Deadline: 30-Jun-23
The Sport England’s Small Grants Programme seeks to develop opportunities for communities to get more people physically active and we’ll support new projects through providing National Lottery funding of between £300 and £15,000.
Sport England to support projects that bring communities together and provide sports and physical activities for people who may be less physically active. They also particularly want to support projects focusing on environmental sustainability.
They also particularly want to support projects focusing on environmental sustainability.
Key Information
- Awards of £300-£15,000 are available to not-for-profit organisations.
- Multiple applications can be submitted, but organisations can only have awards of up to £15,000 in any 12-month period.
- Awards are to help inactive and less active people become more active.
- Their priority is to support projects working with people living in areas of disadvantage as defined by the Indices of Multiple Deprivation areas 1 to 3.
- Applications should explain why there’s a need for the project and how end users have been involved in developing the project.
- Applications should consider how the project adds value to services currently available in your local community, and work collaboratively with other groups to maximise the impact of the project.
What they can fund?
- Provided your project meets the programme aims, they can fund a wide range of costs and items.
- However, your application should state how your project adds value to existing services or provision – they won’t fund costs that are already being incurred.
- Your project should consider how you involve your community in the design and delivery of the project to help show it’s really needed.
- They’d like their funding to connect communities and build on the strengths and assets already in place.
- Coaching – providing opportunities for those less likely to be active, offering them an activity they want to participate in.
- Volunteer training – develop your organisation’s volunteer base through offering training to both new and existing volunteers.
- Service alterations – providing new ways of delivering your existing activity to attract new participants/members, for example offering outreach or web-based classes or targeting new audiences through connecting with other providers in your locality.
- Additional equipment – to enable expansion of activity or safer delivery of activity, for example a defibrillator and associated costs (such as training for its use) as part of a wider project to deliver sport and physical activity.
- Minor facility alterations – examples include adapting a community space to make it more accessible for those with mobility impairments, refurbishing a space to enable sport and physical activity to be offered or improving a space to make it more energy efficient. Please note, you must have, or provide confirmation that you don’t need, the relevant planning permission/building control consent and/or landlord approval. Your application will not be successful unless you include this information in your application.
Eligibility Criteria
- They welcome applications from a wide range of not-for-profit organisations, provided your organisation has a minimum of three unrelated/non-cohabiting trustees or directors.
- You must be able to show that decision making/voting rights are equitably distributed to be eligible for funding – incorporated bodies must show this on their Persons of Significant Control register.
- If you are applying for over £10,000 then your organisation will be required to meet Tier one of their Governance Code.
- Eligible types of organisations are:
- A community amateur sports club (as registered with HMRC)
- An unregistered voluntary and community organisation with a not-for-profit constitution
- A registered charity
- A not-for-profit company (limited by guarantee without share capital or charitable incorporated organisation)
- A community interest company (CIC) or other social enterprise
- Community benefit society
- A school using their facilities for wider community benefit.
- Local authority bodies (including town, parish and community councils).
Ineligible
- While the focus is on what will be achieved, there are some organisation types that aren’t eligible for this fund.
- Your organisation can’t apply if you’re:
- An individual, sole trader or organisation with less than three people or where decision making is not equitably shared (e.g. an incorporated body with Persons of Significant Control)
- A national governing body or Active Partnership
- A commercial/for-profit entity
- Based outside the UK
- An organisation applying on behalf of another.
For more information, visit Sport England.