Club finances

Club finances and fundraising

This section gives tips and ideas on raising funds and generating income for your club / venue.

Easy Fundraising

We’ve partnered with funding website easy-fundraising to enable England Squash affiliated clubs to raise money when you or anyone connected to your club shops online! An average shopper could raise £30 each year, so this is a fantastic opportunity to provide an ongoing revenue stream for your club. This is a really easy way for your players, members, coaches and supporters to support your club – simply by shopping online.

To get started, simply register here and create your club’s free fundraising page. Once registered, you’ll be assigned a fundraising coach, to give you as much support as you need to spread the word to your club network and help you raise as much as possible.

So, how does it work?

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a different way to raise money for good ideas. People are increasingly bypassing more traditional funding routes such as bank loans or grants and turning instead to the people around them and in their community to support their venture.

Hythe Cricket and Squash Club's recent crowdfunding success has seen them raise £26,000 through Sport England's Active Together crowdfunding campaign.

Take a look at the club's top tips for starting a crowdfunding campaign.

Finding a sponsor

Finding a sponsorship for your club is a great way to source extra financing. Sponsors can help with financing new courts, kit, equipment or training.

Find out more about what sponsors can offer here.

Applying for funding

Sport England

Each year Sport England invest more than £250 million of National Lottery and public money to help people play sport and take part in physical activity. With a several funding grants available clubs can apply directly to Sport England for this funding. Find out more about their funds here.

Click here for tips on how to write a funding bid for Sport England Small Grants Programme.

National Lottery Awards for All England

The National Lottery Awards for All offers grants between £300 and £10,000 for projects that improve communities, and the lives of people within them including sporting projects. You can apply to Awards for All if you are a not for profit groups (including social enterprises), parish or town council, health body, or school. You do not need to be a registered charity to apply

Find out more here.

National Lottery Reaching Communities

Reaching Communities provides funding between £10,000-£500,000 for voluntary or community groups. They are looking for people to use their local knowledge, strengths and resources to come up with projects that make positive changes in local communities. Projects that can demonstrate a lasting and sustainable changes to places and spaces, communities and taking action to focus on the root causes of social issues.

Find out more here.

Heritage Lottery

Similar to National Lottery funding, the Heritage Lottery uses money raised by National Lottery players to fund projects that protect the heritage they care about. The fund takes into account sporting heritage with projects that can demonstrate a commitment to preserving the history of clubs and facilities that mean a lot to their local communities. Stories and memories behind the people, places, and events that make up sporting heritage are the key criteria behind the fund.

Find out more here.

Veolia Trust - Veolia Environmental Trust

The Veolia Trust offers grants for a broad range of community projects including play and recreational facilities. They have a history of supporting community sports projects such as the refurbishing of artificial surfaces for the West Yorkshire Hockey Club and the building of changing room extensions for South Yorkshire Rugby Club. All funding is subject to the proximity of location with the web- site offering a Postcode checker to see if funding is available in your area. They offer grants any- where between £10,000 to £75,000.

Find out more here.

FCC Communities Foundation - FCC Community Access Fund

Previously known as WREN, FCC Communities Foundation looks to fund community projects for the provision, maintenance or improvement of public access. The areas in which they look to fund include; multi use games areas, skate parks and BMX tracks, Sports and recreation grounds including pavilions and clubhouses with full public access.

Find out more here.

BlueSpark Foundation

BlueSpark is particularly keen to support projects which will help enhance the self-confidence, team working skills and future employability of children and young people. In most cases grants will be made on a relatively small scale. Many grants will be under £2,000, most will be under £5,000 and only in a few cases will grants exceed £10,000.

Find out more here.