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Grant Awarding Bodies That Can Help Croquet Clubs

The Sports Development Committee through your local Federation Development Officer can often assist with advice on how to obtain grants for development projects. Your club can, of course, apply to Croquet England for development funds but an award will not be made for more than half the project cost. The Committee, in common with other grant-awarding bodies, will also expect your application to show evidence of seeking funding elsewhere. Some may only make awards on a matching basis. So most clubs will have to look for a source of funding from several bodies.

It may seem tiresome to make a great many applications but it can amount to substantial funds being made available. You are much more likely to be successful if it can be seen that you are determined to raise the funds and prepared to put in the effort. Once you have one 'in the bag' others are encouraged. Good luck.

The National Lottery funds projects in the arts, sport, heritage, charity, voluntary, health, education and environmental sectors: lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/funding

This includes

Sport England: sportengland.org

Sport Wales Community Chest: offers grant awards up to £1,500 in any 12 months towards increasing participation and improving standards. Several Welsh Croquet Clubs have benefitted.

Sport Wales Be Active Fund: sport.wales/beactivewalesfund

Sport England Small Grants: offer funding for projects involving adults and young people aged 14 or over which meet one or more of the aims of their "Towards an Active Nation Strategy".

Sport England Return to Play Fund sportengland.org/how-we-can-help/our-funds/return-play-small-grants

Nottingham CC obtained £10,000 matched funding from Sport England as part of their crowdfunding exercise in 2020. Beatrice McGlen (Chair of Nottingham CC) can provide details of what to do and how to do it: beatrice#mcglen.co.uk

Sport England has compiled a useful list of all the other ways that clubs can generate funding, see sportengland.org/how-we-can-help/our-funds/other-ways-to-generate-funding?section=social_sector_funding

They say that there are thousands of grant funders in England and they include links to "help you find what could be right for you". They also list some of the grant search engines that have information on the latest grants available.

Several croquet clubs have obtained substantial assistance with development projects from local sources.

For example, Crake Valley CC in South Cumbria obtained funds (in addition to their Sport England and Croquet England grants) from

Winterborne Valley CC, near Blandford in Dorset, applied for grants from

National Community Funds

Other national foundations (some established by companies doing environmentally doubtful things and/or modelling themselves on US corporations) offer support for community projects such as croquet clubs (though they are never mentioned on the websites) include:

Orsted (formerly DONG Energy) operate Community Benefit Funds for their off-shore wind projects in Liverpool Bay; the Irish Sea off the Cumbria coastline (see Crake Valley above) and the North Sea off the Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and North Norfolk coastline. The East Coast Community Fund (Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and North Norfolk Coast) is a fund worth £465,000 each year for a 20 year period. The Fund is a commitment by Orsted to support communities within the coastal areas of its Hornsea and Race Bank Offshore Wind Farms. The areas included are parts of Boston, East Riding of Yorkshire, Fenland, King's Lynn and West Norfolk, North East Lincolnshire, North Norfolk, South Holland and West Lindsey.

Many rural communities receive money from local solar farms which will be paid annually for as long as the farms are operational. The basic criterion is that ideas should have benefit to the community. The funds are usually administered by Community Groups independently of the local Council. The groups accept applications for grants throughout the year. Councils act in partnership with the groups by holding the community benefit monies on their behalf in ring fenced funds. Examples include:

The FCC Communities Foundation awards grants to community projects from funds donated by FCC Environment through the Landfill Communities Fund. It was previously known as WREN (Waste Recycling Environmental). They award grants to clubs within prescribed distances from landfill sites.

For example, the Mick George Community Fund provides grants of between £10,000 and £50,000 (although it is unlikely that individual grants over £35,000 will be made). Organisations can only apply for a grant if their total project cost is more than £10,000 and less than £100,000. The Fund supports projects located in proximity to landfill sites operated by Mick George Ltd and Frimstone Ltd and other waste treatment sites situated throughout the East Midlands and Anglian regions.

Further, the Mick George Sports Fund (run in association with Living Sport and Northamptonshire Sport - "organisations that specialise in improving the health and well-being of people, through participation in sport and physical activity") has donated more than £150,000 to over 150 separate leisure led schemes in the NN and CB postcode areas, across a wide variety of disciplines; including football, rowing, cricket, bowls, canoeing, netball, archery and athletics.

Another example is the Augean Community Fund. This uses monies provided by Augean PLC under the Landfill Communities Fund. The company's donations relate to its two landfill operations located near Thornhaugh in Peterborough, and King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire. Groups with projects that are located within 10 miles of the King's Cliffe landfill site or the Thornhaugh landfill site may apply for grants, subject to the Augean Community Fund's eligibility requirements. The maximum grant available is £50,000.

There are many other similar but narrower local landfill funds (see for example the Whitemoss Community Fund in Lancashire and the Coastal Recycling Fund in Devon) which should be carefully investigated when development projects are envisaged

Charitable Trusts with a Local Bias

Updated versions of this information will be posted on the Croquet England website when information is sent to the Funding Committee Chair

For more information, please contact the office.

 

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