Grants to help sport and activity groups, clubs and organisations respond to the immediate challenges of returning to play in a coronavirus-safe way.
Fund Information
- Funding body:
- Sport England
- Maximum value:
- £ 10,000
- Application deadline:
- None specified
Background
Sport England is committed to the creation of a world-leading community sport system. This means focusing investment on organisations and projects that will grow and sustain participation in grassroots sport to create opportunities for people to excel at their chosen sport.
The Return to Play Fund is funded with money from the Government and the National Lottery and administered by Sport England. The Fund is divided into three strands.
- Small Grants – A total of £15 million with grants of between £300 and £10,000 to help sport and activity groups, clubs and organisations respond to the immediate challenges of returning to play in a Covid-19-safe environment.
- Community Asset Fund – A total of £5 million with grants of between £10,001 and £50,000 to help local sports clubs and organisations to adapt and open important places and spaces that can help them welcome back their local community safely.
- Active Together – A total of £1.5 million is a crowdfunding initiative to help sports clubs and organisations set up their own campaigns to help sustain them through the crisis. Groups should visit the Crowdfunder website for further information.
Small grants are intended to help not-for-profit community organisations providing sport and physical activity, respond to the immediate challenges of returning to play in a coronavirus-safe way, as well as providing new activities to get people active again as restrictions are lifted.
Objectives of Fund
The £16.5 million Return to Play Fund is funded with money from the Government and the National Lottery and administered by Sport England.
The Fund is divided into three strands.
- Small Grants – A total of £15 million with grants of between £300 and £10,000 to help sport and activity groups, clubs and organisations respond to the immediate challenges of returning to play in a Covid-19-safe environment.
- Community Asset Fund – A total of £5 million with grants of between £10,001 and £50,000 to help local sports clubs and organisations to adapt and open important places and spaces that can help them welcome back their local community safely.
- Active Together – A total of £1.5 million is a crowdfunding initiative to help sports clubs and organisations set up their own campaigns to help sustain them through the crisis. Groups should visit the Crowdfunder website for further information.
Value Notes
A total of £15 million is available.
Grants of between £300 and £10,000 are available.
Who Can Apply
Applications are accepted from:
- Not-for-profit voluntary or community groups or sports clubs.
- Registered charities.
- Not-for-profit companies.
- Community interest companies or other social enterprises.
- Leisure operators, operating a single site.
- Parishes or town councils.
Applicants do not have to be a sports organisation to apply. However, sport or physical activity should be an established and significant part of the core offer.
Restrictions
The following are some of the things that are not eligible for funding:
- Individuals, sole traders or organisations with less than three people.
- Statutory bodies or educational establishments including academies and universities.
- A leisure centre operator, operating more than one site.
- A national governing body or Active Partnership.
- A commercial or for-profit entity.
- An organisation delivering football-only activities.
- Projects not clearly related to coronavirus challenges.
- Running costs and utility bills for projects located outside of our priority areas (IMD 1-3).
- Running costs and utility bills in excess of £1,000 from our priority areas (IMD 1-3).
- Loss of income.
- Construction/refurbishment projects where building regulations approval or planning permission has not yet been obtained.
- Replacement of equipment.
- Existing coaching and other staffing costs.
- Projects taking place or incurring costs before the date of a potential award offer letter – this includes any form of deposits and costs associated in submitting the application.
- Projects not ready to begin within six weeks from submitting the application.
- costs benefitting an individual (eg membership fees).
- costs benefitting participants under five years of age.
- costs that are not a direct responsibility of the applicant to cover.
- Football-only projects.
Eligible Expenditure
The funding can cover a wide range of costs and items specifically linking to returning to play during the coronavirus pandemic. Sport England has adopted a flexible approach on the types of projects it will support.
The following are some examples of what can be funded:
- Minor facility alterations
- Reconfiguration/refurbishment to meet social distancing requirements
- Changes required to adhere to published government guidance
- Other coronavirus-related adaptations, repairs and modifications, eg safety screening and contactless payment systems.
- Service alterations
- Volunteer training, eg health and safety requirements, risk assessments, etc.
- Additional coaching/facility hire costs as a direct result of having to deliver to smaller group sizes
- New ways of delivering activity for existing participants/members. This could be purchasing licenses to use online technology having had to change from delivery in a studio to now having to deliver online, where the classes already existed prior to coronavirus.
- Operational alterations
- Signage/floor markings – maintaining social distance and avoiding congestion
- Pre-visit guidance/marketing/communications – promoting good hygiene
- Cleaning/hygiene – keeping facilities and equipment clean
- Additional sports equipment/kit – minimising sharing.
- New/additional activity
- Activity that provides opportunities to people who do not wish to return to previously delivered activity.
- An organisation offering a new or additional activity to respond to demand, due to changing habits of participants.
- Running costs
- Grants of up to £1,000 to contribute towards running costs (eg ongoing/monthly fixed costs such as rent or utilities) from organisations delivering their activities in areas of high deprivation (decile 1-3 of the Indices of Deprivation). Note: the funding will not support projects that are solely related to running costs, and any requests should be linked to the organisation's returning to play aspirations.
Sport England has set two levels of funding priorities.
- Highest priority - Projects located in areas of high deprivation (decile 1-3 of the Indices of Deprivation). Groups should use the postcode checker the GOV.UK website to see which decile their project location fits into.
- Other funding priorities
- Organisations working with communities who have suffered worse health outcome and the most signficantly reduced activity levels as a result of the pandemic - which currently shows this to be girls and women, young people aged 16-24 and older people aged 70+.
Applications are encouraged from organisations who support people on low incomes, people with a long-term health condition or disabled people, Black, Asian and other diverse communities and LGBTQ+ people.
Location
England
How To Apply
The programme will remain open until the end of 2021.
Guidance notes and the online application form are available on the Sport England website.
Sport England aims to provide a decision within three weeks of receipt of application.
Contact Sport England for further information.
Useful documents & links
Useful Links
Addresses and contacts
For further information on how to obtain this grant locally, please contact the following:
- Helpline
Sport England
21 Bloomsbury Street
London
WC1B 3HF
Tel: 03458 508 508
Email: [email protected]