Sport England Launches £20m Community Emergency Fund

Sport England has set up the new £20 million Community Emergency Fund as part of a £195 million package to help the sport and physical activity sector through the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. It is specifically targeted at organisations, including those not currently supported by Sport England, who have a role in supporting the nation to be active but who are experiencing short-term financial hardship or the ceasing of operations due to the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19).

Grants of between £300 and £10,000 are available to the following organisations:

Local sports clubs
Voluntary and community sector organisations that deliver or enable sport and/or physical activity, including organisations that are not solely or primarily sports organisations and have an important role to play in keeping people active, that may need support for other parts of their organisation to remain open
Small charitable trusts that do not qualify for financial help elsewhere
Regional or county level organisations or leagues that have already paid out funds for activities that are now cancelled and are not able to claim funds from elsewhere.

The fund has been developed to help community sport and physical activity organisations meet their obligations, in particular fixed costs, which are no longer supported with revenue as a result of coronavirus. This might cover expenditure on:

Rent
Utility costs
Insurances
Facility or equipment hire
Core staffing costs (including casual workers) that cannot be met elsewhere by other government funds
Retrospective losses dating from 1 March 2020.

Some examples of the sort of things the funding can help with are:

Support a boxing club to pay for their utility bills and other costs for their facility when no activity is taking place
Support a local league who have paid for equipment to run a competition which is now cancelled and therefore will not receive the money the players in the league would have paid.

Applications are currently being accepted with a closing date of 31 July 2020.

Full details…