The Football Foundation was set up in 2000 by the Government, the Premier League and The FA. It provides grants towards improving local community sports facilities for ordinary people across the country to use and enjoy.
Since 2000, it has provided £399m worth of grants towards 7,700 community projects, with a total project cost of £944m (figures as of January 2011).
The money for the £399m of Foundation grants has been provided by the Foundation’s core funding partners: the Premier League, The FA and Government (via Sport England). The remaining £545m of the project cost has been leveraged from match funders – the Foundation requires applicants to source partnership funding, which means its own funding can stretch further and improve grassroots sports in other towns and cities across the country.
Schools, football clubs, sports associations, councils and other organisations have therefore benefited from new 3G all-weather pitches, floodlights, changing pavilions and grass pitches. The Foundation aims to invest at least 40% of its funding in the top 20% most deprived wards in the country – in fact last year alone it invested 61%.
Between 2000-2010 the Football Foundation helped fund:
1,492 community sports Facilities
670 new Changing Pavilions
339 Artificial Grass Pitches
2,194 improved Grass Pitches
5,600 improved Goalposts
Other interesting Foundation stats:
58 Canary Wharfs – the equivalent height if the total number of Foundation-funded goal posts were stacked on top of each other
9 Hyde Parks – the area equivalent to all Foundation-funded pitches
3 Millennium Domes – the area equivalent to all Foundation-funded pavilions
3 Wembley Stadium sell-outs – the equivalent number of recipients of Foundation-funded free kits
The Foundation also carries out detailed monitoring and evaluation at projects that it supports. In the 2009-2010 season, for example, its M&E showed that at Foundation-enhanced facilities participation in football increased by an average of 10.5%, whilst multi-sport participation increased by 10.4% (more than half of the facilities the Foundation has invested in are multi-sport, so Foundation cash is also helping drive participation in other sports, such as rugby, netball, cricket and hockey).
The Foundation is also a very efficient delivery model, which delivers each of its funding partners a five-to-one return on its investment. The Government, for example, receives a five-to-one return, as the Premier League matches every £1, as does The FA. The Foundation then works with applicants who source match-funding at roughly 50% of the project cost. In 2010, Foundation funding in fact accounted for only 44% of the total project cost, stretching its funding partners’ contributions even further.
Other organisations have been attracted to the Foundation to carry out programmes for them. It delivered the multi award-winning Barclays Spaces for Sports scheme – the largest sport Corporate Social Responsibility programme by any UK company, which developed 200 sports sites. Again, the Foundation turned a £30 million donation from Barclays into a £65 million programme, delivered to time and budget.
It has also recently been chosen by the Mayor of London to deliver the facilities element of his 2012 Olympic legacy for the Capital – the PlaySport London Facility Fund – which will ensure that every London borough benefits from new or upgraded sports facilities.
For more information visit: www.footballfoundation.org.uk.
Or follow the Foundation on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FootballFoundtn.
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