Compared with many voluntary sports clubs in England, the Birmingham Force Basketball Club is a new kid on the block. Catering for girls across the city, it’s been going for just four years, but already has almost fifty members aged from 12 to 18. Responsible for managing the logistics of organising training and matches for three teams at three different venues, are Alaina Allen and her volunteer colleagues, who all coach the girls as well as undertaking administrative roles within the club. As Alaina explains, it’s the costs associated with basketball that present the biggest challenge. “The costs for each match, including hall hire, the referees’ and officials’ fees and petrol work out at about £150. We only charge the girls £3 so we are constantly looking for new ways to raise money”.
Alaina and her colleagues had been talking about applying to the lottery grants scheme Awards for All for a while, and hearing about a couple of other sports clubs’ successful applications made them more confident about having a go themselves. However, it was finding out about and booking on the runningsports’ Awards for All workshop that gave them the final encouragement they needed.
The fact that the runningsports Tutor explained all the sections of the application form, and went through what Awards for All wanted in each section was a great help to Alaina. As she admits, “like many people, we’re not used to filling in application forms, so to get the level of support that the workshop provided was invaluable, even down to the detail of the terminology to use to make our application stand out. It’s scary to think that we probably wouldn’t have applied for the grant if we hadn’t gone to the workshop, and the club would have missed out on £8,000, which is enabling us to cater for the girls in the city that want to play Basketball.”
The money will keep the club going for another two to three years, and give them some stability. However, they’re not intending to stand still, and have aspirations to start an under 12s’ team and to be able to find coaches to expand the under 16s’ section.
Alaina is in no doubt that attending the workshop with a couple of other people from the club is a great idea. “We came away with all the information we needed to complete the application”, she says, “and the fact that the three of us could discuss and agree our final submission with the same level of knowledge that we’d all gained from the workshop saved us a lot of time. And at £15 for each of us, the £45 investment in the workshop fees we made as a whole was not even 1% of the amount of money we secured, so it was great value.”
More than 78,000 clubs and organisations have benefited from the Sport England lottery backed Awards for All grants scheme and many of those who did benefit attribute their success to attending the related runningsports workshop. And as Alaina Allen at Birmingham Force Basketball Club knows, it’s possible to make substantial changes fairly simply with a little help from runningsports.
Now Sport England is launching a new grants scheme where sports clubs can continue to apply for grants from £300 to £10,000. This will be available from April 2009 and will supersede Awards for All. But one thing is for sure, runningsports will ensure its fully updated workshop to accompany the new grants scheme will go on supporting clubs and helping to ensure their hard work is rewarded with a share of lottery money.
If you’re involved in managing an expanding club and would like to learn more about making a greater success of your funding proposals, or working up a club development plan, and would like to know more about that workshop just as soon as it becomes available then register as a runningsports Network Member. It’s completely free and it’s the easy way to stay in touch with all the latest developments.
