The Berks & Bucks FA are here to help you and your club, providing advice on how to effectively manage the clubs finances, find investment to support your growth and develop top class environments for people to play football.
It is important to consider that during difficult financial times money does not come easy and so planning is essential. There are 3 key steps in financial planning for clubs – structure, short term (revenue funding) and long term (capital funding).
Structure
One simple way that may help your club save money is by considering your club structure. For example, Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs) are a government initiatives to help save clubs money by offering a range of tax reliefs and the ability to claim ‘Gift Aid’ on donations made to the club, thereby making the club money too. For more information on CASCs and other club structures please see FA Club Structures Guide (in the documents section below). A guide for different club structures and what the benefits are can be found in the related documents.
Short Term Finance, Ongoing Costs
In terms of short term planning most clubs have a lot they have to pay out for including pitch hire, coaches qualifications and new kit to mention just a few. Luckily there are a vast number of different pots of funding available throughout the year to help support your club with these costs. Two of the key pots are the Grow the Game(http://www.footballfoundation.org.uk/apply/grow-the-game) scheme run by the Football Foundation and Sport England’s Small grants scheme (http://www.sportengland.org/funding/small_grants.aspx). On top of this clubs can access funding through a number of areas including the national lottery, Landfill site schemes, local authority funding plus many more. It is important to stress that although the funding pots are available you will need to prove that you meet the criteria or you will not be able to access funding.
Long Term, Building Facilities
When a club are looking at develop the facilities they use project costs can often be extremely high and the process for developing a project can take a lot of expertise. The Berks & Bucks FA in conjunction with The FA Regional Facilities & Investment Manager and the Football foundation are here to help clubs wanting to go down this route. The main funder in this area is the Football Foundation who have 2 main pots of funding available for facility development; build the game (http://www.footballfoundation.org.uk/apply/build-the-game/) – for projects under £50k and the facilities scheme (http://www.footballfoundation.org.uk/apply/facilities-grants/) for projects over £50k. The Football Foundation also offer support for clubs in the Football League and the National League System down to step 7 and below who want to improve their facilities.
Bucks clubs - http://www.buckssport.org/en/funding/?s=jGiTrVq6zRVa34GfHh
Berks clubs - http://www.getberkshireactive.org/funding/default.aspx
For further information and support with regards to the above please contact;
Paul.Backman@Berks-BucksFA.com
