£16.5m Sport England grant scheme reopens

Sport England in the last 2 weeks has opened, suspended and today reopened a new funding scheme for clubs and sports organisations to help them provide opportunities for people to turn to sports activities. You can now start preparing your bid ready for submission. Here are the details of the latest scheme which is very much open to bids from bowling clubs.

The 'Return to Play Fund' will support groups, clubs and organisations which have been impacted by restrictions brought in to tackle the COVID-19 disease. Full details are available here but in short, there are three streams open for bids with a total of £16.5m to be allocated to schemes.

The three streams being:

£10m - Return to Play: Small Grants

This will provide 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. It’ll help community sport respond to the challenges posed, such as having to deliver in smaller groups, having the correct hygiene and safety equipment and giving training to club volunteers. It’ll also cover making necessary changes to facilities, supplying additional sports equipment and new signage to meet current government and national governing body rules and guidance.

£5m - Return to Play: Community Asset Fund

This will provide grants ranging in value from £10,001 to £50,000. It’ll help local sports clubs and organisations to adapt and open important places and spaces that can help them welcome back their local community safely. This will include helping groups, clubs and organisations address the challenges they’re facing by: 

• adapting how they use space and improving ventilation

• converting existing space to meet social distancing requirements, such as additional changing space

• making improvements to buildings or open spaces for temporary use to get more people active by using a vacant warehouse, shop or community centre.

£1.5m - Return to Play: Active Together

This crowdfunding initiative will help sports clubs and organisations set up their own campaigns to help sustain them through the crisis. It's a great alternative if they don’t meet the priority groups of the other parts of the Return to Play package and Sport England will match crowdfunds of up to £10,000 to help cover the loss of income. The partnership with Crowdfunder will also include advice, guidance and training to help create successful campaigns.

If you require more details then this link is your starting point which will then direct you to other websites providing full details of how to bid and benefit from this scheme.