A message from the trustees
20 YEARS AS A CHARITY AND THE ONGOING BATTLE TO RAISE FUNDS – A MESSAGE FROM THE TRUSTEES
This September Sport4Health celebrates its 20th anniversary as an organisation – founded by Ed who wanted to help people enjoy sport as a way to ease the daily pressures of life and to have better health in the process. It is a registered charity and receives most of its income from charitable foundations (as grants) and some from statutory bodies (eg NHS) through grants or being commissioned to run certain projects (such as Healthy Hearts). All of our programmes depend 100% on our securing this funding as we have little other source of income, apart from the wonderful personal donations that people make.
On average we have to make about 40 funding applications per year (nearly one per week) to secure the income we need. Usually only around 10-15 of these are successful and it is getting much, much harder. All these applications are done in voluntary time by either Ed or one of the trustees (Ciaran) and each one takes around 7-8 hours to complete and submit. It’s a relentless process and, if funding is secured, then each grant comes with its own increasingly complex and time-consuming reporting requirement, which is why you will sometimes be asked to do questionnaires, etc.
We must and will continue to invest this time in raising funds but we wanted to let you know that more and more funders are unable to support our work as they say they receive too many applications and, sadly, very few will say specifically why our application to them was unsuccessful. The organisation will always continue in some form or other. However, as funding is becoming harder to secure we thought it important for you to know that we cannot ever guarantee that some of the individual programmes will always be available (I wish we could!). So do make the most of them – they are for you, to help you have better health, to make new friends, to learn new skills and build confidence and, most importantly, to enjoy!