Active Together

Since May 2020, we’ve been running a successful crowdfunding initiative called Active Together, helping sports clubs and other organisations to set up and run their own crowdfunding campaigns to help sustain themselves through the coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis. 

To date, we’ve supported campaigns with a financial pledge towards their target fundraising amount, but in addition to this, we've been providing:

• free 1-2-1 coaching by experts
• advice and guidance on campaign improvements
• access to free online courses
• free 30-minute webinars, monthly.

As part of our return to play offer, an additional £1.5m of National Lottery funding was made available to continue supporting clubs and local organisations to set up and run their own crowdfunding campaign, with a potential financial pledge from us to help them towards their crowdfunding target.

Crowdfunding is a great alternative if you don’t meet any of the priority groups of our other funding streams, or if you’re seeking to raise funds because of a loss of income due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Crowdfunding’s not the same as traditional grant funding. It does require work to set up and successfully run a campaign, but the sense of achievement you get once a campaign is successfully delivered creates ‘added value’ beyond what’s achieved from a competitive grant application. 

There are also many additional benefits of running a campaign, as well as what you achieve financially.

Feedback so far from other campaigns has seen these benefits include an increased number of new members, sponsorships from local businesses, a great sense of place within the community, as well as new skills and experiences like social media, marketing and communications.

What will you support?

This funding option is about supporting local clubs and organisations through the coronavirus crisis and with the return to play. 

This may be the implementation of changes needed to ensure you’re adhering to the latest government guidelines around social distancing, it may be the need for additional coaching, facility hire or the purchasing of personal protective equipment to make sure everyone who takes part in activity at your venue is safe.

It could be that a loss of income has severely impacted your ability to survive, or the need to undertake essential maintenance of your facilities that are now not possible due to the crisis.

How long will it take?

Campaigns typically run for 28 days but take a few weeks to create – so about six weeks in total.

Applications to Active Together are done through the Crowdfunder site and will take minutes to complete and submit.

Once received, our decision on whether we support your campaign or not will be made within a couple of days, leaving you to focus on running your campaign. 

Whilst we can’t fund every campaign we see, those that make a good case, include a video and have engaging rewards that’ll incentivise a crowd wider than just an existing membership, will usually succeed.

We’ll support you throughout, to help you deliver the best possible campaign you can.

Crowdfunding can be a great way to achieve a fundraise in a relatively short period of time, so why not give it a try?

How many applications have we had across the three branches of the fund so far? How many have been approved? How much funding have we allocated?

We've put together a handy tool that's constantly being updated to answer all those questions, and more.

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