FIND MEFOOTBALL

Grassroots football funding and grants in England

This page does not list the funds that are open today. A list like that goes out of date within months, and a club that budgets against a fund which has since closed is worse off than a club that had no list at all.

What it does instead is show you how to find what is open now, and how to work out whether a fund is worth the hours an application takes. It is written for England. Funding is organised separately in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and there is a signpost to each association at the end.

Funds open, close and change their rules. Where we refer to a funder's terms, we attribute them and point you to the funder's own pages, because those pages are the version that counts. Check the exact programme before you spend time or money on an application.

Information checked on

Work out what the money is for before you look for it

A club that starts from what it can get applies for things it does not need. A club that starts from the project knows within a minute whether a fund is relevant.

  • Write down what you want to do, what it costs and when it has to happen.
  • Separate the things you want to buy or build from the running costs you want covered. Funders draw that line, and a fund may cover one side of it and not the other.
  • Work out what you can put in yourself. Some funds expect the club to fund part of the project.
  • Decide what happens if you raise some of it but not all of it. That answer changes which funds are worth applying to.

Read the exclusions before you read the headline

The exclusions rule things out faster than any amount of reading about what is available. The trap is reading the wrong ones, because a funder can run several programmes with different rules and one exclusions page does not cover them all.

The Football Foundation, which is funded by the Premier League, the FA and the Government, shows how this works. Its general funding page (opens in a new tab) lists among the things it does not fund there:

  • Facilities that are not available for community use.
  • Kit and equipment.
  • Projects intended for private gain.
  • Projects outside England.
  • Retrospective funding, meaning work that has already started or been completed.
  • Routine maintenance and repairs from wear and tear, where they are not part of a grass pitch improvement programme.
  • Facility hire.

That is what the Foundation's general funding page says. Individual programmes can differ from it. The Foundation has run programmes whose eligible costs include kit and equipment and facility hire, both of which appear on the general exclusions list. So the answer to whether something is fundable is not a property of the funder. It is a property of the programme.

Open the specific programme you are considering and read its own eligibility and eligible-costs pages before you spend or apply. Do not rely on a general page, and do not rely on this one.

Retrospective spending is the one worth checking before anything else. Where a programme excludes it, buying the thing first puts it beyond funding permanently, and no application fixes that afterwards.

Check that your organisation can apply

Eligibility is set by the individual programme, not by the name of the funder. Football Foundation programmes publish their own eligibility criteria, and the organisation types accepted can differ between them. Find the eligibility information for the exact grant before you start.

Eligibility can also depend on who is authorised to apply on the club's behalf. On the Football Foundation guidance we checked (opens in a new tab), a football club applicant must be its chair, secretary or treasurer, and the Foundation verifies the role when the account is set up.

Whatever fund you are looking at, confirm who is authorised to apply and co-sign before you start, so the application does not stall while you wait for the right person.

For facility projects, look up your Local Football Facility Plan

The Football Foundation publishes a Local Football Facility Plan (opens in a new tab) for every local authority area in England, produced with local authorities and partners, and describes them as a roadmap of the facilities each community needs. They are searchable by area.

This matters for significant facility investment, a pitch or a building rather than a set of goalposts or a season of hall hire. Look yours up early, because it tells you what has already been identified as a local priority and what has not.

If your project is not in the plan, that is not an automatic no. It is a reason to talk to your County FA about the right route before you write anything.

Questions to ask before you commit to an application

Applications take volunteer hours that could go somewhere else. Work through these before you start, not halfway through.

Before you start

  • Are we the kind of organisation this fund accepts, and is our club's legal form on their list?
  • Is our project the kind of thing they pay for, and is it on their exclusions list?
  • Have we already started or already bought it? If so, ask whether they fund retrospectively before going further.
  • Do they want the facility to be available to the wider community, and can we commit to that?
  • Do they expect us to fund part of it, and where would our share come from?
  • Who has to sign, and are those people willing and available?
  • What will we have to report afterwards, and for how long?
  • When does it close, when do they decide, and can our project wait that long?

If the answer to the last one is no, that is worth knowing on day one. A grant that arrives after the season has started may not solve the problem you applied about.

Where to look

These are the routes available to a club in England. Which of them suits your project depends on what you are trying to do, and that is your judgement rather than ours.

  • The Football Foundation funding pages (opens in a new tab), for football-specific programmes and facility funding. Check each programme's own rules rather than the general page.
  • Sport England's funding pages (opens in a new tab), particularly where football is being used to deliver wider social, community or health outcomes. Its guidance says it will not fund football-only projects where Football Foundation support is possible, giving equipment and facilities as the examples, and directs those to the Foundation. Check the current guidance before applying.
  • The National Lottery Community Fund's England funding finder (opens in a new tab). Constituted clubs can be eligible for some programmes, but each programme sets its own aims and eligibility, so check the exact programme rather than treating the Fund as one set of criteria.
  • Your County FA, which may be able to point you towards football-specific opportunities and, for facility projects, advise on the Football Foundation route.
  • Your Local Football Facility Plan, if you are looking at facility investment.
  • Your local authority and, where you have one, your parish or town council.
  • Community foundations covering your area, for place-based funding.

Grants are one route. Sponsorship, subscriptions and the club's own fundraising are others, and a project that depends entirely on winning a grant has a single point of failure.

If you are turned down

Ask whether the funder will tell you why. The answer matters more than it looks, because the two reasons are different problems.

  • If you were not eligible, no rewrite fixes it. Find a fund you are eligible for.
  • If you were eligible but the project did not fit their priorities, the application can be worth reworking for a different fund, or for the same fund in a different round if they allow it.

Do not send the same application to the same fund again without asking whether that is permitted.

Elsewhere in the UK

The Football Foundation does not fund projects outside England. Funding routes are organised separately in each nation, so start with the association that covers you.

Claim your club listing

If your club is listed on FindMeFootball, claiming the listing lets you keep your age groups and contact route accurate. There is no charge to claim a listing.

Find your club in the directory to start. If you are also building a squad, our guide to recruiting players for a grassroots team covers what an advert can and cannot say.

Common questions

Can we get a grant for kit?

It depends on the programme, not the funder. Kit and equipment sit on the Football Foundation's general exclusions list, but the Foundation has also run programmes whose eligible costs include kit. Find a programme whose published eligible costs cover kit rather than deciding from a general page that a funder is ruled out.

We have already bought it. Can we claim the money back?

Do not assume you can. The Football Foundation's general funding page excludes retrospective funding for work already started or completed, and other programmes may do the same. Check the exact programme before you spend, because once a programme bars retrospective funding the purchase cannot be undone.

Who in the club has to apply?

On the Football Foundation guidance we checked, it is the chair, secretary or treasurer, and the role is verified when the account is set up. Other funders and other programmes set their own rule, so find out before you start.

Can we apply if we hire our pitch rather than own it?

Hiring does not automatically rule you out. It depends on the programme and on what you want funded. Some programmes can fund hire costs, while facility projects may require security of tenure, a lease or the involvement of whoever owns the site. Check the specific programme, and speak to your County FA or the funder before planning work on somebody else's ground.

How long does it take?

Ask the funder, and do not commit to a start date, order a delivery or promise anything to families until you have a decision in writing.