North Herts sports grants: apply now!

Now is the time to apply for Sport North Herts grants. You can apply for a grant to help meet the cost of sports equipment, travel expenses within the UK, clothing specific to the sport, and training and competition fees.

In order to qualify for a grant you must have: 

• reached a regional or national standard
  
• be a permanent resident within the boundaries of North Hertfordshire District Council.
  
• have not received any direct financial assistance from North Herts District Council or Sport North Herts within the current financial year (1st April – 31st March).

The application form can be downloaded from here. There are two rounds of grants every year, so if you get into the regional squad in January you will be able to apply in May.

Help us win some cash

A new source of funding for sports clubs has been launched. Cash 4 Clubs is offering up to £1,000 per club - essentially you just have to bid and say what you want the money for. However before you even get to the bidding stage you need to collect some newspaper vouchers, for which we need your help. 

Simply turn to page 83 in this week's Comet newspaper, cut out the voucher, and give it to Mike on Thursday. Then we can start to think about how to spend the money (big, warm, subsuits are high on the list!).

Sport funding made easy

More information on Amanda Bate's new venture (as mentioned last week) has come out.

Sport Support will advise and guide sports clubs through the maze of forms and reports that surround (and frequently prevent access to) grants that are supposed to be available to sports clubs and teams like ours.

We've done reasonably well in this area in the past, but much of that has been due to Amanda pointing the way. Often its not so much that the application is daunting (though it frequently is), its more that you are unaware that the grant exists at all, or that you are eligible. Grant making bodies frequently use a specialised branch of the English language where words have subtly different meanings so when you look at it you think "that can't possibly apply to girls' rugby" when it turns out that they are desparate to hand over some cash.

Amanda's new company officially starts on 1st November - but apparently she is taking bookings already (including this club, if they follow my suggestion). A great deal of grant money actually goes unspent, so there is plenty of potential business out there.