Sign up for our Fit for Your Funding Future Workshop

Fit For Your Funding Future is an in-person half-day workshop designed for organisations that utilise grant funding to deliver vital projects or cover core costs.

It is a chance to hear from leading experts, including Sport Relief, on: 

• The evolving funding landscape for our sector
• Key challenges and good operational practices in a collaborative environment
• The future of funding with the sector’s major funders

Following feedback from our members, we have been made acutely aware of how challenging the current funding climate is – particularly for organisations who need it the most, relying on grant funding and other fundraising activities to deliver activity their community. The funding landscape is also becoming increasingly competitive, with existing sources of funding often not rising with inflation. We must ensure our members and sector can stay resilient, thrive, and are given the best chance to continue to deliver vital positive impact in local communities across the country.

Our session therefore aims to support interested members and our sector to improve knowledge and awareness of the developing funding landscape and understand how best to capitalise on its opportunities and mitigate its threats.

How do I join the session?

The session is to be run as not-for-profit, with a charge of £50 + VAT for Sport and Recreation Alliance members and £100+ VAT for non-members to cover guest speaker costs. 

We are running the workshop on Thursday 30^th November from 10:00 – 14:00 at the 5-Star Courthouse Hotel in London - The Courthouse Hotel 19-21 Great Marlborough Street, London, W1F 7HL. Guests are free to arrive from 9.30am.

Sign up to the event here – and please get in touch with our Research and Development Manager, Toby Flannigan, for any questions.

More about the workshop

Fit for Your Funding Future is an in-person half-day session to help CEOs, Directors and ‘Heads’ navigate the funding landscape – providing guidance, insight and support from both the funders themselves and sector experts – coupled with networking opportunities with sector peers.

The Agenda:

• Sport for Change
• Neel Sood: Sport for Change Manager at Comic Relief – Neel has over six years’ of experience in evaluating bids and proposals from our sector,and is well versed in the weaknesses in bids and the pitfalls organisations run into. He will deliver a presentation on sport for change and how to incorporate these principles into funding applications to be more appealing to funders.
• Optimising Operations
• Mark Walker: Founder of Oaks Consulting – Mark spent 12 years as the founder and Managing Director of Oaks - a strategic planning, income generation and capacity-building consultancy. He helped guide organisations to attain unprecedented funding revenue (average £3-£4m per year) by optimising their operational efficiency. He will talk about the best way to bring together bids from an operational standpoint, allowing your organisation to manage your human resource capital effectively and reduce wastage.
• Measuring Impact
• Ricky Boardman: Head of Research and Development at the Sport and Recreation Alliance – For the past decade, Ricky has helped many organisations conduct impact assessments of their programmes across health, wellbeing and other areas of social impact. He will deliver valuable insight around monitoring and evaluation to evidence project success and improve the funders’ perception of your programme.
• Future of Funding:
• We are currently in final conversations with a leading funding organisation to send Senior Representative to the workshop. Those attending will get to hear of future plans around funding applications. This session is a great opportunity to ‘brainstorm’ and for funders to listen to those in attendance. This session therefore provides you with a meaningful opportunity to influence the ‘Future of Funding’.

As we are hosting the session, ‘in-person’ our aim is to have an interactive and discursive session, which will also provide good networking opportunities, and the chance to receive support and insight from sector peers. 

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