Funding for Wages/Travel

MeandHer1989

3 years ago I set up The Dorset Destroyers Wheelchair Rugby Club. It is now so successful that we are one of the Top 5 in the country with 21 players.

www.thedorsetdestroyers.co.uk

Then because I felt that there was not enough disability sports in Dorset I set up Disability Sports Dorset to get 20+ disability sports set up in Poole and to build a Centre of Disability Sporting Excellence.

http://www.disabilitysportsdorset.weebly.com

So far we have 4 sports and tonight we are launching a brand new sport (Target Sprint for wheelchairs - Basically wheeling 400 metres, shooting at 5 targets with limited pellets, racing again etc etc etc) But we also run disability shooting club, wheelchair tennis, wheelchair badminton, wheelchair self-defence.

We have a committee who help run both clubs, but many of these ideas are in my head and I need to be able to transfer them onto paper so that we can apply for funding for the Centre (Est. £23 million)

This Centre will be designed by disabled people for disabled people and it will be the best in the UK. I may sound like a bit of a dreamer to some, but this is deadly serious and this is actually happening as we speak. The clubs are all doing well, with The Dorset Destroyers Wheelchair Rugby Club coming 2nd in their first year in the League.

In all these various clubs we have athletes who have Gold/Bronze medals in the Invictus Games, British record holders, Irish record holders and so much more. So this is a reality and something that will happen.

My biggest bridge though is how I get to report and show funders what I want to be built and funded over the next 10 years. I need to go to other centres across the UK, film, photograph and report back on what I want and where, why etc. I'm not just talking inside, but how do we make the building nice without spending much money on it, how do we make it cost effective (Solar Panels etc etc etc Free energy)

So I need to find someone/somewhere who can fund me to plan this. Because we are not a registered charity I am being blocked off from 95% funding.

But does anyone know where I could get funding so I can travel to various centres, talk to designers, local people to various centres to see what to do and more importantly not to do.

I am looking for funding of £5,000 a year for 3 years, for me to work 30+ hours a week to get this up and running. This does include travel costs to centres across the UK. No money will be spent on accommodation or anything like that. It's a small amount of money, but to be honest we've run all our clubs on that because there's very little money out there to set up a starter club.

This will happen, I assure you. One day it will be the Centre that everyone in Europe will look at to be like. It won't have loads of money spent on the design outside, but it will look nice and the most important thing is to spend the money on the equipment/access etc.

kingfisherblue

It's great to hear how well you are doing - I've followed your previous posts in the past and was delighted to see that you have posted again.

So, onto the details in this post. First of all, could you become a registered charity? That would open up a vast amount of funders available to you. There is a lot of information available, and it may well be the best way to move forward, not just for realising your dream of building your centre, but also for ongoing costs once it has been built.

Can you get any local sponsorship, or have you already exhausted that route? Could you write to large sports clubs (football clubs, for example) and ask for donations to help you realise a dream for disabled sportsmen and women?

You could set up a crowdfunding page, and register for easyfundraising (although I believe the latter is only good if people sign up to use your account when shopping, and then remember to aactually do so).

Can you hold some charity style events - summer fairs, car boot sales, raffles, race nights, to raise money? If you can hold one a month and raise £420 each time, you will have your first £5000 within a year.

Bag packing at supermarkets can be great for raising larger amounts of funds, although you obviously need enough people to participate. My Brownie unit is small, and I offer two hour slots to the girls due to their young age. We bag pack in Iceland, with only 2-4 tills (amount open varies during the day). In one day, we usually raise over £400. Units that bag pack in larger supermarkets tend to raise £700-£1000 in a day.

For your actual plans, you could approach colleges that have courses in architecture, town planning, or similar, and ask if anyone would like to volunteer their services to help you with plans for the building, perhaps as a piece of coursework. This could help you with pitfalls as well as positives.

I'm sorry that I'm not much help, but as always, wish you the very best of luck.

Savvy_Sue

I agree about registered charity status. However, even without that you may be able to access pro bono professional support. I'm sure I'll have mentioned your local voluntary services council, although it may have a different name ...

MeandHer1989

We are registering Disability Sports Dorset as our Umbrella organisation which will control all the clubs but this is going to take some time

Got a list of things to do now so thanks

Savvy_Sue

Definitely worth getting some professional advice about what to register as - as well as a charity you may want some kind of 'business' organisation. In the good old days, the only option was to be a registered company as well as a charity, to give your trustees some protection if the whole thing went belly up. Now there are CIOs and other things about which I know next to nothing apart from being aware of their existence.

If your ultimate aim includes charging for use of this centre, then that may affect what you do now. Do hope you can get some either pro bono or at a very good rate ...