Fund to diversify the sport and physical activity workforce

We’re making up to £1 million available to diversify coaches and volunteers in the sport and physical activity sector.

Our Workforce Diversity Great Ideas Fund will be open for a month, from today, and we want to hear from anyone wanting to engage women and/or black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) communities in volunteering or coaching opportunities.

With both Coaching Week and Volunteers’ Week taking place now, the National Lottery funding has been allocated to address the fragmented workforce – partly comprised of coaches and volunteers – that is currently lacking diversity.

THIS FUND HAS NOW CLOSED

Our ambition is to help ensure people working in sport and physical activity are skilled, motivated, valued, equipped for their role, are enjoying a positive experience and is representative of our diverse nation.

Up and down the country, amazing people are doing amazing things to support people in their community to become more active.

They are the unsung heroes, the backbone of physical activity. We know that these people make the difference and we're hoping to help these people to do more and help others to get involved.

This is certainly true of coaches and volunteers from diverse backgrounds, we regularly hear fantastic stories of women and people from BAME communities getting involved and making a difference to people around them.

But we know that there are barriers facing them in getting started, so we're keen to find ways that we can support more people from these backgrounds into the sport and physical activity workforce, and to help ensure they have a really positive experience once they are engaged.

“Learning what works to engage and support these audiences into volunteering and coaching is key and we want to work with you to learn what approaches work and why,” said our head of coaching Stuart Armstrong.

“There are any number of potential learning opportunities. Maybe you’re planning an unusual partnership, or want to test ways of using new technology to get women engaged in volunteering.

“Perhaps your organisation has never had any connection with sport before, but has something different to offer within a sport or physical activity setting. 

“Whatever your ideas, we’re keen to find out what we can discover together.”

It doesn't matter what stage of development your idea is at. It can be an idea on paper, or something already being delivered which you think has the potential to be scaled up or replicated with a different audience or in a new community.

Applications can be submitted between now and 3 July, with our team then assessing submissions and contacting selected projects to develop a full application in August and September.

Final decisions on funding will then be made in October and November.

MORE INFORMATION

Read the FAQs