Skip to content

More than £4m invested in ideas to tackle inequalities

Our Pilot Fund awarded an average of £233,000 to 18 projects around the country.

6th September 2024

We've awarded more than £4 million to support ideas aimed at reducing inequalities in access to sport and physical activity.

Our one-off Pilot Fund was open for six weeks in December 2023 and January 2024, by invitation only, and focused on ways to increase activity and decrease inactivity in disadvantaged groups. 

The fund also allowed us to test new approaches and ideas for funding and working ahead of the launch of our Movement Fund in April.

It was open to more than 60 organisations whose funding requirements sat between the large-scale, long-term approach of our system partners and the small-scale, one-off purpose of our former Small Grants programme. 

A woman smiles while pulling a rope to climb a hill. A girl in a helmet is at the top of the hill and there are other climbers below.

We asked that ideas came from the lived experience of people facing inequalities and favoured proposals benefitting those at the intersection of two or more disadvantaged groups. 

After assessing the applications we made 18 awards, totalling £4,200,164 of National Lottery funding, to a variety of regional and national charities, community interest companies and national governing bodies. 

Our executive director of partnerships, Phil Smith, said: "Tackling the inequalities that make it harder for some communities to enjoy the benefits of an active life is an ongoing priority for us.

"So we were delighted to invest in these fantastic programmes around the country, all of which strongly align with our mission.

"The fund helped us to develop a new investment approach with these kinds of organisations, whose work will be vital in helping us achieve our aim of making sport and physical activity accessible to all."

The Pilot Fund made awards of between £174,669 and £250,000 to various projects: 

  • 10 focused on helping people getting active (indoors and outdoors), walking and yoga.
  • seven were based on more traditional sports, including programmes for mixed sport, rugby, football, swimming, running, cycling and ice skating.
  • one provided both routes.
     

"The Pilot Fund helped us to develop a new investment approach with the kind of organisations whose work will be vital in helping us achieve our aim of making sport and physical activity accessible to all."

Phil Smith

Executive director of partnerships, Sport England

Most of the awards will benefit more than one disadvantaged group, particularly in socio-economically deprived areas.

But more than a third of them will support truly intersectional groups, such as women in Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, and girls in socio-economically deprived areas.

While the naming and terms varied in each application, the groups who will benefit from the grants can be broadly categorised as follows:

  • Socio-economically deprived: 10 awards
  • Long-term health conditions and/or disabilities: 10 awards
  • Non-majority ethnic groups (Black, South East Asian, Muslim): eight awards
  • SEND (learning and/or emotional and/or mental health conditions): six awards
  • Women and girls: six awards
  • Children and young people: four awards
  • Older adults, aged 75+: two awards

A boy using a walking frame plays football in a sports hall as a coach crouches down to talk to him

  • Pilot Fund awards 2024

    Full details of the 18 programmes awarded funding:

    Organisation name Amount awarded Description
    The Mason Foundation £249,972 The Mason Foundation is a registered charity which supports, connects and empowers disadvantaged communities to come together by providing a simple solution to tackle inequality. The funding will allow them to help 1,500 more people with long-term physical and mental barriers to being active via 150 newly trained volunteers and 45 newly engaged partners.
    National Childbirth Trust (NCT) £220,842 The NCT is a 65-year-old registered charity which provides support and information for all things antenatal to postnatal. This award will help them to expand, improve and update their Walk and Talk volunteer-led walking groups for expectant and new parents, over the next two years. The programme focuses on inactive women, culturally non-majority communities and deprived socioeconomic groups, all of whom face barriers to being active, particularly during this period of their lives.
    Bloomsbury Football Foundation £250,000 Bloomsbury Football Foundation is a charitable incorporated organisation which supports underprivileged young people across eight London boroughs to deliver grassroots football. With this award, Bloomsbury communities will provide support to young people aged 3-18, primarily girls, from disadvantaged communities, to access programmes taking place on local housing estates.
    Dallaglio RugbyWorks £247,406 Dallaglio RugbyWorks is a registered charity which uses rugby and its core values of teamwork, respect, discipline and sportsmanship to equip young people who are excluded from education with the life skills and attitudes they need to move into sustained education, employment or training after school. They will use this award to deliver programmes in youth clubs and local sports venues in deprived areas of Birkenhead, Hartlepool, Leicester and Birmingham over the next three years. 
    Level Water £247,000 Level Water is a registered charity which is the only national organisation specialising in disability learn-to-swim and iss recognised as an established leader in this field. They will use this fund to recruit, train and install inclusion specialist swimming teachers in locations across the nation to address their 3,000+ waiting list of children with disabilities hoping to learn to swim, 60% of whom do not have the financial means or ability to access any other physical activity.
    Community Integrated Care £250,000 Community Integrated Care is a registered charity and one of the largest and most successful social care charities in the UK. They offer a range of specialised services to individuals with learning disabilities, autism, mental health concerns, dementia, physical disabilities, and complex care needs. With this award, they will run a programme of 'Sustaining, Scaling and Innovation' in support of Uniting the Movement. They will be able to continue delivering multiple physical activity sessions in multiple locations, while scaling up their work to reach more people, encouraging more activity and opportunities.
    The Greenbank Project £250,000 The Greenbank Project is a registered charity, aiming to provide inclusive and relevant opportunities to disabled people and other disadvantaged groups, serving over 17,000 people with disabilities each year. With this award, they will create five new hubs to offer power hockey to 300 people not functionally able to take part in other available activities due to disability or long-term health conditions.
    Belong: The Cohesion and Integration Network £250,000 The Cohesion and Integration Network is a national charity with a solid understanding of how factors such as lack of representation, fear of judgement and cultural and social factors can impact levels of participation in sport and physical activity. This award will fund a project to increase and sustain physical activity among people from lower socio-economic groups, ethnically non-majority communities and women and girls in six areas of high deprivation.
    ParkPlay Ltd £221,000 ParkPlay is a registered charity which offers free outdoor non-competitive activities, designed to meet the needs of all participants regardless of age, background and ability, creating a safe place for people to connect and get active. This award will allow ParkPlay to scale up their offer across 200 new communities in areas of the greatest need, aiming to reach 20,000 active participants.
    Fitmums and Friends £199,352 Fitmums and Friends is a registered charity which provides a range of mixed-ability running, walking, cycling and buggy sessions to help increase physical activity levels and provide opportunities for participants to make connections, across 22 currently active groups. This award will allow the organisation to respond to a recent surge of requests to participate in programmes supporting needs such as bereavement support through yoga and for children, menopause support, projects for those with learning disabilities, chair-based activities for the elderly and exercise sessions during school drop-off.
    Open Minds Active CIC £210,000 Open Minds Active CIC is a registered community interest company working in and around Bristol and the South West, with a purpose to strengthen mental health and wellbeing within communities, widen access and create opportunities for excluded citizens. This fund will allow them to grow the reach of their three main activity programmes, including wild swimming, over the next three years to address health inequalities and physical inactivity for the most excluded citizens and disadvantaged groups in their area. Many of the women (60%) referred to the programme new to the city and often refugees, seeking asylum or from culturally diverse communities. 
    Sporting Memories Network CIC £243,932 Sporting Memories Network CIC is part of a social enterprise that helps older people to reminisce, replay and reconnect through the power of sport and physical activity. They support a wide range of people aged 50-plus, including those living with dementia, depression or loneliness, to improve their mental and physical wellbeing through regular club sessions within local communities across the UK. This award will fund a project to support older people who are currently inactive, many of whom have a long-term health condition which deters them from taking part in mainstream activity provision.
    Cycling UK £248,734 Cycling UK is a registered charity which runs a range of projects, groups and programmes to encourage people to cycle, by making cycling more accessible. With this award, a network of community cycling clubs will be supported to deliver appropriate cycling activities within their communities. The funding will allow for the continued support of 29 existing clubs and 32 new clubs across England in areas of higher ethnic diversity and areas of higher levels of socio-economic deprivation.
    Dame Kelly Holmes Trust £224,578

    Dame Kelly Holmes Trust is a registered charity which supports 11 to 25-year-olds in both education and in the community. They inform and inspire by training former champions from the world of elite sport to coach and mentor young people to success. This award will support two programmes, the first of which is to increase physical activity levels among disadvantaged young people within deprived areas of South Yorkshire and the Liverpool City Region. They will also support young people in hospital with life-limiting health conditions and long-term illnesses, using world-class athletes to mentor, train and motivate them into activity, which may aid their recovery and support better health beyond the programme. 

    The Outdoor Partnership £249,549 The Outdoor Partnership is a community partnership charitable company which aims to change lives through outdoor activities. This award will allow it to target more areas with high socio-economic deprivation in inner-city London boroughs, Birmingham, Brighton, Devon and Cornwall, while continuing to develop work in Yorkshire, Cumbria, Plymouth and Coventry. 
    British Ice Skating £174,669 British Ice Skating is the national governing body for ice skating in the UK. They aim to increase representation of ethnically diverse communities and disabled people across sport by providing more inclusive and accessible opportunities to participate. This award will support them in developing their work with people with disabilities.
    International Mixed Ability Sports  £247,255 International Mixed Ability Sports is a CIC based in Bradford, which stemmed from the lack of opportunity for people with disabilities to take part in mainstream community sport as equal members without being separated, classified or identified. This award will allow them to expand their activities across additional areas of deprivation, with a focus on supporting people of British South Asian heritage, women, and people with disabilities or long-term health conditions.
    SMILE Through Sport £215,875 SMILE Through Sport is a charitable incorporated organisation in north-east England which provides sport, physical activity and leisure activities to individuals of all ages, disabilities and backgrounds. This award will support them to deliver physical activity sessions for people with complex disabilities in community settings, while also delivering CPD, courses and e-learning to organisations and individuals to increase capacity in the region to support the needs of disabled people in being more active. They aim to attract over 2,200 participants and to work with 15 partner organisations as part of this work.

     

    Read less

Sign up to our newsletter

You can find out exactly how we'll look after your personal data, but rest assured we’ll only use it to make sure you receive our newsletter, to understand how you interact with our newsletter, and to provide administrative information about our newsletter.