Please note, the Active Women themed funding round is now
closed to applications”
Women in disadvantaged communities and women caring for
children under 16
Sport England’s themed rounds of National Lottery
funding tackle gaps in sporting participation, to complement our
other funding programmes.
We are planning to run up to three themed rounds
in each year of our current funding strategy.
If you wish to apply to the Active Women Themed
Round, you must ensure that your project has a strong focus on one
or both of our two highlighted groups. We will only fund those
projects which directly address our objectives for this round. If
your project is not appropriate to this theme it may be better
suited for a subsequent theme or one of our other funding
programmes, such as the Small Grants
Fund.
Check for eligibility
The first themed round (Rural Communities) attracted over 500
applications, of which only 30 projects have been encouraged to
progress to the second stage of bid development.
Demand can far outstrip the availability of funds and therefore
it is a highly competitive process. A total of £10m National
Lottery funding is available for this theme so unfortunately we
will not be able to fund every application, however justifiable and
worthwhile the project may be.
It is vital therefore that projects are designed specifically to
address the demands of the particular theme as we would prefer not
to waste your time, effort and money in creating and submitting
applications that are likely not to be supported.
To be eligible for funding under this theme, applications must
demonstrate that projects will address the specific barriers to
participation in sport faced by either:
Projects need to demonstrate how they will increase the number
of women playing sport from either one or both of these groups.
Sport England has a target of getting one million people playing
more sport. Your project will contribute to the delivery of this
target
Not only do applications have to demonstrate how they will
remove existing barriers in order that
more women from the two target groups can take part in sport, they
must also look at how they can allow those women to take part in
sport more often
The selection of this theme
Women participate in less sport than men. Only 13% of women take
part in 30 minutes of sport three times a week compared to 20% of
men. The data also reveals that 30% of women take part in sport
once a week whilst 37% do sport once a month, many of whom would
like to participate more but face real barriers in doing so.
In order to focus our investment through this themed round of
funding and maximise its impact, we have selected two groups of
women to target under the overall theme of women’s
participation.
The challenge involved in raising participation is different for
each of the two groups:
Women in disadvantaged communities
For women in disadvantaged communities, regular
participation in sport is lower than the average with over seven
out of ten currently playing no sport at all. In addition less than
half would currently like to play sport. The challenge is therefore
to stimulate local demand for sport amongst these women.
Download a spreadsheet
of the 20% most deprived communities
Women caring for children under 16
Seven out of ten women caring for children under 16 would like
to play more sport. However, research suggests that other competing
priorities take preference over sport. The challenge is therefore
to identify and provide an appropriate and accessible supply of
sporting opportunities to meet demand.