Key facts

Support available
Grants or pledges from £300 to £15,000

Length
Projects can run for up to 12 weeks

Timescales
No submission deadline. Apply at least 12 weeks before you want to start activity or spend any money. You’ll usually get a decision within six to eight weeks. If you have a ‘live campaign’, Sport England may request an extension to its end date.

Objectives

How can you increase physical activity?

The Movement Fund supports projects that get people active, which often means removing barriers for people so they can take part in physical activity. There are three ways that your project can approach this:

1. Get inactive people to start being active

'Inactive' people are those doing fewer than 30 minutes of activity each week.

You'll be in our highest priority for getting funding if your project is for this group of people.

Show us when you apply:

that people are inactive today

how they'll start being active as part of your project

2. Keep people active

Activity levels change across people's lives as they experience different personal, social and environmental challenges. We aim to support projects that enable people to remain active through these key moments.

Show us when you apply:

your understanding of the factors impacting activity

how you’ll support people to continue to be active

3. Get active people to do more

People who do at least 30 minutes of activity each week are considered 'fairly active'. We can support projects that encourage people to regularly achieve at least 150 minutes a week.

Show us when you apply:

your understanding of existing activity levels

how your project will help them become more active

Sport England Priorities

Sport England receives more applications than they can fund. Therefore, they must decide which projects to prioritise.

The priority is to invest in projects that support their organisation goals outlined in their Uniting The Movement Strategy.

Sport England especially want to support projects that give opportunities to groups of people who typically haven't had as many chances to be active.

These groups include:

people living on low incomes

disabled people or those with long-term health conditions

older people

people from culturally diverse communities

pregnant women and parents with very young children

girls aged 5-16

LGBTQ+ people

people who are in foster care

people who provide care without pay

These priority groups are just examples so in your application please explain your own audience and why they face barriers to being active. The Movement Fund is particularly interested in projects that address the challenges faced by individuals with combined characteristics, such as people with long-term health conditions alongside caring responsibilities – to help assess this they've developed an inequalities metric.

Communities

The Movement Fund also prioritises projects in communities identified as having the greatest need for activity programmes, based on their Place Needs Classification system. This combines physical activity data from their Active Lives Surveys, as well as wider social data including the index of multiple deprivation (IMD), community need and health inequalities data to help them understand the needs of an area.

What makes a good project?

Helping improve or create new spaces for people to be active in – or providing the equipment they need to do the activity.

Fit-for-purpose and modern facilities are important for engaging people in physical activity. We want to support projects that are improving spaces or creating new areas for more people to be active in. Projects that understand and address local needs and incorporate feedback from potential participants.

We also support projects that are improving their provision of equipment, which either directly supports activity delivery, or improves the ability to maintain a facility so more activity can take place.

We have seen how much the community supports these tangible improvements. Therefore, projects focused on facilities or equipment are likely to receive a Movement Fund Pledge Award.

Improving environmental sustainability and providing physical activity opportunities

We know that the places and spaces we use to be active are threatened by the effects of climate change – whether it’s reduced water and air quality, rising temperatures, or extreme weather events such as flooding, drought and heatwaves.

We can support projects that improve both environmental sustainability and physical activity opportunities.

Funding could help you install LED bulbs and automatic controls or sensors to reduce usage, introduce solar panels or even micro wind turbines.

All of these can help keep costs down, thereby enabling you to keep participation costs low and ensure financial accessibility for lower-income groups, or to extend the operating hours to enable more people to take part.

Who can apply?

The Movement Fund is for not-for-profit organisations, such as:

sports clubs

community groups

charities

local authorities

not-for-profit companies

schools – where the project will benefit the wider community

Your organisation must have a formal governing document.

This means a document that outlines the functions and the ground rules of your organisation.

Most organisations will already have this in place. For example, sports clubs have a constitution, charities have terms of references and not-for-profit companies have memoranda and articles of association.

Smaller organisations may not have a formal governing document in place yet; however, it's easy to create a constitution that outlines how your organisation works.

It helps to protect your members, makes your organisation run more smoothly and will make it easier to apply for other funding in the future.

If this is something you need to do, Buddle has tips on how to develop a constitution.

Your organisation must be managed responsibly

To offer public funding, we need confidence that you are running your organisation responsibly – whether it is led by volunteers or paid staff members.

This includes having some things in place which demonstrate democratic and good governance.

Your organisation must:

have at least three committee members, trustees or directors who aren't related and don't live together

make sure decision-making and voting rights are distributed fairly

If you're a company, please check your organisation’s 'significant control' information on Companies House. No one should have significant control

Buddle has help and advice on governance of your organisation.

We do not fund

We have some restrictions on our funding. Please be aware we can’t fund:

individuals or sole traders

organisations based outside the UK

companies who can pay profits to directors, shareholders, or members, including companies limited by shares

organisations applying on behalf of another organisation

organisations who have already received £15,000 from the Movement Fund in the last 12 months

If you received an award of less than £15,000 in the last 12 months for a project that is completed and closed, with all monitoring information provided, you can apply for a new project.

However, the total combined award value for both projects cannot exceed £15,000 in the last 12 months.

Suitability

If you're unsure whether the Movement Fund would fund your project, you can use the suitability checker here or email [email protected] to talk about your project.

How it works

If your application is approved, the Movement Fund will offer a pledge towards your campaign target. The maximum pledge is £15,000.

This pledge will be valid for 12 weeks after the date of the Award Agreement. If you do not launch your crowdfunding campaign within those 12 weeks, your pledge will be rescinded.

After you get the pledge, if you want to change your campaign target, rewards or other page content, you must email [email protected].

The pledge will appear on your campaign page once you:

reach 25% of your campaign target,

have donations from at least 25 different people*.

* To verify whether Supporters are unique we will take account of information including, but not limited to: name, address, email addresses and payment card used.

You need to reach 100% of your campaign target to receive the funds from Sport England.

If you do not reach 100% of your target, then the pledge will be cancelled.

It’s helpful to tell your crowd about these conditions, as it can help drive momentum. The pledge is designed to create energy on your campaign, provide you with a boost at a critical stage and then encourage your supporters to back you and ‘get you over the finishing line’.

We reserve the right to vary these pledge criteria; you will be notified if their pledge criteria will vary from the stated terms above.

Additional Requirements

Project Owners or the campaigning organisation pledging to their own campaign is allowed, however this should not be a significant amount unless discussed with the Movement Fund before the pledge is added. Small offline donations that have been collected may also be added, however you may be required to evidence the origin of these pledges (receipts, letters of support, copies of cheques or bank statements etc.).

All funds should be raised during your campaign duration for the purposes of your campaign and project; retrospective funds raised prior to your campaign as well as ordinary income will not be considered eligible.

You will be ineligible for funding from Sport England if, at their sole discretion, they are not satisfied that all the Supporter pledges on your campaign are genuine pledges.

Where campaigns or pledges are identified as fraudulent, potentially fraudulent, or demonstrative of manipulating the pledging on a campaign in order to obtain match funding, this is taken very seriously. Where appropriate, the police or other relevant authorities will be informed. In addition:

Your application for funding will be refused and any existing commitment for funding will be withdrawn.

Your Crowdfunder campaign may be cancelled and you will be ineligible for future applications or campaigns.

Action will be taken to recover funding which has been paid out.

Once a pledge has been offered, you must not alter your campaign’s closure date or initial campaign target without the Movement Fund’s consent.

All funded campaigns are required to agree to the Movement Fund Award Conditions.