Changing Room Project

Who are we?

Brixham Town FC was formed in the hight of the pandemic meeting the needs of our local community. Within our first season the club was voted Devon FA club of the year reaching 2 cup finals and successfully putting our first trophy since being re-formed as a club. This was strongly down to the support from local businesses and our wider community in supporting us through the year. From this we now have added a reserve team as well as 5 youth teams and through our partner company BDA we are successfully running girls’ football and walking football for people over the age of 40. On top this in the summer we used our JC park facility to run an 8 aside football league on a Monday evening which had 12 full teams competing in a league and saw many people get back into sport. Through this we estimate that around 100 people of all ages are now accessing weekly sport in which they weren’t before. We believe this is only going to grow with the progressions we intend to make.

Why are we crowdfunding?

After spending last season playing at our new facility JC Park, we have now been told by the league we can no longer play their due to not having changing rooms on site. As a club we have approached the cricket club next door to try and work out a partnership where we could use them on a Saturday afternoon however this has not been accepted by the cricket club so our only hope now of playing at our home pitch is to get some changing rooms of our own. We are hoping this crowd funder can help us in affording a project like this and it is really our only hope of being able to play games back at JC Park.

The club are currently playing home games at Furzeham Green at a significant extra cost to ourselves whilst still paying the lease at JC Park. For our youth teams in particular they a deserve a facility in which they can thrive. By adding these facilities, it means our kids will have something they can be proud of. As a small new club, we are aiming to run many fundraisers this year to help towards playing back at home in the 2023/24 Season. We have 4 youth teams, a walking football team and 2 adult teams currently at the club and for the 2023/24 season we will be welcoming a girls under 13s team as well as a under 8’s and 9’s team to take our youth team totals to 7.  All of these teams will benefit from having on site facilities. 

How you can play your part

There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. If you want to run your own fundraiser to support us, maybe a sponsored activity or similar, use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!

How we’ll spend the money raised

Our overall project cost is detailed below so any money you are able to donate will help us pay for the things listed below.

COSTINGS

Item

Cost

Electric Cable

£1000

Materials 

£9000

Labour

£3500

Water and Waste Connections

£500

Hot Water Immersion Heater 

£852

Toilets & Showers

£1000

Foundations 

£600

Waste Water Pump

Donated by Pump Technology

Overall Cost

£16,500

Community impact

How our project will increase sport participation & benefit our community;

Adults – Within the past year our club has seen significant increase to participation in sport. We have registered to our club 38 players who the majority have only started playing football again this season. This is sprouted from our 8 aside league we ran in the summer which saw a lot of players that haven’t played for numerous years getting back involved and now we have 2 sides playing football in the south Devon league every week without any problem with raising teams. Due to our inclusivity them opportunities were made when in Brixham in particular these opportunities were not there. We have also as a club helped raise money for the fishermen’s mission as well as a local girl who needed medical help to continue our aim of giving back to our community. 

Youth – When we took this club on, we started with 1 under 8s team. Within one year of running children’s football camps and clubs at our facility we have increased that number to 4 teams. At these camps, over the summer we ran a half term football course which had 120 children registered. This was up 70 children on our previous camp due to having this new facility. By adding the changing rooms and toilets I feel this is only going to increase and again will result in more children being active within the bay. This year we have also established an u8s & 9s team. This shows a clear increase in participation in our local community and we are continuing to grow which highlights even more so how our facility needs to match our ambition. 

Girls – Brixham Town FC have linked with BDA to start a girl’s football club on Friday nights at JC Park. We are hoping through this link to be able to start girls’ youth teams and encourage more young girls to get into football. We have already had a lot of success within our girl’s section with girls coached by us reaching the hights of Torquay united and Buckland however we feel this is due to the fact we have not been able to facilitate this as much as we can through having our new facility. From having our new facility on site, we aim to have girls’ teams of our own and put an end to young girls from Brixham having to travel out of the town to play in a team. This is something we strongly believe through our clubs we will achieve. We now have 20 girls training weekly aged between 9 and 13 and will be starting a new team for the 2023/24 season.

Walking Football – We are also extremely proud that this summer we began a walking football club which we have now expanded into having our very own walking football team. Our team consists of gentlemen aged between 65 – 75 and through this we are enabling older people within our community to remain active and enjoy sport. We are looking to enter the Devon League through this and hope to expand further by adding another team for people aged between 45 – 55 and 55 – 65. 

Ladies Football, LGBT Inclusion & Disability Football – As a club we are also dedicated to providing opportunities within Brixham for Ladies and adults/children with disabilities. This is detailed in our 5-year plan for development, but we are working closely with Ashley Harris at the Devon FA who is helping us strive towards our goals. We hope through having our new facility we will be able to expand our services to be able to offer these clubs to the people of Brixham. We also ran a very successful rainbow laces campaign this season which saw all our teams come together to support lgbt inclusion in sport.

Who we are working with to help us reach our targets;

In the past year we have had a clear dialog with the Devon FA which has resulted in us becoming one of only 2 clubs in South Devon being added to the Devon FA Investment Ready Scheme. Through this we as a club have been able to create a detailed self-assessment of ourselves and will be able to access help and potentially funding to help our club progress. We have full backing from our county FA, and they have selected us as a club that they would like to help due to the fact they can see our positive impact on sport within our community. Our local councillors have also commented on how well we have done to create such a fantastic environment for children to succeed in just a year and we also have been in contact with Catherine Williams who is the lead for sport within Torbay who has been to our site and again has high praise for what we are trying to achieve.