Basildon Phoenix Swimming Club COVID19 Support

Aim

The global COVID19 pandemic has had a significant impact on our finances and so we are raising funds to help secure the future of our club.

Overview

Covid-19 has created an uncertain future for sports clubs. We are seeking funding to help to keep our super swimmers swimming and motivated. This is essential for all our swimmers’ mental and physical well-being and enabling them to continue their swimming journey.

Our Club has been particularly badly hit during Covid-19 as we have historically had to rely on gala income generated to meet our training costs. We have lost out on approx. £60,000 income since March 2020 from competitions we have not been able to hold due to Covid-19 restrictions. The Club is seeking funding of £10,000 to ensure it can continue to meet training costs while competitions are not allowed.

About Basildon Phoenix SC

We are Basildon & Phoenix Swimming Club, a successful swimming Club with over 300 members at the home of the internationally renowned Basildon Sporting Village which was a London 2012 legacy project and a pre games training camp for international teams. 

Our club has members aged 6-80. It has a variety of squads, from junior swimmers learning the skills that will enable them to begin their competitive swimming careers to adult ‘Masters’ swimmers who have their own competition and training pathway. 

We are a Swim Mark Performance Club, a central focus being age group and senior competition swimming, including both Para-Swimming and Deaf Swimming pathways. The club has enjoyed significant and growing success at County, Regional, National and International levels. The club has won the Top Club award at the Essex County Age Group Swimming Championships five years in succession. We have a team of highly experienced coaches, including those with expertise in strength and conditioning.    

Historically, the club has significant experience of organising swimming competitions – every year, thousands of swimmers from the local area and beyond have the opportunity to compete in Basildon Sporting Village’s Long Course (50m) swimming facility, the club’s home. Our galas have provided members and the wider swimming community with the opportunity to post times that qualify them to swim in County, Regional and National-level competition. 

See what our members have been doing to stay motivated during COVID19 lockdowns, along with some past achievements

Why are we are fundraising?

We are a non-profit-making club run by a team of passionate volunteers. BPSC has historically been reliant on income from competitions. The club uses the funds generated by competition to offset the cost of swimming for its members. The club is based in an area of high deprivation according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). As such, the experiences afforded by swimming can be transformational. Ours is not a club where we are able to pass on shortfalls in income to our membership by increasing fees as it would become unaffordable for many members.

This, on top of restrictions on numbers per lanes to keep to Social Distancing guidelines, means our fees cannot cover our training costs. We have managed to claw back some losses by some members opting to continue contributing fees during the first lockdown, and we continue to explore other ways of raising funds.

Match Funding

Once we have raised 25% of our initial target of £10,000 from a minimum of 50 supporters, we can apply for Sport England ‘Active Together’ Match Funding of up to 50%. If we are successful and go on to raise the remaining 25%, we will receive the funds from Sport England.

This project successfully funded on 29th March 2021