Upgrading of tennis facilities

Aim

We want to encourage more children and seniors to play sport but our mini court needs updating

Press play above to hear from our kids!

Update: Sport England grant approved

Great news! The Avenue recently applied to Sport England's Extra Funding Scheme (Active Together) and we are pleased to announce that we have been successful.

What does this mean?

Sport England will kindly pledge £8,574, which is 30% of our campaign's target. The pledge will be triggered by Sport England when both of the following are satisfied:

• we reach 25% (£7,145) of our target
• we have at least 100 unique supporters (donors)

Once the pledge is triggered we must still go onto to raise 100% of our campaign target (£20,000) in order to keep it. 

Why has the campaign target changed?

We still need to raise £20,000, but the target has now changed to £28,580 to reflect Sport England's grant, which will soon be pledged once we have met the trigger events above. 

Who are we?

The Avenue Lawn Tennis Club (ALTC) in Loughton (a not-for-profit community club run by volunteers) has been the home of friendly, social and competitive tennis since 1912 and is the last remaining tennis club in Loughton. Our Club, is an essential resource to the local community.

Why are we crowdfunding and how will we spend the money raised?

Volunteers who help run the Club invest much of their time to improve the service we offer to the local community. However, we have limited funds each year to make the changes the Club requires.

We plan to redevelop and convert our run down junior mini-court and hitting wall into a multi-use games area (MUGA) that will encourage active participation in sport by a wide range of local community members, particularly school children and seniors. This will be achieved by installing an all-weather multi sports surface with a new pickleball court. There will be an updated hitting wall for practice and drills and a shooting net for basketball and netball. Outside the main space there will be a permanent outdoor table tennis area.

While the new pickleball court will attract players of all ages, the main users and beneficiaries, of the proposed MUGA, will be younger members of the club and young people from local schools and the surrounding area. The redeveloped space will encourage local children to be active early in life and to learn good habits in a safe friendly community environment and introduce them to tennis. On completion the new space will also be used for mini-tennis coaching and tots tennis, freeing up existing courts for older juniors to receive more specialist coaching on a full-size court within their designated LTA youth programme.

To support this project the Club needs to raise £20,000. We have advanced plans to do this work with an experienced court supplier and are ready to start if we can raise the money. Together we have identified that the current surface has insufficient drainage making it unsafe and unplayable. A new porous macadam layer with edging will raise the court to alleviate this issue. 

All donations will go directly to this project and to say thank you to any persons or businesses willing to support us we would like to create a thank you feature wall within the clubhouse and on our website. All money raised will be spent on doing as much of this project as we can and any surplus will go towards purchasing the necessary equipment to deliver these activities.

Our new MUGA will look something like the following:

Community impact

Our club currently has over 250 members but we also offer low-cost pay and play junior coaching for non-members. Local schools use our courts on request, and we have been hosting a weekly session for a special educational needs school for over 17 years. In the school holidays tennis and multi-sport camps are open to all. Adult tennis coaching is available to non-members and new players all year round. These activities extend the use of our club to approximately 100 non-members weekly. We therefore estimate that the number of people benefiting from this project to be upwards of 350 with an age range of 4-84 years old.

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. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – 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!

This project successfully funded on 19th April 2024