Applications for our next round of special Hardship Grant funding is now open to support members at risk of dropping out of the sport.
The Hardship Grants Programme is an initiative designed to provide financial assistance to British Gymnastics members to help them continue participating in gymnastics through times of significant financial hardship. Due to the pandemic, we have worked hard to make more funds available for the Hardship Grant Programme, to deliver special rounds of funding to British Gymnastics members suffering financially in these difficult times.
Since March 2020, we have seen a 2,900% increase in demand for Hardship Grants. To date, we have supported everyone whose application has been approved, awarding £173,198 in grants to 514 individuals, helping them to stay in gymnastics.
In total, since 2015, the Hardship Grant Programme has funded 839 individuals, spending a total of £288,397 on personal awards.
This, the fourth round of Covid-19 recovery Hardship Grants is open from today (Monday 18th October), so if you are a British Gymnastics member who will drop out of gymnastics without our financial assistance, please apply as soon as you can.
The closing date for applications will be midnight on 31st October.
Hardship Grants for disabled gymnasts
As part of this special round of Hardship Grants, we are pleased to announce that in addition to our general pot of funding, an extra £18,000 will be available to specifically support disabled members.
We would like to extend our most sincere thanks to The Peter Harrison Foundation for their most generous grant which has enabled us to support disabled members who are at risk of dropping out of gymnastics for financial reasons.
Who is eligible and how do I apply?
Our Hardship Grants are open to current British Gymnastics members who are in significant financial hardship and who are at risk of dropping out of gymnastics as a result of coronavirus.
We will NOT fund any of the following:
- Members who are deemed to be financially capable of/or have the means to fund their involvement in gymnastics
- Any person who has made a false claim in the past
- Gymnasts in receipt of UK Sport Lottery funding
- British Gymnastics staff members
It is extremely important that as a gymnastics community, we are all there to support those who are most in need and are at risk of dropping out of gymnastics completely. We treat fraudulent claims very seriously and we strongly urge those who have the means to get back to gymnastics, to not apply as doing so may result in charity funds not being available to support someone else who is in desperate need of our help.
See full Hardship Grants Criteria
To make an application, simply fill out our Application Form via the link below.
Make an application
What happens after I’ve applied?
We will be reviewing all applications in November and will notify each applicant of their award decision in December.
We must stress that any applications which are not completed by midnight on 31st October (this includes a fully completed application endorsement), will not be considered for an award. We therefore strongly advise that applicants contact their endorser early to ensure their application is completed on time. If anyone has difficulty in completing their application, please contact us at: [email protected] to avoid disappointment.
There will likely be many more applications than is usual, so please bear with us as we work through this. We will fully consider each individual case and we are committed to ensuring that no British Gymnastics member drops out of gymnastics due to financial hardship.