This week I was joined by No Walls Gardens director, Gary May, at the offices of The Premier League at Gloucester Place, London, to attend a workshop put on by the National League Trust on securing funding for local community projects.
The National League Trust supports community programmes at clubs who are members of the three divisions of the National League. This support comes in the form of grant aid and development advice. The Trust’s aim is to encourage every National League club to become involved in their community.
For Gary and I, this was an opportunity for us to explain to other clubs attending the workshop — including Aldershot Town, Sutton United, Welling United and Eastleigh — the projects we have worked on together locally and it was clear that the range of different projects was extensive compared with other clubs. However, as yet, EUFC has not secured funding from the National League Trust to help support a local initiative that will make a difference to our community.
We hope that this will change very soon, and Gary and I, with the help of newly appointed Northfleet Big Local Chair, Sue Hart, will be working on finally securing funding for the Fleet IT suite to be located in the new Northfleet Central community hub, located at the former Rainbow Centre on Station Road off Northfleet High Street. The planned Fleet IT suite will allow increased IT access and skills for local excluded groups.
The National League Trust’s grant aid programme is made possible by the generous support of the Trust’s funding partners: the Premier League and the Professional Football Association. Since October 2010 both bodies have committed annual support as part of a three-year funding agreement. From September 2016 this will be £1.2m each year for a further three years, bringing the total contribution to the charity to £8.7m.
