Barclays Community Football Fund

The Barclays Community Football Fund is a partnership between Sported and Barclays, creating a channel to activate community impact across the UK to adjoin the bank’s sponsorship of professional men’s football and women’s football in the Premier League,Barclays Women’s Super League and Barclays Women’s Championship.

The BCFF is not solely a grassroots sport funding scheme. Sported’s own insight and other research underlines that typical funding models have inhibited sport’s ability to build a more equitable, inclusive and sustainable society. So its approach breaks the wheel of traditional funding schemes, getting resources to groups that need it most, dramatically impacting their capacity to deliver football, particularly through engagement with marginalised and hardest-to-reach youth.

It connects communities, increases confidence, and provides life skills that generate greater social mobility. It does this through creating opportunities for under-represented communities in society to access football for its wider benefits. The innovative programme focuses on women and girls; lower socio-economic areas; racially diverse communities; people with disabilities; and people from the LGBTQ+ community. And last year, the programme provided 2,910 community groups with access to vital funding and support reaching 431,163 young people.