What kind of challenges will your volleyball club be facing following the lockdown?

What kind of challenges will your volleyball club be facing following the lockdown?

What will clubs be thinking about following the COVID 19 outbreak?

Can clubs continue?

Will they have the resources to return to their normal playing and training schedules?

Will clubs face losing sponsors? At local level sponsors tend to be small business such as pubs, restaurants and local shops, these have been significantly impacted financially by the lockdown, will they be able to continue to support community sport?

How will clubs ensure they retain their players and volunteers, whose work-life balance has been changed due to the virus?

Most clubs have been maintaining personal contact with players and hopefully even luring a few recruits looking for a team experience and connection after those long weeks in isolation. Many clubs have risen to the challenge, keeping in touch with members through the internet using programmes such as  Zoom, doing online training and fitness sessions.

Volleyball England has been providing advice and support to clubs to ensure long-term sustainability of clubs and participants and keeping them update with the latest guidance from the government.

There is financial support from a variety of organisations and charities, these include Sport England who have received over 6,500 applications to its £20 million Community Emergency Fund over the past month alone. This compares to 4,000 applications across the whole of 2019 for all of its different funding schemes. The challenge for community clubs, that hire a facility, is that funding streams are often structured in a way which makes them difficult or unsuitable for small clubs to access.

The funding that is available is unlikely to consider core costs, and demands disproportionate levels of monitoring information, adding to demands on time to our volunteer-led sport. All volleyball clubs in England are run and developed by volunteers, the demands on these volunteers is high. Attracting and retaining these volunteers is a real a challenge, they can be put off by administrative requirements and the sheer time commitment that volunteering demands.

Some sports have been able to re-start this week, in the weeks to come other sports may well be able to become active again.

What support will you need? How can the Foundation help? Contact us on foundation@volleyballengland.org