Sport England

[Taybank]

I see (BOF Board of Directors minutes Item 7) that BOF is once again dancing to a Sport England tune.

[madmike]

Yes - entirely sensible (follow the money)

[Ant W]

How much money is it?

[Spookster]

How much money is it?

http://www.sportengland.org/about_us.aspx

[Ant W]

Yes, but for orienteering specifically? Genuine question.

[madmike]

Sport England funding for 2009-2013

Orienteering
£2,275,000

[Red Adder]

Thats a useful sum - no wonder the likes of Limelight would like a piece of the action.

[mharky]

Wow, that is a lot of money!

Where's it all gone?

[PhilJ]

we got a tad more than Rounders (2,200,000) poor taekwondo (my first sport) getting only 750,000 and that's an olympic sport, taekwondo have always been ripped apart by internal politics even when i was competing 30+ years ago.
Is there a World Champs in Rounders, the only time we play it as the annual club weekend
17,000,000 to Netball...wing attack anyone?

[Ant W]

Thanks for the info. I finally got round to searching the Sport England website - here is the document listing NGB funding for all sports:

http://www.sportengland.org/funding/ido ... version=-1

[graeme]

It's real money, and all in the BOF accounts, with a little more detail -
£100k international, £550k "whole sport plan" £80k "Club and coach".
though as usual not enough detail to answer mharky's question.

According to the annual report BOF money is mainly spent on abstract nouns: Membership, Events, Development, Performance and Governance. Alternately, half a million quid goes on staff.

Bottom line is, BOF gets more than twice as much money from us taxpayers as it does from us orienteers. So BOF-central works for us taxpayers, and we have a deficit to deal with (and if we ever do, there's a debt too ).

[AndyO]

There are some big numbers on the list of funding to different sports, and I know that they (Sport England) will look for participation numbers to merit continued funding, as well as success in medal terms, but is there any matching requirement for funds to penetrate down to all active members, or can it all be spent at the discretion of the governing body on administration and the elite end of the sports? - not that I am against prima donnas of course

[Spookster]

I know that they (Sport England) will look for participation numbers to merit continued funding, as well as success in medal terms, but is there any matching requirement for funds to penetrate down to all active members, or can it all be spent at the discretion of the governing body on administration and the elite end of the sports? - not that I am against prima donnas of course

I think you are confusing Sport England and UK Sport.

Sport England => "is focused on helping people and communities across the country create a sporting habit for life."

UK Sport => "is responsible for investing around £100 million of public funds each year in high performance sport. UK Sport has a very clear remit at the ‘top end’ of Britain’s sporting pathway, with no direct involvement in community or school sport."

NGBs don't have discretion to spend the money as they wish - it is all allocated to specific projects, programmes or activities. So SE money can be used for Talent Development, but it can't be used for the Performance Squad.

Unfortunately UK Sport now focuses on Olympic Sports, which is why orienteering will no longer be in receipt of UK Sport funding.

[aiming off]

The Sport England focus in the next funding round sounds perfect.

"is focused on helping people and communities across the country create a sporting habit for life."

The sport has demonstrated an ability to achieve this over the last 35 years, probably better than any other looking at our age profile: just look at the number of M/W45-70s with a lifelong habit. Focus the forward funding on the development and retention of younger age groups. Can't help thinking that development of enthusiasm for the sport in the teenage years, with retention through university are important areas where much more could be done with the right level of funding.

[70plus]

Focus the forward funding on the development and retention of younger age groups. Can't help thinking that development of enthusiasm for the sport in the teenage years, with retention through university are important areas where much more could be done with the right level of funding.

Agree with the basic idea - in fact the age-profile of O has shown for a long time where it needs padding out. However it seems far too simplistic to suggest that the problem can be solved by throwing 'funding' at it. Those teenagers who really get the O-bug try to go to an orienteering uni such as Sheffield; the hiatus usually comes after that. How should all the magic money be spent?