The Love Rowing open grant round closed at 12 noon on 27th January 2025!

We achieve our mission by working in partnership with schools, community organisations and rowing clubs. A fundamental way we achieve this is through our open grant round. If you are considering an initiative that fits with our mission to transform lives through the sport of rowing, the Love Rowing open grant round could be for your organisation.

Our Trustees recognise that a limited amount of funds are available to distribute each year and this will be a competitive process. The January 2025 open grant round is seeking to support 2 or 3 projects of up to £10,000. This guidance along with the grant making policy aims to support organisations seeking funding to understand who is eligible for funding, our current funding priorities and what will make a fantastic project.

More information can be found in the grant making policy to assist organisations to understand if their organisation and project is eligible to apply for a grant, and to understand the decision making process and requirements of receiving a grant.

What we are looking to fund in the January 2025 Open Grant Round:

We invite applications that align with Love Rowing’s core areas particularly;

1. Young people from low socio-economic backgrounds. 
2. People from ethnically diverse communities that are underrepresented in rowing.
3. Disabled people or people with a long-term health condition.

Find out more about how to develop projects targeting these audiences in our top tips. Remember people are people, and everyone is unique, therefore they don’t always fit in boxes. We look forward to seeing applications that have considered the needs of people across these target audiences. 

What difference do we want to see through Love Rowing funded projects:

We are keen to fund projects aligned to our mission of transforming lives through rowing. We are less motivated in our January 2025 open grant round in big numbers of participants if their experience of rowing is a one off or short lived. We know the transformative power of rowing is more likely if people have opportunities to keep rowing. If your project aims to introduce new participants to rowing, please tell us in your application how you will support them to transition to row regularly.

Grant applicants need to tell us what difference and impact they will make through the delivery of the project to open the doors to rowing for new communities and positively impact on people’s lives. There are various ways rowing can make a difference. Think about how your project can make an impact and how you would measure this. These are areas we would like you to consider:

• How will your project tackle the under representation of our target audiences in rowing?
• How will your project improve the perception of rowing being an inclusive sport?
• How will your project improve participants’ physical health and well being?
• How will your project improve participants’ mental health and well being? 
• How will your project improve life skills such as teamwork, resilience, self-discipline and leadership? 
• How will your project improve participants’ self-confidence and independence? 
• How will your project reduce social isolation and improve social cohesion? 
• How will your project improve education attainment? 

Please do not tell us what you think we want to hear, and we do not expect each project to make a difference in every aspect.

Other things to consider that will strengthen your application:

We are looking for applications that give us confidence that the project will be a success. We want to know that this project has been informed by need, with careful consideration and planning. The project delivery needs to start in 2025, and therefore we are looking for applications for projects that are ready to deliver, and have mitigated any risks that may prevent the project from taking part. 

Furthermore, we are keen to support projects that are not one-off. It is important to Love Rowing that this project leads to sustainable change. We would like to understand if the whole club or organisation is behind the project and its long term sustainability. This includes understanding how it will be financially sustainable in the long term.

Good luck!