Gymnastics, like many sports, is not well funded. As many of our parents are aware, a lot of effort has to be put into raising extra money to help this club provide the best facilities for its members. It took 22 years, and a lot of TLC from an army of voluntary helpers, to build a gym with top quality equipment, but of course it doesn't stop there. With almost 1,000 members, the apparatus gets a bit of a beating and needs to be replaced quite frequently. Gymnastics equipment costs many tens of thousands of pounds.
However, we're very proud of our achievements and truly grateful for all the support we've had. The fact that our membership has grown by almost 50% since moving into our new premises shows that it has been money well spent. The more children we can expose to the sport and exercise, the more we feel we've achieved something for a small group of the nation's youngsters.
Grants and donations
Since 2004 we've raised over £20,000. £6,000 of this has come from grants and donations very kindly awarded by the Royal Borough of Kingston, Kingston Sports Council, British Transport Police and Kingston Roundtable. We’ve also received coaching bursaries from an RBK Neighbourhood grant and Skills Active. We continue to apply for similar grants every year.
Our fundraising activities
200 Club – Our most important fundraiser is the 200 Club, which currently has 115 members. This costs £24 a year for a number, £12 of which goes towards gymnastics equipment and £12 towards the prize money. Each month, three numbers are drawn – the first wins £60 for its ‘owner’, the second £35 and the third £20. If you’d like to join, please ask for a form at Reception.
Photo Shoot – Our next biggest activity is the photography. Every October Katharine Cary, a professional photographer (and a gym mum), takes photos of the children. We’ve received some very complimentary comments about the quality of the photos. In particular, we’d like to thank Katharine for her hard work in handling such a large project and for making all of the children look so beautiful and angelic!
Other activities – Other important sources of fundraising include competitions (and the refreshments we sell at these), book sales, raffles, and clothing – both new and second-hand. Also, quite a number of our gymnasts get involved in sponsored events at various times. Most recently Janine Pavlis, one of our senior Team Gym gymnasts, raised over £500 at the Las Vegas road race. The trampoline squad have been running cake stalls to raise money for their first ever international competition in Portugal in September. They’ve raised enough money to reduce the travel and accommodation costs by over £100 each.
Our latest raffle event raised £800 for Chris O’Connor and his coach Simon Gale, to support their recent trip to Lausanne for the Junior European Championships, at which Chris represented Ireland. Thank you to everyone who bought tickets – commiserations to those who didn’t win!
In summary
In 2007, we raised nearly £7,000, all of which has been put towards the cost of the new matting around the pommel horses, beams and parallel bars. This project is almost finished and will have cost in the region of £20,000 once complete. However, as with most other sports clubs, we need to improve on our efforts. Not only do we have the equipment to think about now, but also we have an increasing number of elite gymnasts who compete internationally. The cost of travel and accommodation for these trips is seldom paid for by anyone other than the gymnasts themselves. So if you get accosted by some sweet, demure gymnasts holding a book of raffle tickets for whatever the latest venture is, please feel free to buy the whole book – we can buy some more!