Grassroots sports clubs play a vital role in their communities and nowhere more so than in the small town of Costessey in Norfolk, home to Costessey Sports Club. For more than 70 years, the club has given residents of a range of ages and more recently, genders, the opportunity to play competitive sport. Like most clubs however, as the team count grows they are fighting against the rising costs of equipment, pitch hire or maintenance at a time when the cost-of-living makes out of pocket donations difficult to come by for local residents. For the last few seasons, the club has been using easyfundraising to generate free funds as the club community shop online and have benefitted from over £2,500 in extra funding. Here’s Paul, the club’s secretary to explain how they’ve done it and the difference it’s made.
Tell us all about the Costessey Sports Club
The club was founded in 1948, originally as a male adult football club. Later in 1977 the club expanded to include youth teams, and fast forward to the upcoming 2025/26 season we now have about 30 teams across boys/girls/men/ladies and operate as an inclusive, community sports club. We are a Norfolk FA accredited club and we play at Norfolk’s premier FA venue – The FDC.
The best example of us as a community club can be seen during our annual youth tournament, held each June where we invite over 120 teams from across our region to compete here over a weekend. All our coaches volunteer their time to park cars, cook on the BBQ, make drinks and ensure a positive environment, it’s a real team effort but something we love to do. We’re a highly people positive club and enjoy seeing all generations able to enjoy competitive football.
What do you need funding for?
We reinvest our fundraising each year back into new and existing teams to help them, but of course the running costs in grassroots football go up every year, the cost of pitches particularly. We want to make sure our club is accessible for all, and don’t want to be increasing subs frequently so we look to do various fundraising through the year. Our summer tournament as mentioned above is our largest funds contributor but easyfundraising is now our second!
Why did you join easyfundraising and how easy was it to get started?
We were looking to buy a VEO Cam for our Mens and Ladies first teams as well as youth teams when required. We had some coaches wanting to record games either to support their coaching of the team or to further support their coaching qualifications journey. We came across easyfundraising after researching fundraising methods that all of our club members could easily get behind.
It does exactly what it says on the tin – it really is easy fundraising! Every time our members shop online with the appropriate stores, we get free donations and without it costing anyone anything. When we started, we asked all the coaches and parents to join, and they’ve brought with them some extra supporters so we have 88 registered now. We raised the money for a VEO cam’s annual subscription fee and have kept this running thereafter. Our total now stands at £2,500 and it has become a very valued and key fundraising contributor to help keep the club ‘in the black’.
How have the funds raised helped?
We have our VEO Cam now and are just continually investing the extra money into our running costs. When we do have something specific we want to buy we will set that as a goal and encourage everyone to step up their shopping – especially as we get towards the autumn and then Christmas!
Here is a recent goal captured on our new VEO cam!
How have you promoted easyfundraising to your club community?
We’re fortunate in that having so many teams we have around 400 people in our club network. Right now, only about 20% of them are registered as our easyfundraising supporters but the more we raise the easier it becomes to promote it. We regularly feature our cause page in our coaches meeting notes and update on progress at our AGM to encourage supporters to get behind us.
As a supporter yourself, what do you like best about easyfundraising?
I shop on my phone a lot and their app is excellent. If you have the app, you can get the mobile donation reminder and this pops up to tell you if you land on the website of one of the giving retailers. With a tap then I can activate my account and a percentage of what I spend will become a donation at no extra cost – fantastic!
What would you say to other football clubs about joining?
It’s free and it’s easy – what have you got to lose? Over the course of time it grows and grows and becomes a habit for you and your supporters.
A final word for your supporters and sponsors…
We are so grateful to everyone who supports our club, be it via easyfundraising or our club sponsors, local businesses, our committee and all the coaches that devote their time to making the club such a great place to be. Thank you.
Support Costessey, or register your own club to start raising!
Costessey are one of over 14,000 football clubs who collectively have raised over £2m with our help to date. You can help the club continue to raise vital funds for free by signing up to support them here.
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