Club Mark
Doncaster Hockey Club has become the first hockey club in Yorkshire to achieve the England Hockey Club Mark. It follows some hard work by Kerry Haslam over a number of months and will open up more opportunities for our club. In particular it opens up funding opportunities from both Sport England (SE) and the National Hockey Foundation (NHF) that will be essential for the resurfacing of our astroturf pitch.

The Pitch and Funding Applications
Funding applications were submitted to the NHF (£55k) and SE (£130k) just before Xmas to resurface our astroturf pitch. The applications have the support of England Hcockey, Doncaster MBC, Yorkshire Hockey, local schools and sports clubs who use our pitch.

We are aiming for completion of the work before the start of the 2018/19 season.
We will almost certainly not get all the funding we have applied for. What we actually do will depend on how close we get to the target of £200k from these applications and the fantastic ideas that people in the club are putting into action to raise money in Doncaster.

The information collected for these applications are readily available for anybody to make additional applications that they may think of, or know about. Just contact a committee member for the information and do it – it’s easy.

Finance
The pitch fund account stands at £80k plus another £7k collected from fund raising and club savings since Oct 2017. A clear requirement of our funding applications is that we;
- Make financial provision for the next refurbishment of our pitch around 2028.
- Ensure that governance is put in place to protect that funding and ensure it is not used for any other purposes. We will not get this funding to support us again.
This will mean annual savings to the pitch fund of at least £20k will be needed. The committee thinks that £10k will come from tight control of expenditure – not spending money we haven’t got, and ensuring that all members pay their annual subscriptions and match fees.

A further income of £10k will need to be generated over and above our annual social events and sponsorship income. The committee is looking at opportunities to make more pitch time available for external hire, particular during prime times, and get more external hire out of times not currently used eg daytimes and the summer break.

If you know of anybody who would be willing to sponsor us please put them in touch with Kirk Bellerby. Our ladies and men’s 1st teams are working hard to secure their own sponsorship for the club – please support them. The ladies are doing better than the men - no surprises there then.

Dates For Your Diary
13 April – Junior Presentation Evening
14 April – Hockey Club Ball

“Ask not what your club can do for you, ask what you can do for your club”