At the start of October the Fulham FC Foundation recognised a significant milestone of 20 years of building better lives through sport.
For the past 20 years the foundation has provided football and sports programmes to the community, engaging with over 120,000 young people and adults in the process.
The game against Newcastle United at Craven Cottage on October 1st marked the launch of the Fulham FC Foundation 20th year appeal with the aim of raising £20,000 to support the vision of creating a healthy and inclusive thriving community by supporting programmes such as DisAbilty, Refugee, Mental Health and Women & Girls activities.
In total, the Fulham FC Foundation raised over £15,000 from this special occasion, 75% of its overall target which was a massive success.
CEO of the Fulham FC Foundation Mike McSweeney said: “We are very conscious that we are in a cost of living crisis and we didn’t want to overtly stand in front of people and ask for money.
“We put a number of different initiatives in place that would allow us to do things slightly differently.
“A couple of examples include from every shirt sale that day from the retail shop we took £20 of so in effect that was directly giving us money.
“We also auctioned off the players shirts from that match day and that raised good money and the initiatives and other small things helped us to that £15,000.”
Fans were able to make donations to Fulham FC Foundation around the ground to support the aforementioned projects, whilst a number of other fundraising activities took place on the day across online and hospitality spaces.
Across the match day, the foundation focused on promoting four of their projects, namely Refugee Kicks, Bursary, Mental Wellbeing and Women & Girls Football, with more than 20 members of staff at Craven Cottage supported by a host of volunteers from various Fulham FC Foundation activities.
There’s plenty the foundation would like to do in the future and McSweeney added: “Part of this campaign is about raising funds because we are a charity but it’s as much about getting the awareness out there about the work we do.
“In the last couple of years we launched a bursary scheme to make sure there are no barriers or costs to enable people to take part in the activities we offer.”
“Whether its boots, kit or travel people can get what they need.
“Through the launch of this scheme more people will have access to the activities we offer.
“We want to set up and do more things and to do that we need the funds.”
If you want to find out more about the Fulham FC Foundation or donate to the cause click here.
Fulham FC Foundation is the official charity of Fulham FC.
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