Grants for Nonprofit Community Athletic Programs
- The best place to apply for grants for nonprofit community athletic programs is with the professional leagues and teams for the type of sport played. Most professional leagues have a strategic mandate to encourage youth to play the sport in their home communities. Likewise, the individual professional teams support the league mandate to promote the sport and also have a secondary objective to support the community around where the team is located. For example, Major League Baseball operates the Baseball Tomorrow Fund that gives grants to little leagues around the country, while teams such as the New York Yankees award grants to local youth organizations for all types of athletic programs, including baseball.
- Corporations that sell sports-based products often operate a foundation that awards athletic grants to community organizations. This is the company's way of promoting itself with its main consumer group and generating goodwill. For example, the Nike corporation makes its money by selling athletic shoes. It also operates a foundation that awards grants to nonprofits promoting athletics in local communities. Corporate grants tend to be more complicated than grants offered by professional leagues and teams, requiring additional formalities in the application process.
- The federal government and many major state and city agencies have grant programs that allocate funds to youth and community organizations for athletics. For example, in New York City, there is the Department of Youth and Community Development that provides grants for after school programs. Athletics can be a core component of a funded program through this agency. The U.S. Department of Education operates the Carol M. White Physical Education program that also provides funding for athletics.
- The last major source of grants for community athletic programs are private foundations. There are thousands of foundations throughout the country that focus on a wide array of issues, including community-based sports programs. The best way to research grant opportunities is to use the resources aggregated by the Foundation Center. The Foundation Center publishes descriptions of all private foundations and maintains an Internet-based research database of foundations for public use that is available from its website.