Doncaster Sheffield Airport Increases Community Investment Fund for Grassroots Charities

Community groups around Doncaster Sheffield Airport have less than three weeks left to apply to a £10,000 project funding pot.

The airport owner and developer of the adjacent GatewayEast project, Peel L&P, has doubled its Community Investment Fund (CIF) value this year to £10,000. This gives more local community groups the opportunity to apply for valuable financial support in a difficult year, where local charities and community associations are under enormous pressure.

Eligible community groups can apply to the Airport Consultative Committee (ACC), the organisation that manages the Community Investment Fund (CIF) on behalf of the airport and Peel L&P and that facilitates communication between the airport, local communities, councils, and businesses.

The funding is available to sustainable community projects, which are within a ten-mile radius of the airport and not eligible for local authority or national funding, including voluntary community and self-help groups.  Peel L&P and DSA are keen to support projects which share their company values of improving health and wellbeing, heritage conservation, environmental improvement and community cohesion. 

Previous successful projects include new shirts for the 2021 cohort of Doncaster Schools Football Association of players AKA ‘Donny Boys’ and funds to move the Wadworth Maypole from its location at the edge of the A1 to a safer position in the centre of the village green.  They are both great examples of those community organisations and projects eligible for support from the airport’s Community Investment Fund.

Robert Hough CBE, Chairman of Peel Airports, said: “The grant to move the Wadworth Maypole is one of the more unusual requests.  However, as a focal point of the community’s heritage conservation and a central part of community celebration, it was a compelling request.  We were pleased to support this historic part of the local community, particularly one associated with regrowth and renewal.”

“Donny Boys provide grassroots football for young players between 8 and 16 years and we are proud to fund an organisation that supplies important health benefits and wellbeing for its young players.  We have been deprived of team sports during lockdown and we are delighted to kit out the next generation of young players and get them back to the sport that they love.”

Neal Biddle, Peel L&P’s Development Director for GatewayEast added: “We’re pleased to be able to extend the financial support for local charities that do invaluable work in the community and we’d encourage groups who meet the criteria and in need of a helping hand with their projects, to make an application.”

Applications for funding are open until 31 March 2021 through the Airport Consultative Committee (ACC).  Applications are expected to be oversubscribed, so groups applying for financial support to the fund are advised to complete an application in plenty of time, and with sufficient detail to help with the decision-making process. Successful applications will be announced in early June. 

More details and application form can be found here: https://flydsa.co.uk/about-us/community/