How We're Funded
As a trade body driven toward doing what is best by our members, we think it’s important our clubs and members know how we’re funded.
How Are We Funded?
To date, we have not received a penny in funding from any external sources. We’ve never recieved government funding, nor have we received any funds or support in anyway from external bodies like the National Lottery, Sport England or UK Sport.
We are entirely self-sufficient, funding our operations exclusively from our own generated revenue. We do this through membership subscriptions and merchandise sales. All of our advice and guidance is offered to members of the public, police, councils, LADOs and clubs free of charge and without any remuneration.
We also run a series of social enterprises – from Coffee Roasting to Hotdesking – to help support the BMABA with a diversified income stream. This is following on from the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic during which we applied for emergency funding from Sport England to help the association and it’s attached Foundation to ensure we could continue promoting grass roots martial arts, upholding our safeguarding standards and ensuring access to training for vulnerable students. Unfortunately Sport England declined to provide any support and continues not to engage with us for any funding or grants.
To this effect, we remain a private owned company that is setup to run as a Social Enterprise, registered with Social Enterprise UK and focused on re-investing all profits back into BMABA. Nobody within BMABA draws more than £100,000 in salary, nor draws any dividends. We have no investors or shareholders.
How Do We Spend Our Income?
A large proportion of our income is spent on staff and payroll. We have no members of staff on any kind of substantial remuneration packages, but as our organisation has grown rapidly we have had to bring on a staff in operations, strategic ops and administrative duties to help the association run.
The remainder of our spending is committed to key areas of operational importance. We provide a full breakdown of our spending by category for all members of the association.
We are incredibly responsible with our spending, ensuring we remain well positioned to promote our charitable aims. We also ensure we have a suitable reserve to see us through uncertain times, just as we did during Covid-19 when we made more than £100,000 of support and benefits in kind available to our member clubs.
Ready To Switch?
How transparent is your current organisation when it comes to income and spending?
We’re proud to have been providing our members with detailed breakdowns on income and expenditure since 2014, and we welcome our members to have a voice on how and where we re-invest our profits. From Club Management software through to our grants programme; our members make us, and we’re happy to share detailed financial information for proper and full transparency.
