How Are We Funded?
To date, we have not received a penny in funding from any external sources. We’ve never recieved government help or funding, nor have we received any funds or support in anyway from external bodies like the National Lottery.
We are entirely self-sufficient, funding our operations exclusively from our own generated income. 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.
Our Group of Social Enterprises actively seeks sponsorship and other commercial partnerships but receives no funding, grants or donations.
The association remains entirely self-funded and self-sufficient, and without any support or assistance from government, Sport England or the National Lottery.
During the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic 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.
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. We are accountable to our members and open to scrutiny. Whist we may be technically a private company, our trustees and Social Mission, as well as a contractual agreement between our Social Enterprise and Foundation ensures all profits are mandated to go to the Foundation to enable it to run charitabale programmes.