How Grow Sport Supports Your Club's Grant Funding Journey
Grow Sport is supporting over 50 clubs nationwide with their 2026 Community Sports Facilities Fund applications, with an estimated combined grant value of €7.2 million
THURLES, Co. Tipperary – Grow Sport, the Irish sports club consultancy, is supporting more than 50 clubs across the country in their 2026 Community Sports Facilities Fund (CSFF) applications, with an estimated combined grant value of €7.2 million. The figure spans applications across golf, GAA, football, rugby and other sporting codes, underlining the scale of funding that clubs stand to gain when their applications are built to score.
Every year, sports clubs and schools across Ireland leave capital funding on the table. Not because their projects lack merit, but because the application process is unforgiving of gaps: a missing letter of support, a weak participation narrative, a governance document nobody thought to update. Grow Sport exists to close those gaps, for every sport, every code, and every stage of readiness.
Checking fundability first
Before drafting a single document, Grow Sport assesses a club against the fundamentals assessors actually score: ownership status, governance, membership trends and inclusion story. This tells the club where its application is already strong and where the case needs to be built before a word is written.
Understanding how CSFF assessors think
Grow Sport has supported applications across pitch works, floodlighting, dressing rooms, clubhouses, courts, equipment and accessibility projects, and has seen first-hand where applications succeed and where they fall down. Assessors score on demonstrated need, community impact, participation growth, accessibility, governance and financial sustainability. The applications that fail usually share the same faults, and Grow Sport makes sure its clients' applications don't.
Coordinating every letter of support
Strong applications rely on the right mix of stakeholder letters, and missing even one can weaken the whole submission. Grow Sport manages this process from end to end, from the National Governing Body through to local schools, community groups and the Local Sports Partnership, so nothing falls through the cracks.
Building the financial and participation case
A credible application needs more than a good project. It needs a well-evidenced financial plan and a participation model that stands up to scrutiny. Grow Sport builds both, along with the full supporting document set assessors expect to see.
Winning the points other applications leave behind
Inclusion and sustainability are areas where many applications underperform. Grow Sport helps clubs build a genuine inclusion strategy and a sustainability plan that reflects current scoring priorities, turning these into real points rather than afterthoughts.
Supporting clubs end to end
Grow Sport's process takes clubs from initial consultation right through to submission and post-award support, typically within a matter of weeks depending on how quickly the NGB, architect and quantity surveyor engage.
Pricing
Grow Sport's annual support fee is €950 + VAT, covering consultation, readiness assessment, funding strategy and application preparation, plus support across other live schemes as they arise. A 5% success fee applies to the grant awarded, payable only if the application succeeds. No award, no success fee.
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"Every club has a project worth funding. What often lets them down isn't the project itself, it's the gaps in the application: a missing letter, a weak narrative, a governance document nobody updated. We're currently supporting over 50 clubs through this year's CSFF round, with an estimated combined grant value of €7.2 million between them. Whatever your sport, your size, or your stage of readiness, we build applications that score," said Mark Ruddy, Founder and CEO of Grow Sport.
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