$17 million to increase participation in sport across Australia

The Morrison Government is committed to encouraging more Australians to participate in sport with the latest allocation of core participation grant funding.

For more than 25 years, Sport Australia has been allocating funding to National Sporting Organisations (NSOs) and National Sporting Organisations for People with Disability (NSODs), to help drive sport participation initiatives across the country.

These organisations range from baseball and basketball through to netball, rowing, judo and badminton among many others. NSODs include the likes of Special Olympics, Transplant Australia and Deaf Australia.

This coming financial year, $17.26 million will be distributed across 55 national organisations.

Minister for Sport Richard Colbeck said the funding provides certainty to sports as they continue to navigate the impact of the pandemic.
“The Morrison Government has been focused on supporting sport as much as possible during this difficult time,” Minister Colbeck said.

“Last financial year, sports were provided with greater flexibility on how they could use their core participation funding allocations and in many instances this funding helped sporting organisation remain viable.”

Minister Colbeck said the focus was now on increasing participation and helping sport organisations deliver quality community experiences.

“The funding can be used to assist sports in a number of ways, including developing new programs to meet the needs of today’s sporting participants, ensuring they have access to safe and affordable equipment, or by providing professional development opportunities to upskill community volunteers,” he said.

Touch Football Australia (TFA) CEO Jamie O’Connor said the funding allocation would help TFA continue to hold events such as the Cold Climate Classic in Tasmania.

“TFA will also use the funds to deliver on a new strategic and operational plan which will guide the direction of the sport over the next four years,” Mr O’Connor said. “It will assist in the improvement of our systems, create inclusive offerings, establish new educational frameworks and continue the development of our competition management software."

“This ongoing investment enables us to continue to develop our products and see more people engage with sport.”

Sport Inclusion Australia CEO Robyn Smith said the funding was critical to the organisation’s capacity to deliver inclusion services for athletes with an intellectual impairment.

“We work with the sporting sector to help them be more inclusive of athletes with a disability,” Ms Smith said.

“We are seeing more sporting organisations and clubs include programs which focus on the ability of the individual, such as Tennis Australia’s inclusive events and Cricket Australia’s National Cricket Inclusion Championships which is great to see."

“We welcome this funding which will help us to continue to advocate for inclusion in all sports.”

Sports have been notified of their allocations and funds can be accessed from 1 July 2021.

A full list of sporting organisations receiving core participation funding is available here.