Red Smith Sports Awards will facilitate $5,000 in Scholarship Grant money for Reimbursement to participating youth sports organizations in the Fox Valley. In partnership with RSSA and all annually participating youth sports organizations, Appleton’s Scheels Sporting Goods Store commits $100 to all scholarship recipients to the Every Kid Plays Program affiliates – Youth Sports programs in the Fox Valley.
Become a Participating Organization
Background to the need:
The RSSA has approximately 30 youth sports club grant recipients. Each year, these organizations fill out a grant application for awards up to $1,000. To most of these clubs, the money is vital to helping their respective organizations with needed equipment and operational costs. However, many of these organizations also have scholarship programs for families that cannot afford the rising costs of player participation fees. Most organizations do everything they can to keep costs low for all participants and no organization ever wants their club to be about the “haves & have-nots.” Therefore, many organizations have created scholarships for less fortunate families who cannot afford annual participation fees. These organizations, such as the AYFA, have to subsidize these costs with sponsorships and fundraising. In the AYFA alone, the fees are only $175 to participate, but annually average about 20 families that need scholarships to play. Therefore, the AYFA has to raise an additional $3,500 to make sure every kid can play middle school football in Appleton.
Here’s How it Works:
In addition to the RSSA grant application, the Red Smith Youth Grant will also include the new Red Smith Teammate Grant – Every Kid Plays Program application. Since RSSA is already collecting all the club information, this will be a supplemental grant opportunity where Scheels/RSSA asks an additional (let’s just say five) questions regarding scholarship program, numbers, and procedures for scholarships within their respective club. This way, the clubs are responsible for their own scholarship programs and vetting their own applicants. We award each of the clubs a grant of up to $1,000 to help reimburse their internal scholarship programs. We would request to see the application process/forms for each applicant of the Red Smith Teammate Grant – Every Kid Plays Program, so we better understand their process. However, the organizations would remain responsible to vet each candidate.
Each youth season starts and ends differently throughout the year, so the Scheels gift cards will be processed immediately following each participating organizations registrations and scholarship requests are annually completed. All recipient’s names and contact information must remain in confidence between RSS, Scheels and the participating clubs. We encourage each of our participating organizations to submit the scholarship list of Scheels gift card recipients promptly following registration close, so the recipients can purchase gear and apparel needed for the upcoming season!