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 $150 to all scholarship recipients to the Every Kid Plays Grant program affiliates – Youth Sports programs in the Fox Valley.
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 Scheels Every Kid Plays Grant 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 Scheels Every Kid Plays Grant, 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.
Red Smith Sports Awards will facilitate $5,000 in Grant money for Appleton’s Scheels Sporting Goods Store to qualified and vetted cause in the request categories of:
- Equipment
- Facilities
- One-Event supporting Youth Sports programs in the Fox Valley.
Background to the need:
The RSSA Group, on behalf of the direction and management of Scheels Sporting Goods Store in Appleton, has facilitated the $5,000 (+) annual grant as a pass-through from Scheels to RSSA to award applicant. The process has been a simple, collective effort by the RSSA Committee members to reach out to local youth sports groups and identify facility or equipment needs. For the past seven years, the RSSA has identified, vetted and awarded the following organizations and their cause:
2012 – Menasha Youth Sports: Updates and upgrades to playing surfaces at parks
2013 – Greenville Youth Sports: Upgrades to ball fields at parks
2014 – Appleton Family Ice Arena: Updates to facility and new ice in rink
2015 – Lawrence University: Retrofit of Football Facilities at the Banta Bowl
2016 – Appleton Soccer Club: Update of Facilities and Fields at Scheels USA Youth Sports Complex
2017 – Appleton Area School District: Purchase of Backboards for multiple schools in the district
2018 – Special Olympics of the Fox Valley: Purchase of Mobile Scoreboards
How it will work going forward:
1) We can continue the status quo – to perform the duties of annually identifying, vetting and awarding an organization of need in the qualifying three categories.
2) The RSSA can add this grant as an add-on or supplemental grant to the RSSA Grant, which we are already collecting a great deal of information about each organization. We can offer the SGB immediately following the application for the RSSA Grant. The SGB could be a five-question supplemental request for use towards equipment, facilities or an event. This process change could potentially add many more applicants annually. With approximately 30 current grant recipient youth organizations, we feel that many would identify a need within their organization and apply for the supplemental SGB Grant.