Football club adopts charity of the season
Howard Lake | 25 November 2003 | News
Arsenal Football Club has adopted ChildLine as its first ever charity of the season. The partnership should boost the charity’s profile among boys.
As major corporate entities, football clubs are proving a worthwhile focus for charities’ corporate fundraisers. Arsenal FC has now formalised its first year-long partnership with a charity, the children’s charity ChildLine.
So far Arsenal has donated thousands of pounds worth of advertising space free of charge at its Highbury Stadium, in the club’s matchday programme and magazine, and on the jerseys of its players as they warm up before matches. ChildLine has also been given regular editorial slots in Arsenal’s publications and its Web site to call for volunteers.
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The football club raised more than £12,000 with its ‘ChildLine Match Day’, a home game against London rivals Tottenham Hotspur. The income was raised through programme sales, a penalty shoot out during half time, an SMS text messaging competition and raffles.
In return Arsenal is using the partnership opportunity to draw on ChildLine’s expertise to develop its own work with children and young people within its community programmes.
ChildLine’s tenure as Arsenal’s ‘Charity of the Season’ coincided with the launch of one of ChildLine’s biggest-ever awareness campaigns, Boys Allowed, which aims to reach boys and young men with the message that it is OK to have problems and to seek help to find solutions.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.