The Aggression Sessions Fund supported Consett Amateur Swimming Club to promote its sessions to families, schools and community hubs across the Consett area.
A £100 grant paid for 5,000 leaflets and 50 posters, helping the volunteer-led club raise awareness without taking money away from children’s swimming programmes.
Making local swimming easier to find
Consett Amateur Swimming Club has been part of the local community since 1963. The club supports swimmers from level 7 onwards, helping people develop their skills and take part in community galas, regional competitions and national championships.
Like many volunteer-led clubs, Consett Amateur Swimming Club is doing practical community work with limited resources. The club provides a safe, accessible place for children and young people to improve their swimming, meet others and enjoy being active.
But visibility can be a challenge. The club was struggling to compete with advertising from non-local swimming clubs with larger budgets. Without support, it would have had to use money from its children’s swimming programmes to pay for promotional materials.
The Aggression Sessions Fund supports community sports clubs across County Durham, helping them grow and become more sustainable so more people can take part in physical activity.
Consett Amateur Swimming Club’s story: getting the word out
With a £100 grant, the club produced 5,000 leaflets and 50 posters through PMI Creative.
The materials are being distributed to schools and community hubs across the Consett area, helping more families find out what the club offers.
This was a small grant, but it met a real need. For a volunteer-led club, promotional costs can be hard to justify when the priority is keeping sessions running for children and young people.
The funding meant the club could promote itself properly without reducing the money available for swimming activity.
After testing the leaflet content on Facebook, Consett Amateur Swimming Club attracted a new volunteer. That person has now started their coaching journey and is supporting young swimmers.
For a club that depends on volunteers, that matters. More volunteers can mean more coaching capacity, more support for swimmers and a stronger future for the club.
As the club explained:
“This is an opportunity we would not have had without this funding. We can now look to really boost memberships and offer mental health support and friendships to future generations of swimmers.”
How a small grant makes a big difference in the right hands
A £100 grant can look small on paper. For a volunteer-led club, it can still make a big difference.
Consett Amateur Swimming Club needed to reach more local families, but paying for promotion would have meant diverting money away from children’s swimming programmes. The Aggression Sessions Fund covered that practical cost, so the club could get the word out without reducing what it offered to young swimmers.
That visibility helps the club grow. More families knowing about local swimming opportunities can mean more children taking part, more people becoming involved and a stronger future for the club. The early response has already helped attract a new volunteer, who has started their coaching journey and is now supporting young swimmers.
Because of our expertise and knowledge of County Durham and Tees Valley, the team at Point North helps small grants reach the right places, the places where they can make a big difference. In Consett, £100 helped a long-running community swimming club promote its work, protect its children’s sessions and build the volunteer support it needs to keep going.