Funny enough I’ve been in that position. And having been in it I have some empathy with the club.
We were picked as an official club charity for last season. As a relatively small, local charity we were delighted. Thought “this is it, the club is loaded, we’ll do well here”. Two weeks later they present the outgoing charity with about £3k. Three. Thousand. Pounds.
Now, we’ve got old dears running coffee mornings who can summon up more than that so we were a bit surprised. Fast forward one year and there we are getting our cheque for about £4K.
https://www.afcb.co.uk/news/club-news/charities-speak-of-their-time-as-afcb-partners
The maths suggest that’s rubbish so why am I not bitter? Well what we learned early on is that the club gets hundreds of requests from local charities. Like lottery winners who go public, everyone is trying to tap them up for a few bob since (a) the club has lots of income and (b) each request might only be for a couple of grand. They have to say no because they can’t satisfy them all.
So they run the charity partnership but that also isn’t an open purse. Rather than them handing over loads of cash, they give you the platform to be able to do it yourself. Exposure, PR, links to the community... and that’s before you factor in the likelihood that some of the players will take a shine to you (hello Steve Cook
). It’s the old proverb about giving a man a fish vs teaching him how to fish.
Anyway, I know I’ve gone off topic but just thought it might be interesting to share some insight.