Support our Clubs 2021

It's hard to believe that it's nearly a year since Covid19 impacted our lives in such a fundamental way. It has been a very difficult year for everyone however the rollout of the vaccine programme now gives us hope of a return to a more normal way of life in the coming months.

In April 2020 we launched the 'Support our clubs so gymnasts can bounce back!' campaign to encourage our great community of members and fans to rally around their local clubs in a time of crisis. Today we are renewing this call to 'support our clubs' in the difficult months ahead as we slowly move towards a gradual reopening of our sport...

• Download full campaign brief, click here...
• Download & share campaign flyer, click here...
  

Background

Gymnastics is one of the biggest sports in Ireland and gymnastics clubs have become important community hubs throughout the country from urban through to rural areas nationwide. Our clubs have individual memberships from 0-50 members for small clubs through to clubs with 1500 – 2000+ members welcoming all genders, ages, abilities and backgrounds.

Most gymnastics clubs now operate as small businesses based out of dedicated/full-time facilities. They employ full-time, part-time & casual staff to make sure they can deliver gymnastics programmes for their local communities. Just as with any other business they have monthly costs that range from commercial rents/mortgages, through to staffing and maintenance costs. They fund these costs through the term-fees they charge to each individual member.

The problem

In Ireland we have been living under crucial Covid19 restrictions to help combat the virus since March 2020 and Gymnastics Ireland, along with our clubs, completely support the governments' efforts in this fight.

As gymnastics clubs are classified as nonessential businesses they have been unable to operate normally since the restrictions began. Despite the various government supports in place these restrictions have greatly impacted the normal cashflow of our clubs leading to difficulty in meeting basic operational costs necessary to keep the clubs open. With the vaccine programme rollout now in operation we can see that a return to a more normal way of life is in sight and we look forward to the re-opening of our clubs as soon as is safely possible. We are asking for the continued support of our members and gymnastics community in what we hope is now the final stretch to reopening in the next number of weeks/months to ensure all our clubs will be able to re-open when the time comes

Our ask

Many people have been seriously financially impacted by the outbreak of the virus through the loss or scaling back of their jobs. This is the case for many people from within our own gymnastics community. We have nothing but sympathy for them and hope that once restrictions are lifted we can all return to a more normal way of life as soon as possible.

We are asking anyone who’s job has not been affected by the Covid-19 crisis to...

• continue to support their local gymnastics club by continuing to pay term fees if they are able to do so. We ask that they do so knowing that classes in the short – medium term will likely not run

• we are also calling on any fans of our sport out there who may be in a position to support their local gymnastics club to make donations if at all possible

We want to make sure our clubs are still there and ready to get back to work when this is all over so please support our clubs so gymnasts can bounce back!

#supportourclubs #gymnastsbounceback #gymnasticsireland #sportstartshere