GAME-CHANGING GENEROSITY THAT WILL ALLOW FOOTBALL TO FLOURISH
£1.5m gift from philanthropist Anderson allows clubs at all levels to remain alive and kicking
Sitting alone in his office in Paisley, Stuart McCaffrey was about to receive an email that would blow his mind. the communication was from philanthropist James Anderson, who had just offered a cool £1.5million to his charity, the Scottish Football Partnership trust. to say McCaffrey was surprised is an understatement.
‘it was a Monday, about four o’clock in the afternoon. i’d spoken to Mr Anderson a couple of weeks before when he’d been on holiday and he said he was going to get back in touch,’ recalled McCaffrey.
‘At that point, i don’t know if it’s £100,000 or anything near that. i’m hoping he’s going to give us something but i’m not sure he’s going to meet the full aspiration.
‘And he said: “My wife and i would like to donate £1m in September and half a million pounds to support your plans. Both would be eligible for gift Aid”. Just two sentences. it was just incredible.
‘it was all very low-key, just the way he is. it meant so much to us that he had been able to do that. it was just fab, absolutely fab.’
the investment is game-changing for the SFPt, who aim to use the money to improve facilities for clubs around Scotland. it’s their biggest investment ever and they will now take time to consider applications before awarding the money to good causes.
As Scottish football’s leading funding charity for the grassroots game, its aim is to promote inclusive participation, with physical and mental wellbeing central to its aims and objectives. Donations such as these are crucial to the charity’s success, but they do not come without a great deal of hard graft taking place in the background.
Forming relationships with benefactors and proving their worth is a massive part of it, too. And that’s key when doing business with the likes of Anderson, an investment manager who has been at the heart of several large donations to Scottish football since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
McCaffrey said: ‘We were very fortunate to get some investment from Mr Anderson last year, supporting the girls’ and women’s game and youth football in Scotland. He made two donations of £250,000, one for the girls’ and women’s game and then one for Scottish Youth Football. When you add on the gift Aid, it comes to around the £600,000 mark.’
the money from Anderson and an anonymous second donor helped the SFPt and Scottish Women’s Football lessen the financial impact of the pandemic.
‘On the youth football side, every club which registers with the SYFA has had their registration and affiliation fees covered,’ explained McCaffrey. ‘now, that may not seem like a lot, but if you’ve got a club with 15 teams all paying a £50 registration fee, it starts to add up. So, the fund has actually been really good at taking away some of the burden the clubs face.
‘Every penny of the investment and the gift Aid went out. it was a time of crisis. We wanted to help them. Some of that investment has also helped to invest in volunteers. At the moment, we are running two programmes. One supports Scottish Youth FA coaches with education and development. We are funding these courses for them.
‘the second thing is sports first aid, something that’s very topical because of the Christian Eriksen incident at the Euros in the summer. We’ve been investing in sports first aid for about six or seven years now with over 3,500 volunteers trained. With the Anderson investment last year, it allowed us to invest in another 1,000 places for SYFA coaches. that allowed us to continue our conversation with him, reporting back on what we’re doing.’
Keeping the conversation alive proved vital as the charity recognised the growing need for better football facilities throughout the country. While the coronavirus had a devastating effect on indoor sport, football emerged from the lockdown more quickly thanks to the ability to play outdoors and be socially distanced.
‘Mr Anderson actually asked me if there were useful next steps after making his first donations to the trust,’ said McCaffrey, the former Hibernian, Aberdeen and inverness Caledonian thistle defender.
‘Around the end of March, April time, we put a proposal to him. i found him really personable. i was
He clearly trusts us to deliver this investment... and we will do
sharing things about some of the outcomes of his previous year’s investment. He’s always very appreciative of that feedback, recognising the power and the positivity football can have in our community.
‘it’s been really quite humbling to have the opportunity to interact. We asked him for £1.5m and he matched the full aspiration. that was unbelievable. it’s pretty cool.
‘He clearly trusts us to deliver this investment and we will do. We have the relationships which will allow the funds to grow. We’ve had numerous enquiries already and there are a lot of really, really good, good projects out there.’
McCaffrey (right) believes community ownership can help struggling clubs prosper, but those who take clubs on must recognise they need regular investment.
‘Local authorities are really struggling,’ he said. ‘Facilities need investment and when the community club takes over, we need to make sure we don’t pass them a problem. We have to give them something that’s modern or something that can be improved to cater for their needs, so our pitch to Mr Anderson was very much about the current needs and local facilities where the game is played.
‘there are smaller things like modular floodlights to allow kids to play more in the winter on grass, a storage container that allows them to store goals or pitch lining or maintenance equipment. then there’s bigger stuff around the pitches, pavilions and maybe upgrading or actually creating new facilities from scratch.’ Having started his football journey in East Kilbride at age seven, McCaffrey cites the developments there as a good example of the transformation that can occur. ‘Four years ago East Kilbride YM, the amateur club, and EKYC, the boys and girls club, came together to
form east Kilbride United. They used the Community empowerment Bill to speak to South lanarkshire Council about taking on the building there and then the pitches, and that’s what they did,’ he said. ‘The first phase was about regenerating. They took a very open-plan room and turned it into four changing rooms.
‘This was phase one and, off the back of that, SFPT awarded them a defibrillator.
‘We gave them a grant for modular floodlights so they could use them more in the winter. The pitches had been starved of investment for years and the club wanted to improve the drainage and surface quality, so we made a grant and some other investment came in to help them. now, it’s a very modern facility in the community’s hands.
‘The nice thing for me is, when I started as a kid, it would have been hard to imagine that. There was red blaes down the middle and grass on the wings. To be part of the investment and actually drive by and say to my kids: “That’s where I used to play! And look at it, isn’t it fantastic?” That’s just great for me.’
McCaffrey is now hoping that others will go on the journey with the charity as they look at this investment as an ongoing model for the game in Scotland.
‘I’m hoping we can show this is a really good model for people to invest in the game,’ he said. ‘If we can really demonstrate the impact of that, it may be that someone who has an interest in the Aberdeen area or the Glasgow area will do the same.
‘We’re not going to let Mr Anderson down. We’re going to really make an impact with this.’