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Over 100 clubs across the UK have already benefited from charity days hosted by Bright Ideas for Tennis. One of the main advantages is that the total funds raised remain within the club so that they can be put directly towards a project such as developing additional tennis programmes, improving members' experience or even to fund larger capital projects such as building new courts, refurbishing clubhouses, installing floodlights or purchasing extra equipment including ball machines. If you would like to get involved or would like your club to benefit please get in touch.
We wanted to celebrate the Club’s 20th Anniversary by offering the members something different and at the same time involving the wider tennis community. Absolutely nothing could have been better than what Danny Sapsford and Chris Eaton at Bright Ideas for Tennis brought to us in Bristol. The coaching clinics had sold out within a few days (82 players taking part) and over 150 Barbeque tickets were pre-sold in the first week so we were very excited about the upcoming event and even invited some local tennis VIP’s to join us!
The added bonus, apart from making lots of money on the day, is the number of new people playing tennis at the club. Ten new players came in the first week and that immediately doubled by week two after the event – we can’t wait to see what happens next! The publicity from the event has brought lots of enquiries and we can’t thank Bright Ideas for Tennis enough for providing us with an opportunity to offer more tennis to more people more often.
We were blessed with excellent weather, and had a great turn-out from our tennis customer base. Danny and Chris ran a series of engaging coaching clinics for our mini-tennis players up to our adults, and sandwiched in between was an entertaining doubles exhibition featuring club coaches Trevor and Nick.
Aside from the clinics and exhibition match, there was a BBQ on offer, as well as a raffle that offered over £700 worth of prizes! Both helped to boost the funds raised, and added to the impact of the event. Many parents have since gone out of their way to say what a lovely day it was, and to ask when the next one will be!
(Thanks to David Long for photographs)
The aim of the North Dulwich Bright Ideas for Tennis day was to raise funds to upgrade the club's two shale courts to make them all-weather proof, and to provide free coaching to members of the local community.
£250 of the money raised has already been spent on provision of free coaching for members and non-members of all ages at the Club’s last open day on June 29th. In addition, new members who joined the Club during the open day are to receive two further free coaching sessions.
The remainder of the money raised on our Davis Cup day will mainly go towards meeting the cost of resurfacing the club’s two shale courts.
North Dulwich raise the most funds from all club visits between Sept 2013 and July 2014 by the charity Bright Ideas for Tennis
As a reward for their success our charity ambassador, Tim Henman visited the club along with Danny Sapsford, Luke Milligan and Jamie Baker on Saturday, October 11th. It was a roaring success with 250 people in attendance, a memorable experience for all who attended either for coaching or to watch the doubles exhibition match, enjoy the fantastic BBQ or watch Tim Henman's 'Keepy-Uppy' challenge. The day raised over £5K, making the total raised by the club nearly £10,000, an incredible achievement for a small club.
Bright Ideas for Tennis has so far helped to fully fund a variety of projects such as practice walls, ball machines, court cleaning and court re-painting. We have also contributed to several new court developments and many floodlight projects. Click on the thumbnails below to view some of our completed projects and read the club surveys to see just how Bright ideas for Tennis is helping clubs to get more people playing more tennis.
We are always looking for ways to help tennis clubs, so if your club has a passionate committee or club coach with some realistic goals to improve your Tennis Club then we would like to hear from you.
Get Involved At a time when many smaller Clubs are possibly struggling to attract and retain membership numbers, a day such as the one delivered by Bright Ideas for Tennis, together with the coaching legacy that will follow is be a great way to enhance the profile of the club(s) both internally and externally and hopefully ensure the long term health of our clubs. It is also a great way of enthusing existing members to get out on court and play more frequently.
One of our big aims off the back of this day is to build and develop more opportunities for families to get out on court and play, to get those parents who may only pick up a racket once or twice a year on court with their children and enthuse them. We will also further develop our links with the local schools and provide additional coaching opportunities for our existing and prospective new members. I would like to extend my thanks to Danny and his team for giving us this great opportunity and I wish him well for all his future endeavours with Bright Ideas for Tennis.
We were delighted at Lancaster Tennis Club to have Danny and Luke visit our Club under the Bright Ideas for Tennis charity scheme. It's a great way to raise money for the Club but more importantly the sessions they ran were great fun, instructive and hugely enjoyable. All our juniors and adults gained enthusiasm and new insights and also appreciated the chance to watch a competitive exhibition match with top quality players. Some of our juniors said it was their best ever afternoon of tennis! We hope they'll come back again - they'll always be very welcome.
We're privileged to take part in the Bright Ideas for Tennis initiative. It's an amazing opportunity to enable our members to improve their game and help more people to participate in the sport we love. We're very excited about our next event and hope to incorporate some exhibition doubles, as we did at the first event and get a good crowd in to support our efforts to raise more funds for reaching out to new starters in the game.
Feedback was instant and extremely positive. Everyone told us what a fantastic day they had, how much they learned from the clinics, what a great atmosphere Danny and Chris created (not to mention that they seemed to learn everyone’s name in an instant) and how involved everyone felt. It was such a great day that people have been talking about it weeks after the event, sharing photos and videos, and asking ‘when can we do it again’!
Mega thanks to Danny and Luke for a brilliant, sparkling and uniquely fun tennis fundraiser! The legacy these two delightful gentlemen left behind will enable Stocksbridge Tennis Club to provide additional coaching resource to reach out to even more youngsters in our community (a much needed boost to our current voluntary over-stretched coaching limitations). In addition some of the funds raised will go towards the long term goal of lighting to enable our community to play tennis play for longer all year round. It is a truly wonderful thing they have done for our local community!
What this opportunity has done is show that even the smallest of clubs can create a great day and at times where money is tight there is always a way to raise funds. It has shown that with teamwork and commitment then anything is possible. Thanks to Bright Ideas for Tennis for giving us the opportunity to make this happen
Chris and Andrew really got everyone enthused and all who attended said how much they had gained from the sessions and how they’d enjoyed playing with other members of the club that they wouldn’t ordinarily have met. We are all now eagerly anticipating our next Tennis Circus day in May.
Great fun was had by all who came and the players really benefited! We look forward to arranging another day with Danny and the team in 2014/2015.
North Dulwich Lawn Tennis Club owes Bright Ideas for Tennis, and particularly Danny Sapsford and Andrew Richardson a huge thank you for making the day possible. Danny's enthusiasm and passion for tennis is infectious and meant that we all thoroughly enjoyed the day. Even organising the day was a pleasure. To see how successful the day was made all the effort worthwhile; especially as we only had roughly six weeks to organise the day, but Danny's guidance and assistance made it a breeze.
Many thanks must also go to all who helped on the day from the club's coaches to all of the members who gave up their time to be a part of the best day in the club's history.
The Bright Ideas for Tennis day at the YMCA Hawker Centre was an inspirational success. With bags of energy and enthusiasm from Danny Sapsford and Chris Eaton. A great boost and all round fun day for all participants and spectators at the tennis centre.
The main goal was to increase the profile of tennis in the local area and raise some money to provide free tennis initiatives in the community, safe to say we achieved both goals, raising an incredible £1074, whilst also enjoying a great day.
We had the best and busiest club event in living memory yesterday thanks to Danny Sapsford and Luke Milligan. The feedback has also been amazing with really positive emails and texts. David Alexander, who is 99 years old, said that he has never seen so many people mention how good the day was (and he's been at the club since he was a junior). The turnout was brilliant and it was so nice to see so many attend, watch the exhibition match and stay to the end. It's a first!