The LTA has announced the launch the LTA Tennis Foundation, a new charity that partners with people and organisations to improve lives through tennis. It formally launched on 31st May and will be raising awareness of its work during the upcoming grass court season.
The Foundation’s goal is to inspire more people from all backgrounds to discover tennis, open the sport up and increase diversity, work collaboratively with existing charities and partners, and invest in people, programmes and places to play.
The charity’s focus is solely for the grassroots of the game, across all parts of Great Britain, with a particular focus on diverse and disadvantaged communities where the game is less well established.
The LTA Tennis Foundation is the result of a merger between the Tennis Foundation and LTA Trust. The Tennis Foundation was an independent charity which was fully incorporated into the LTA in 2018. The LTA Trust was the LTA’s facilities investment charity and was responsible for providing loans and grants to venues to expand or improve their facilities.
The Foundation is a loan and grant giving charity, which will work with partners who can deliver projects that match the charity’s objectives. The charity will give loans or grants to help partners deliver new projects or to scale up existing work so they can reach a larger number of individuals. The charity will also sometimes support projects delivered by the LTA if the Trustees feel these meet the charity’s goals.
In its first full year of operation, the charity will be working to build partnerships with existing tennis charities and organisations to help understand how best to support them and use the Foundation’s resources to improve access to tennis facilities, programmes and coaching.
Tim Lawler MBE, Chair of the LTA Tennis Foundation Trustees, said, “The Trustees and I feel very proud to be involved with the Foundation. As a group we share the LTA’s vision of ‘tennis opened up’, and we want to use the wonderful sport of tennis to make a real difference to people throughout Great Britain. Our priority will be to support the grassroots of the game, with a particular focus on diverse and disadvantaged communities where the game is less well established and the opportunity to get involved has been limited.”
“We will work hard to build partnerships with existing charities and organisations to understand how we can best support them in the years ahead. We want to ensure we do everything we can to support the great work that is already taking place.”
Scott Lloyd, Chief Executive of the LTA, said, “I’d like to place on record my thanks to the former Trustees of the LTA Trust and Tennis Foundation, who did much great work in bringing the sport to more people in this country. With the launch of the new LTA Tennis Foundation, there is a chance to go much further and use the resources at the charity’s disposal to support more projects and partners across tennis. The work that is already taking place in supporting facilities investment, parks and LTA Youth shows the value the charity can bring to British tennis. We’re looking forward to working with the Trustees in the years ahead.”
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