An operating grant is a general grant for sports clubs. The operating grant is awarded on a discretionary basis based on calculated criteria.
Application period: see section application.
Applicants must comply with the application guide for grants for sports and the general grant allocation guidelines of the City of Helsinki when applying for, using and reporting on grants.
Operating grants may be awarded upon application to sports clubs which meet the following criteria:
- The registered domicile of the sports club is Helsinki and its activities are open to all Helsinki residents. The activities for which a grant is awarded must be primarily directed at Helsinki residents.
- The sports club must be registered with the Finnish Patent and Registration Office in accordance with the Associations Act. The club’s activities must be well-established and the club must have been in operation for at least one full calendar year prior to applying for a grant. This does not apply to cases in which a club has changed its name, a division has registered as a separate association, or the operations of clubs that have previously received a grant are entirely or partially joined together.
- According to the statutes of the sports club, the club’s primary field of activity is sports and exercise, and the umbrella organisation for the sports activities that they organise is a member of the Finnish Olympic Committee and/or is covered by State funding for national sports organisations provided by the Ministry of Education and Culture. More than 50% of the club’s regular training activities must be in sports that meet the abovementioned criterion.
- The sports club organises regular instructed sports activities for the same group within the club at least 10 times for a continuous period of three months.
- The club’s regular instructor-led sports and physical activities must be attended by at least 50 active members who live in Helsinki, or, alternatively, at least 20 active members under the age of 20 who live in Helsinki.
The sports club must comply with the principles of good governance and the ethical principles for sports communities in all its operations.
The calculation of the operating grant is based on the following criteria:
- The number of active members living in Helsinki (juniors/adults)
- The weighting of activities for children and young people in the calculation is 80%, while the weighting of activities for adults is 20%. Persons that turn 20 in the application year and younger count as children and young people.
- In the application, club members who participate in regular instructed training activities for the same group at least 10 times for a continuous period of three uninterrupted months are reported as active members. At least four members and an instructor or coach must take part in the instructed training activities. The regular activities organised must be the club’s own non-profit activities, excluding sports activities acquired by the City as a purchased service or carried out in cooperation with the City. Coaches, instructors, team managers or other club officials are not classified as active members.
- A person can only be reported as an active member for calculation purposes once, even if the same person participates in the activities of several training groups over the course of the calendar year.
- The number of instructors and coaches who have completed at least VOK 1, i.e. the first level of the national coaching and instructor training programme. In addition to the VOK 1 training programme, the number of instructors and coaches who have completed a training course for coaches and instructors of at least the same level and content, or who have completed an initial vocational qualification (vocational school), a sports instructor’s degree (university of applied sciences) or a Master’s degree in sports science (sports pedagogy or sports biology) is taken into account.
The grant calculation uses a limit percentage that prevents the reduction of the operating grant by more than 20% from the operating grant awarded the previous year. If the change in the number of active members or instructors and coaches is due to a structural change in the club, such as a division or several leaving the club, the limit percentage is not used.
The amount of the operating grant is determined by comparing the club’s score with the scores of other clubs applying for an operating grant and the available budget.
A grant may be awarded to eligible applicants who have applied for the grant by the given deadline. The amount of the grant cannot exceed the amount applied for. If an applicant receives a grant for its sports activities from some other City of Helsinki grant form, the Sport Service will not approve a second grant.
The combined share of the operating and facility usage grant cannot exceed 80% of the eligible costs of the club’s non-profit activities. Loan repayments, interest, depreciation, reservations or other calculated items that are not based on actual expenses are not considered to be expenses resulting from the activities.
Grants of less than EUR 200 are not awarded.
The application for operating grant opens at the beginning of the year and ends on February 15.
Grants must be applied for within the application period specified. If an application is not submitted by the deadline, it will be regarded as late and rejected.
The grant is primarily applied for through the operating and facility usage grant application form. The same application is to be used to apply for a sports facility usage grant. A link to the application form will appear on the left side of this page for logged-in users during the application period.
Click here for instructions on how to use the e-services to apply for a grant and how to log in.
In exceptional cases, the grant application may be submitted to the City Register Office ( instructions(Link leads to external service) ).
The application must be accompanied with the mandatory attachments specified for each grant, a list of which is available below.
For the application to be processed, applicants must attach the mandatory documents to the application. The mandatory appendices to an operating grant application are:
- Action plan for the year of application
- Budget for the year of application
- Financial statements (latest confirmed/signed, the previous year or the year before)
- Financial or operational audit report (latest confirmed/signed, for the same year as the financial statements)
- Annual report (latest confirmed, for the same year as the financial statements)
If the applicant has not previously applied for a City of Helsinki grant or if their information has changed, the following appendices must also be submitted with the application:
- Statutes of the association
- The bank’s notice of the account holder or a copy of a bank statement (the applicant must have their own Finnish bank account to which the grant will be paid)
- An extract from the Register of Associations
Decisions on operating grants are made by the Sports Sub-committee. Decisions are expected to be made in April. The grant decisions, including the instructions for appeal, will be sent for information to all applicants.
See previous decisions of the Sports Sub-committee on the page of the Sports Sub-committee(Link leads to external service) .
The grant will be paid in accordance with the grant decision in one instalment into a bank account specified by the recipient. If the recipient does not have a bank account, they must open one. The City of Helsinki will only pay a grant into a bank account in the name of the recipient.
A prerequisite for the granting and payment of the grant is that there have been no discrepancies regarding any grants awarded by the city to the recipient in previous years. The city has the right to suspend the payment of a grant until the matter has been resolved if there is reason to suspect that the prerequisites for the recovery of a grant specified in Section 10 of the general grant criteria of the City of Helsinki are met.
The city has the right to set off the grant in whole or in part against a recoverable claim from the recipient.
An operating grant may be used to cover expenses arising from the club’s non-profit activities.
The grant must be used during the year in which it was awarded, unless otherwise specified in the decision. The combined share of the operating and facility usage grant cannot exceed 80% of the eligible costs of the club’s non-profit activities. Loan repayments, interest, depreciation, reservations or other calculated items that are not based on actual expenses are not considered to be expenses resulting from the activities.
The grant cannot be used for fundraising or for business and investment expenditures, or to increase the association’s financial assets or any other long-term investments. The grant cannot be forwarded to other associations or distributed as individual grants to members. The funds must be used for the operations of the association in general.
The recipient must notify the City of Helsinki without delay of any significant change affecting the use of the grant.
The use of the operating grant will be reported in connection with the application for the following year’s operating grant. The application form includes a separate section for this, and the mandatory attachments submitted with the application form are a part of reporting the last year's grant as well.
If the applicant has received the grant in the previous year, but does not apply for a grant in current year, the applicant must fill out a separate report form (opens in a new tab)(Link leads to external service) on the use of the grant from the previous year. The report form must be completed by the deadline mentioned in the grant decision.
A preview of the application form (pdf, in Finnish) (Link leads to external service)
Read more about the other documents governing the award, use and reporting of grants for sports on the Guidance and support page.
The contact details of personnel providing personalised guidance on sports grants are available on the Contact details page.