A club receives funding. It can open an additional group, buy equipment and hire a coach for more hours. The board has reason to be satisfied, and participants gain better training conditions. Yet one decision remains that is not visible in the grant award notice: who will pay to maintain these capabilities when the funding ends?
That question changes the way we look at a budget. Raising money and strengthening the organisation can happen together, but one does not guarantee the other. A new project can be properly delivered and accounted for while the club still lacks resources for its core activity. It may also leave behind equipment that needs maintenance, a longer lease or a group whose parents expect the sessions to continue.
Ascendia's thesis is this: a club's sustainability is co-determined by who will cover costs, and from what, between the end of the funding and the end of the commitments taken on. A funding agreement therefore also defines how risk is shared and the real time horizon of the board's decisions. New money strengthens the capacity to operate when it allows the full cost of those commitments to be covered for as long as needed. The size of the revenue alone does not show that.
We focus primarily on local and grassroots training clubs operating on a not-for-profit basis. Their responsibility covers continuity of sessions, accessibility for participants and working conditions for staff. The analysis combines academic research, Polish funding rules and three club cases. The way of assessing a budget proposed by Ascendia is a management tool whose effectiveness would require a separate study.
A project has an end date, a club has commitments
A project brings order to activity: it defines beneficiaries, activities, budget, timeline and outcomes. The funder knows what the money is for, and the club can plan delivery. The problem arises when the project calendar becomes the organisation's only calendar.
Training has its own continuity. A player moves between age categories, a coach plans work for the coming seasons, a facility needs upkeep, and documentation and reporting do not disappear with the last grant-funded session. The club has to reconcile these needs with agreements that may finance only a defined part of its activity.
This does not mean every project should last forever. A one-off camp or tournament can have a closed budget and achieve a worthwhile goal. The difference is whether the board consciously closes the undertaking or assumes continuation without securing its funding. Participants' expectations are not income, and the prospect of another call for proposals is not a signed agreement.
It helps to distinguish three kinds of commitments. The first arise from law and signed contracts, for example employment or a lease. The second are needed to carry out the declared activity, although the board may change its scope. The third concern responsibility towards participants: announced sessions, continuity of training and access rules. They have different legal status, but all of them should be part of the discussion about the future budget.
Ascendia proposes calling the mismatch between the costs of an adopted continuation and the resources available to fund it the continuity gap. This is an interpretive term that organises well-known problems of finance and management. It is not the name of a new economic law or an established scientific indicator.
The full cost of a club goes beyond the bills for training
An hour of training requires more than a coach and access to a hall. Someone draws up the schedule, runs recruitment, answers parents, and keeps track of payments, documents and safety. In a larger organisation this work may be done by employees. In a smaller one, part of the duties is taken on by board members and volunteers.
Planning must therefore distinguish a cash expense from a resource needed to run the activity. Unpaid work may not involve a bank transfer, but losing it requires finding a replacement, reducing services or incurring a cost. This is a management distinction. It does not mean that every volunteer hour should automatically be recognised as a cost in a Polish financial statement.
A good example comes from the British Marlow Rowing Club. In its accounts for the year ended 30 September 2024 it reported donated services worth GBP 284,351. This was an in-kind contribution, not cash paid into an account. The document shows how significant a share of an organisation's resources unpaid work can represent. [7]
This case helps explain the cost of professionalisation. When a club hires a coordinator in place of a volunteer, a new expense appears. The task itself, however, may have existed for a long time. The salary reveals the financial cost of work that a specific person previously did on different terms. The board should establish which duties the employee takes over, what problem the role solves and how long the club can sustain the position.
The wider literature describes the risk of cutting back an organisation's support functions. Jesse Lecy and Elizabeth Searing, analysing historical data on US nonprofits from 1985–2007, found a decline in the reported share of overhead costs. The administrative share fell, while growth in fundraising costs partly offset that decline. The result does not allow every accounting change to be equated with a real loss of capacity. It does, however, show why a low administrative cost ratio alone is not enough to judge the quality of an organisation. [3]
The conclusion for a club is practical: savings on support functions should be judged by their effects. More efficient bookkeeping can cut costs without harming the work. Shifting duties onto an overloaded coach can cut spending while also reducing the time devoted to training. In both cases the budget looks leaner. Organisationally, these are different decisions.
Public funding can build sustainability
The mechanism described above is easy to turn into an oversimplified story about harmful grants. The research and the regulations do not justify such a conclusion.
Szczepan Kościółek analysed the 2015 reports of 316 Polish clubs with public benefit organisation status. Of these, 166 received grants. Grant-funded clubs had higher average revenues, but the analysis did not confirm all the expected differences, including the hypothesis of a larger number of beneficiaries. It was a descriptive study of a selected group of clubs. It does not prove that the grant caused the observed differences and does not describe the situation of Polish sport as a whole in 2026. [2]
A strong counterweight to the thesis that grants are a burden comes from a study by Jeremy Thornton and Jesse Lecy. The authors followed 6,301 US nonprofits in 2008–2012, analysing the receipt of direct federal funding. The results pointed to improvement in some measures of financial health, including operating margin and net assets. It was not an experiment, and the sample covered particular recipients of large grants, so the findings cannot be transferred directly to a small Polish club. Their basic message must nonetheless be taken into account: public funding can strengthen an organisation. [4]
Polish law also allows everyday training to be funded. Article 28 of the Sport Act provides, subject to statutory conditions and on the basis of an appropriate local government resolution, for grants covering among other things training programmes, use of facilities and coaching staff salaries. The scope of support depends on local rules, the public purpose and the specific agreement. No club has an automatic entitlement to these funds. [12]
What matters, then, are the terms of cooperation. Funding that covers the necessary costs, with clear rules and adequate notice, can make planning easier. Even a regularly available call for proposals, however, leaves uncertainty about the outcome of a particular application.
This is visible in the KLUB Programme for 2026–2028. The multi-year period refers to the design of the programme and the agreement with the operator, with the amount of funding set annually. The mere presence of three years in the name does not guarantee an individual club the same amount throughout the period. [9]
Other documents show that support functions can be funded. The KLUB PRO catalogue includes, among other things, the upkeep of training facilities and selected club running costs, on the programme's terms and within its limits. PROO 1a combines mission activities with institutional development of the organisation. It is not, however, an unlimited safety fund: the PROO 2026 rules exclude funding reserves to cover past and future losses or liabilities. [10–11]
These differences matter more than the shared label "grant". When assessing an offer, a club should read the cost catalogue, the delivery conditions and the timeline, and then compare them with its own needs. The programmes described serve here as examples of funding design, not as a list of currently open calls.
Diversification helps if it spreads real risk
In sports club funding, the advice to combine grants, membership fees, session fees, sponsorship and donations comes naturally. Each source can have its role. Their number, however, does not tell us whether the club has become more resilient.
Pamela Wicker, Neil Longley and Christoph Breuer studied revenue volatility in German clubs. The financial analysis covered 240 organisations with data for 2004, 2006 and 2008. Greater diversification was associated mainly with lower volatility specific to an individual club; it offered weaker protection against the part of volatility linked to the economic situation. A higher share of membership fees was associated with lower volatility, and a larger share of subsidies with higher volatility. These are associations in a historical sample, not proof of the effects of a specific change in funding policy. [1]
A cautious principle can be drawn from these findings: sources should also be compared by the causes that might weaken them. Several sponsors from one industry may cut spending at a similar moment. Income from entries and sales at a tournament may depend on the same event. This is an analysis of possible risk, not a claim about how often such situations occur in Poland.
Diversification also carries a servicing cost. A new sponsorship deal may require preparing an event, delivering promotional benefits and reporting. The value of the payment has to be set against the additional expenses and the work needed to meet the obligations. If the club lacks the resources for this, the amount raised may overstate the benefit.
There is no basis for using the cited study to set an optimal share of grants or fees for all clubs. An organisation running open sessions for people on limited incomes may need a different funding structure from a club offering expensive commercial coaching. Stability should be assessed together with the purpose of the activity.
Three cases show three different problems
KS Warta Poznań and the funding of individual sections
The 2024 report of the multi-sport KS Warta Poznań shows why a general description of a club's budget may be insufficient. In the field hockey section, the city grant was named as the main source of funding for the senior team, and other public funds were also described for the youth teams. The tennis section, by contrast, reported using its own fees, donations and volunteer work to prepare the courts. This is the multi-sport club, not the Warta Poznań football company. [6]
The document does not prove that the organisation is in financial difficulty. It shows different operating conditions within one club. The management conclusion is that continuity should also be assessed at section level: establish what costs each section has, who covers them and which funds can be used jointly. Diversified revenue across the whole organisation does not settle whether money can be moved freely between tasks.
Marlow Rowing Club and the difference between assets and cash
Marlow offers a second lesson. At the end of September 2024 the club's net assets stood at GBP 2,172,163. At the same time, cash at bank amounted to GBP 118,784, of which GBP 61,783 was attributed to restricted funds. A large part of the organisation's value was held in fixed assets. [7]
A club can therefore hold substantial assets and still need a precise plan for current payments. A building makes training possible, but its book value is not money ready to pay a coach. Unrestricted funds, too, must be set against the due dates of liabilities. Marlow's accounts are not grounds for declaring the club insolvent; they are used here to show the difference between financial categories.
Perth Gymnastics Club and the importance of regular fees
At the Scottish Perth Gymnastics Club, income for the year ended 31 March 2025 was GBP 361,024, of which GBP 314,066 came from fees. The surplus of income over expenditure was GBP 80,073, and cash at the end of the period GBP 221,418. The accounts showed no restricted funds. [8]
This is an example of an organisation in which a high share of fees coexisted in a given year with a surplus and a cash reserve. A single case does not prove, however, that such a model is available to every club or that the revenue structure alone explains its position. The document also reports a change in the accounting basis, so results should not be compared with the previous year without adjustment.
These cases do not form a ranking of models. They help read three different pieces of information: to whom funding was attributed, what resources sustain the activity and what part of the organisation's value can serve current payments. The British clubs' accounts underwent independent examination, which is not a full financial audit. Data from different countries are not used here for a simple comparison of club efficiency.
Access to sport also has a financial model
Regular fees can make planning easier, but the ability to charge them has limits. When a club raises its price, it should check not only the expected effect on revenue but also who will still be able to take part.
At Marlow, the board explicitly links its fees policy with accessibility and describes concession mechanisms. [7] For an organisation pursuing a social purpose this is part of the financial decision. If the price is to remain below the full cost of the service, it must be established from what source the difference will be covered. It may be public support used in line with its conditions, a donation, volunteer work or other club income. Each solution requires checking its durability and limitations.
Such reasoning brings order to the discussion about self-sufficiency. A club using public funding does not have to be badly managed. It may be consciously carrying out a task whose costs should not fall entirely on participants. Conversely, a high share of fees does not by itself say whether the organisation is achieving its intended accessibility goal.
For a local authority and a social sponsor this raises the question of the scope of the funded service. If support is meant to enable a particular group to take part, it is worth assessing the cost of serving that group and the conditions for continuation. The number of participants during the project does not yet answer whether they will be able to train next season.
Freedom in using funds changes the scope of decisions
The purpose attached to money affects which problems the board can solve. Funds for specific equipment may be needed, but they will not replace a coordinator's salary if the agreement does not allow such use. Funding that permits several types of costs to be covered, on the other hand, makes it possible to adjust spending to the club's situation.
Pamala Wiepking and Arjen de Wit interviewed representatives of 20 organisations receiving support from two Dutch lottery funds. Respondents described the importance of multi-year, less restricted funding for, among other things, planning, hiring and responding to change. The authors built a conceptual model and hypotheses requiring further testing. The study concerned the experiences of selected beneficiaries, so it does not prove a universal advantage of such funding. [5]
It does, however, aptly name a mechanism worth studying in sport: predictability and flexibility can widen the time horizon and scope of the board's decisions. A club can consider what it needs in the coming seasons instead of fitting all its activities to the nearest call for proposals. This is an interpretation, not a measured effect for Polish clubs.
Freedom requires accountability. A funder may reasonably expect a clear purpose, control of spending and assessment of results. It is important that this assessment also covers the club's capacity to deliver its activity reliably. Otherwise, a large number of undertakings may be rewarded while the conditions for sustaining them are overlooked. This is a risk arising from the design of indicators, not an accusation against every programme.
An agreement shares risk between organisations and people
It is now worth combining three elements: the full cost of operating, the purpose of the money and the duration of the commitment. Together they raise the question of how responsibility is shared. If a funder commits to support for one year and the club takes on costs for two years, the later period needs separate cover. Proper accounting for the first year will not secure it on its own.
Risk arises particularly when a club makes a decision that is hard to reverse before it knows the terms of further funding. It may be a longer lease, a position with a notice period or an investment with running costs. Not every such decision is a mistake. What matters is that its terms, source of cover and exit option are consciously adopted by the board.
Otherwise the gap may be covered outside the original plan: by higher payments from participants, additional volunteer work or reduced training. From the funder's perspective, the project may have achieved all its outcomes. From the organisation's perspective, its further cost is borne by other people. This is a possible mechanism described by Ascendia, not a finding about the scale of such practices in Polish sport.
This has an important consequence for professionalisation. A club's development should increase its capacity to choose consciously what it will sustain, on what terms and with whose money. Expanding activity that depends solely on another undecided call for proposals may limit that freedom. When assessing new funding, it is therefore worth also considering the range of decisions the board will be able to make after it ends.
How to check the continuity gap before accepting money
Ascendia proposes an assessment in five questions. It is a way of structuring a decision, not a scientifically validated solvency test. It can be carried out on the basis of agreements, a cost plan and a payment schedule.
What does the funding actually cover? The club should set the eligible expenses against the full scope of work needed to deliver the task. Shared costs require a justified allocation so that they are neither omitted nor counted twice. Unpaid resources are worth describing separately, together with the possibility of replacing them.
When will the money be available? The annual plan should be broken down by month. A grant paid later than expenses are incurred requires bridging finance that complies with the agreement. Funds awarded should be separated from funds paid out, and expected support from the funder's commitment.
What will remain after the agreement ends? For every new position, facility or group, the further costs, the period of commitment and the source of cover must be identified. If continuation depends on another call for proposals, there should also be a workable option without that grant.
Which income streams could weaken at the same time? The board should run a scenario in which the largest payment is delayed and related sources fall together. The aim is to test the sensitivity of the plan without giving the scenario a false statistical certainty.
How will the change affect accessibility and people? The outcome of the assessment should cover not only the missing amount but also its consequences: higher fees, a smaller group, changes to a coach's work or more volunteer duties. This way, risk does not disappear from the budget simply because it has been shifted onto participants or staff.
Let us show this with an entirely hypothetical example. All amounts below are assumptions of the illustration, not data from a real club. For clarity, we compare annual income and expenditure, ignoring differences between the timing of payment and accounting recognition.
A club has PLN 240k in income and the same amount in expenditure on its current activity. It receives PLN 100k for an additional project whose expenditure is also PLN 100k. The project is fully funded. The board, however, decides to take on commitments that, after the project ends, will increase annual expenditure by PLN 20k. We assume no new income to cover them.
The project balanced during implementation. The problem stems from adopting commitments to continue without securing further funding. The board can resolve it by finding funds, changing the scope of activity or negotiating different terms. Each option should have a responsible person and a deadline before the commitment becomes hard to change.
In practice, a shared sheet is enough to start: source of funding, cost and period of commitment, permitted use, month of payment, approach to continuation and responsible person. Once it is filled in, the club should know the lowest projected balance of available funds and the amount of commitments left without cover.
A reserve should match a specific risk
Assessing continuity also requires an answer to the question of how the club will finance an unplanned break in income. Checking the bank balance is not enough. The money may be restricted or needed for commitments already made.
For local government grants, the Polish Public Finance Act sets out rules on using and returning funds that are unused, received unduly or used contrary to their purpose. The unspent part of a targeted grant cannot be treated as a free reserve for future years. [13]
A helpful point of reference is the guidance of the Charity Commission for England and Wales. It distinguishes freely available reserves from restricted funds and from fixed assets used for the charity's activities. It does not set a single appropriate level of reserves for all organisations. This is guidance from a British regulator, not a Polish statutory requirement. [14]
In a club, the size of the necessary safeguard should follow from the income calendar, contract notice periods, the costs required to sustain training and a scenario for scaling activity down. The board must also define when and for what it may use these funds. A reserve can help survive a delay. Using it regularly to cover a permanent gap between costs and income, however, calls for a change to the financial plan.
The aim is not to accumulate as much money as possible. Holding back available funds excessively also needs to be justified to participants and funders. The club should be able to explain what risk it is safeguarding against and how it combines security with carrying out its mission.
What managers and funders should change
For the board, the most important change is to consider new income together with the commitments it makes possible. A decision about a grant, a sponsor or expanding sessions should cover the year of delivery and the period after support ends. Responsibility for continuing the activity then has a specific amount, deadline and person.
For coaches and staff, this means clearer terms of cooperation. The team should know which duties are funded, which are temporary and what continuation depends on. If development relies on volunteer work, it is worth agreeing its scope and cover arrangements rather than assuming the unlimited availability of the same people. The organisational importance of handing over such responsibility is developed in Ascendia's analysis of knowledge management in a sports club.
For local authorities, federations and grant-makers, this points to the need to assess the cost of sustaining the capabilities they fund. Earlier information about timelines, allowing justified support costs where the rules permit, and requiring a realistic continuation plan may all be useful. Support accounted for annually can still take a longer perspective into account. A declaration of continuation should not, however, be equated with a guarantee of future funding.
For sponsors and private funders, this way of thinking makes it possible to assess what will remain after the partnership ends: a one-off event, equipment, skills or a permanently available service. Each of these outcomes can be valuable if its cost and further responsibility are transparent.
The analysis presented has limitations. The studies concern different countries, periods and types of organisation; some cover the whole nonprofit sector. The club cases illustrate mechanisms but do not represent all clubs. What is missing is a current, representative panel of Polish organisations that would allow the scale of the continuity gap and the effects of individual funding conditions to be measured. The proposed model is therefore a decision framework and a starting point for further research.
The most important question for a club nevertheless remains concrete. When it secures new funds, it should be able to say not only what they will enable it to launch, but also the conditions for sustaining what it wants to continue. An organisation's sustainability begins where a development plan is matched by responsibility for its further cost.
Sources
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- [2] Kościółek, S. (2017). Rola dotacji przedmiotowej w funkcjonowaniu polskich klubów sportowych o statusie organizacji pożytku publicznego [The role of subject grants in the functioning of Polish sports clubs with public benefit status]. Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska, Sectio H, Oeconomia, 51(4), 153–162. DOI: 10.17951/h.2017.51.4.153. Full text (in Polish).
- [3] Lecy, J. D., Searing, E. A. M. (2015). Anatomy of the Nonprofit Starvation Cycle: An Analysis of Falling Overhead Ratios in the Nonprofit Sector. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 44(3), 539–563. DOI: 10.1177/0899764014527175. Full text on the author's website.
- [4] Thornton, J., Lecy, J. (2023). Net impact of government funding on nonprofit fiscal health: burden or benefit? Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 33(3), 561–584. DOI: 10.1002/nml.21533. Full text on a co-author's website.
- [5] Wiepking, P., de Wit, A. (2024). Unrestricted funding and nonprofit capacities: Developing a conceptual model. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 34(4), 801–824. DOI and full text: 10.1002/nml.21592.
- [6] KS Warta Poznań. Sprawozdanie z działalności za 2024 rok [Activity report for 2024] (in Polish), sections on field hockey and tennis. Full text read from the indexed version of the official document; availability of the file on the club's server was unstable during verification.
- [7] Marlow Rowing Club. Annual Report and Unaudited Financial Statements for the Year Ended 30 September 2024, trustees' report, balance sheet and notes 2 and 5.
- [8] Perth Gymnastics Club SCIO. Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2025, pp. 5–9; official OSCR register, SC043869.
- [9] Ministry of Sport and Tourism (2026). Program KLUB na lata 2026–2028 [KLUB Programme 2026–2028] (in Polish), budget and scope of the operator's tasks.
- [10] Ministry of Sport and Tourism (2026). KLUB PRO, cost catalogue, annex no. 1; programme document (in Polish).
- [11] National Freedom Institute, CRSO (2026). Regulamin konkursu PROO 2026 [PROO 2026 call rules] (in Polish), priority 1a and ineligible costs, pp. 10–11 and 22.
- [12] Act of 25 June 2010 on Sport (in Polish), Articles 27–28; consolidated text Journal of Laws 2026 item 95, with amendments included in the Chancellery of the Sejm consolidated text of 12 May 2026.
- [13] Act of 27 August 2009 on Public Finance (in Polish), Articles 250–253; consolidated text Journal of Laws 2025 item 1483, with amendments included in the Chancellery of the Sejm consolidated text of 3 August 2026.
- [14] Charity Commission for England and Wales. Charity reserves: building resilience, CC19, sections 3.1 and 3.4. Used as a management point of reference, not as a source of Polish law.