Strategic approach
The Club recognises its central role in the local community and seeks to continue to build on its reputation as a positive social force. Hearts has established the Big Hearts Community Trust to be its main vehicle for investing in local community organisations. As well as the local community, the Club also aims to achieve positive national outcomes, ensuring that Scotland is an attractive place to do business, children have the best start in life and lead full and healthy lifestyles, and Scotland realises its full economic potential with more and better employment opportunities for young people.
By making the Club a better company, Hearts believes that it can widen its customer base and attract new supporters and corporate sponsors, thereby increasing revenue potential. To support and underpin this, the Club has developed three key themes which it has built its community investment strategy around:
- Bigger Hearts – using employees to put something back into the community and preserve the Club’s heritage as a core member of the local community
- Better grassroots – increasing young people’s participation in sport
- Stronger communities – Managing the community footprint of the Cub
Using partnerships to deliver community benefit
Hearts has developed a number of partnerships, both local and national, to support the delivery of its community investment programmes:
- Working in partnership with AEGON, the life assurance and pension company and City of Edinburgh Council, Hearts has delivered breakfast clubs in schools across Edinburgh where a need is identified. Breakfast clubs, which have benefitted 720 school children over three years, provide beneficiaries with a healthy start to their day. Feedback from schools also indicates that children attending breakfast clubs demonstrate improved attendance and concentration rates. At the same time, the breakfast clubs have enabled Hearts to leverage additional support from other businesses, both in the form of commitments to support future breakfast clubs and in terms of pro bono support for the Big Hearts Trust.
- Hearts has developed a further relationship with City of Edinburgh Council and a number of local community organisations such as Spartans Community Football Academy to deliver an adult literacy programme. 107 individuals improved their confidence levels and communication skills through attending the programme. The Club was also able to leverage funding from Football Aid and the HBOS Foundation in support of the programme. This has provided £20,000 worth of positive PR for the Club across the lifetime of the programme, developing the positive perception of Hearts in the community.
- As a member of the Scottish Premier League Future Jobs Fund, Hearts has developed a learning facility at the Club’s home ground, Tynecastle Stadium. The Centre has been used to deliver employment programmes and employability skills courses for young people aged between 16-24. 83 young people in the last year have found jobs through this initiative, far exceeding the Club’s target of 20 jobs per annum. Jobs were created across the entire Lothian area and included golf clubs, local councils and in schools. Hearts also took on some of the participants into jobs available at the stadium.
For more information on Heart of Midlothian Football Club’s approach to community investment, please visit http://www.bighearts.org.uk/
