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Grass-Roots
Rugby For everyone

AWards Trust

making an impact 2025

March 2025

At GREAT, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to play and enjoy the game of rugby. We are absolutely thrilled to celebrate the incredible grassroots clubs and community trusts making a massive difference across Scotland.
Thanks to our round of small grants in March 2025, these five fantastic projects are breaking down barriers, upgrading vital facilities and taking the sport to the next level.
Check out how these local legends are using their funding to change lives:
Pictured: Representatives of Hawick Youth Rugby proudly receiving their cheque from GREAT Trustee, Rob Moffat.
Hawick Youth Rugby
The Mission: Keeping the game accessible for every young player.
The Challenge: Operating in an area high on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, fundraising and sponsorship opportunities are naturally limited.
How the Grant Helps: As a standalone age-grade club managing U15, U16, and U18 teams, Hawick relies entirely on its own steam. To ensure no player misses out, they’ve established a vital hardship fund to help families cover kit and costs. This grant takes the pressure off their day-to-day operating expenses so they can focus on what they do best: building a fun, welcoming team environment.
Pictured: Eric Paxton, President of Kelso RFC, receives their cheque from GREAT Trustee, Roger Baird.
Kelso RFC
The Mission: Lighting up the future of community rugby.
The Challenge: The floodlights at Croft Park haven’t seen an upgrade in around 40 years, leaving them inadequate for the massive influx of weekly training sessions.
How the Grant Helps: A £2,500 grant is going straight toward essential lighting upgrades at Croft Park! This will directly benefit a huge variety of squads training throughout the week, including S1/S2 boys, U15 boys, U12 to U18 girls’ squads, the Kelso Harlequins (U18 boys), and the Ladies’ team. Portable floodlights will make a massive, positive impact on delivering safe evening rugby to the community.
Pictured: SCRT representatives receive their cheque from GREAT Patron Gregor Townsend MBE and GREAT Trustee Willie Allan MBE at Murrayfield, joined by Scotland Internationals Zander and Matt Fagerson.
Pictured: SCRT representatives receive their cheque from GREAT Patron Gregor Townsend MBE and GREAT Trustee Willie Allan MBE at Murrayfield, joined by Scotland Internationals Zander and Matt Fagerson.
Strathmore Community Rugby Trust
The Mission: “Developing people through Rugby”.
The Challenge: Ensuring children with additional needs have consistent, structured, and expertly supported physical activity opportunities.
How the Grant Helps: Strathmore has been running highly successful, life-changing Autism-Friendly Rugby sessions for years. Starting from age five, these sessions boost the long-term physical and mental health of participants. The trust will use the funding to keep upskilling coaches to perfectly support the specific needs of the players, while using their “UpShot” monitoring system to track the amazing qualitative and quantitative benefits to local families.
Pictured: Strathendrick RFC representatives presented with their cheque by GREAT Patron Gregor Townsend MBE and GREAT Trustee Willie Allan MBE at Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium.
Strathendrick RFC
The Mission: Driving the rapid growth of girls’ and women’s rugby.
The Challenge: Over the last 12 years, Strathendrick has exploded from 3 teams to 19! Their fastest-growing sector is female rugby, meaning teams like the U16s often must travel incredibly long distances for competitive matches.
How the Grant Helps: This funding directly supports the club’s strategic objective to advance and enable female rugby. Strathendrick has gone from having no female teams to boasting 4 girls’ squads and 2 women’s squads (both contact and touch). This grant helps ease the logistical strain of their brilliant expansion.
Pictured: Smiling Faces and full energy action shots of the young players and coaches thriving in a safe, well-lit, and high-energy environment.
Waysiders / Drumpellier RFC
The Mission: Offering rugby for everyone, from toddlers to adults.
The Challenge: Operating in a predominantly football-focused area, parts of the club’s footprint sit unusable in the winter months due to a lack of pitch lighting.
How the Grant Helps: Funding portable training floodlights will completely unlock the club’s available space. Even better? By illuminating their own grounds, WDRFC saves money previously spent renting local authority facilities. They are redirecting these savings straight back into funding coaching hours for local schools—making regular, healthy exercise affordable and accessible for a whole new generation.

Awards

Small Funds Grant

Recipients of our Small Funds Grant can recieve an award of up to £2,500. See our award criteria below to determine if your project or  organisation is a good fit for this award.

This application has closed.

Award Criteria

Below you will find our Award Criteria which outlines what project we fund. If you still have questions about our awards, you can learn more on our Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page.