Arsenal in the Community

The Arsenal Foundation

Arsenal’s desire to help people doesn’t end with our Community department. There is also our independent charity, The Arsenal Foundation.

In 1992 Arsenal set up a charity called The Arsenal Charitable Trust and adopted a “charity of the season” each year, making a commitment to raise money (around £250,000- £300,000) for the selected charity. These have included Great Ormond Street Hospital, Centrepoint, Teenager Cancer Trust and The Willow Foundation. 

Arsenal’s tradition of giving expanded and in May 2012 The Arsenal Foundation was launched as a registered charity and a grant-giving organisation with the mission to help young people fulfil their potential. Save the Children, the Willow Foundation and Islington Giving are all official partners of the Foundation, with a great number of other projects also benefitting from grants and support. 

Save the Children is the global charity partner, and we have combined our experience in running community programmes in north London with Save the Children’s expertise in a humanitarian context to co-design and co-deliver an innovative project called Coaching for Life. This programme, which was launched in 2018, aims to impact the physical, emotional and mental wellbeing of children who have been affected by conflict.

Coaching for Life runs in Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, which is home to almost 80,000 Syrian refugees, half of whom are children. Independent research has proven that a sense of belonging, safe spaces and the presence of trusted adults have all been contributing factors in impacting the mental health of participants, in encouraging a 50/50 gender split in coaches and participants and in raising participants’ self-confidence and hope for the future.

Locally, The Arsenal Foundation combines funding with Islington Giving, which is a grant-giving charity in Arsenal’s host borough, Islington, and also awards grants from a small grants scheme called the Gunners Fund to local initiatives and community groups. 

You can find out more here