Laureus Sport for Good Germany & Austria is a non-profit foundation which leverages the power of sport to support young people in their personal development. Laureus conveys values such as team spirit, respect, discipline and fair play – helping children and adolescents in their daily lives, in school, and in their careers. They learn to believe in themselves, to cope with setbacks, and to take responsibility for their own lives. Whether street football, skateboarding, therapeutic horse riding, basketball or boxing: the social sport projects not only motivate children and young adults to live an active life, but also give them a strong foothold.

As of today, Laureus’ German and Austrian projects have helped over 50,000 disadvantaged children and adolescents. To reach even more young people, the organization’s chairman would like to scale up the most promising projects. This requires additional sources of funding, where public grants have been identified as especially promising. It was time to leverage Oliver Wyman’s expertise in funding strategies.

Project Scope

Together, Oliver Wyman and Laureus developed an actionable funding strategy focused on public grants. First, we conducted an internal analysis to understand the funding criteria and main topics as well as the foundation’s specific financial needs. We then analysed the market for public grants on EU, national, county, and city level in Germany and Austria to understand the potential for Laureus projects. In addition, we analysed further interesting sources of funding such as corporate funding, media funds as well as lotteries. Finally, we built a concrete implementation plan for the next 24 months including ready-made applications as well as a clear path to engage with high-level policy makers and corporates to secure long-term funding sustainability.

Impact

The new strategy for financing through public grants will allow Laureus to scale up existing projects and fund new projects to support even more children and adolescents. Oliver Wyman provided Laureus with several tools for the successful implementation of this strategy, such as tailor-made applications to the most promising public funding programs and an effective method to approach potential policy makers to promote the Laureus “movement”. Moreover, we developed a prioritized list of companies as well as a company pitch to address them. All measures were added to an implementation plan and agreed on upon the project’s completion.