Gloucestershire County Cricket Club is to significantly grow its revenue streams and strengthen its community impact programmes in Bristol following a £400,000 investment from city-based impact investor BBRC.
The funding will enable the club to develop three new programmes, including expanding its existing work with refugees in the city, restoring its partnership with the BIMM music institute to support young talent and creating educational and employment opportunities for young people. 
The new programmes will complement the Bristol-based club’s already impressive range of initiatives aimed at delivering social impact, including weekly ‘walkers and talkers’ sessions run by former player Andy Brassington, as well as initiatives such as ‘walking cricket’ for older people.
It also hosts two mental health charities at its Seat Unique Stadium in Ashley Down and conducts educational visits to local schools, providing career guidance for people with barriers to employment through Bristol social enterprise The Restore Trust.
Gloucestershire interim CEO Neil Priscott described the investment from BBRC as a powerful demonstration of support for the club’s work, ethos and impact.
“The investment represents a great partnership between a locally embedded sports club and an impact-focused, locally embedded investor,” he added.
“BBRC has helped to provide a strategic commercial transformation, which supports the social impact at the heart of our club’s business plan.”
As the West of England’s first home-grown, place-based impact investor, BBRC (Bristol & Bath Regional Capital) is focused on unlocking funding and support for purposeful businesses, charities, housing and social enterprises.
It has an ambitious growth trajectory which aims to attract and deploy £1bn in investment over the next decade, having already brokered and invested £71m into the region over the past 10 years and developed a wide portfolio of net zero opportunities for investment.
BBRC investment director Jari Moate said: “Gloucestershire represents another organisation delivering significant social impact in our region, supporting and empowering young people and minority groups.
“As a result of this investment, the club will be able to reinstate previously successful programmes and expand its work to help even more people in the South West.”
Gloucestershire’s investment, from the BBRC-managed City Funds impact investment fund, will enable it to support:
- New educational endeavours that will pull together partnerships from across the local area to create ‘working world’ educational and employment opportunities for young people who are experiencing barriers to accessing the workplace.
- The Bristol Refugee project. In the last couple of years Gloucestershire has supported refugees in the city with open cricket sessions at the venue, providing food and space to pray. In 2023 it supported City of Bristol College to create a cricket club enabling young Afghan refugees at the college to play indoors through the winter. The new investment will expand this work with the college, offering students a 25-hour a year programme across the academic year on wider life skills, including budgeting, information about living in the UK and healthy eating, alongside the previously trialled cricket practise.
- With the new funding, Gloucestershire will be able to reinstate its partnership with the BIMM music institute, which previously ran in 2021 and 2022, and enables young local up-and-coming artists to play at the venue on matchdays to larger audiences than they would usually.
