About Us
We are the Orienteering Foundation, a charity that promotes and supports orienteering, to bring all the benefits this amazing sport has to offer the people of the UK, and to ensure that our sport is here for the enjoyment of generations to come.
But the future of our sport is at risk. Tens of thousands of school children participate in grassroots schemes, but despite this good work we are seeing drop out rates of 70-80% in those crucial skill building years of ages 13-21, and only 10% of our orienteering community is aged between 20-35. These are the age bands when youthful participants can realise this is their sport for life. Why is this and what can we do about it? With your gifts the Orienteering Foundation funds junior programmes and investment in young elites, alleviating hardship and expanding junior opportunities to help to underpin that key age group so they stay with us into their early adult life and beyond.
And our volunteers are getting tired. In past years we have seen a 4% drop in the number of events run but a 7% increase in competitors. The demands outside events also continue to rise. We know people want to participate in our sport but we are in danger of burning out our volunteers. Anecdotal evidence from our club friends tells us this is an increasing problem. To protect the future of our sport, with your gifts the Orienteering Foundation invests in developing tools, techniques and training to alleviate workloads and make events simpler to run and reduce non-event volunteer effort.
Technology in the sport provides massive opportunity but we need to invest. We have all seen major changes over the past twenty years with the emergence of electronic punching and tracking systems, mapping software, and online analysis tools. Communication between clubs and their members, and with the wider public has been revolutionised through social media. The Orienteering Foundation uses your gifts to continue to exploit these opportunities and provide seed capital for innovation.
With your support the Orienteering Foundation works to tackle emerging issues. We currently fund junior programmes, invest in elites, support adult coaching opportunities, support those developing tools and techniques to alleviate volunteer workloads, and sponsor projects which look to exploit new technologies in our sport. With your help we can do more.
Other pages related to About Us