adidas Foundation welcomes 34 partner organizations to the United by Sport Program
adidas Foundation welcomes 34 partner organizations to the United by Sport Program
First United by Sport Partners
We are happy and proud to announce the first 34 partner organizations of our United by Sport program. After an intensive and comprehensive selection process, 17 organizations were selected to receive funding from the adidas Foundation for General Support while an additional 17 organizations will receive Project Specific funding. The United by Sport partners will run programs in 31 countries spread all over the globe, from Australia to Colombia and from Ukraine to South Africa. In total, the grant volume of all partnerships results in € 11.05 million in funds to be disbursed over a period of three years (2025-2027).
About United by Sport
United By Sport strives to leverage the transformational power of sport to promote equality and fight hate and discrimination in all its forms, including on the basis of religion or belief, racial or ethnic origin, gender, sex, ability, age, sexual orientation and more. In the first Request for Proposals for the United by Sport program, two types of support were made available to organizations that fight such hate and discrimination through sport or in the sport sector. Organizations were able to apply under these two different categories:
- Project Specific support: funding for new projects ranging from a minimum amount of 150,000 EUR to a maximum amount of 700,000 EUR.
- General Support: Funding for general operations of organizations whose regular programming is fully aligned with the United by Sports criteria up to 50,000 EUR per year for a maximum of three years (minimum amount 10,000 EUR, maximum amount 150,000 EUR).
RFP and selection process
Between March 18th to May 31st, 2024, applications for the first United by Sport Request for Proposals were accepted. In total, 754 applications were submitted from organizations in 107 countries, of which 347 were in the general support category and 407 in the project-specific category.
Of the 754 applications submitted, only 366 passed the eligibility criteria that were required for a proposal to be considered. We deeply respect and appreciate the time and effort that all applicants put into their proposals and have identified a variety of approaches we would take to ensure an even higher success rate in any future processes we may run.
In a thorough selection process that took us from July to November 2024, we selected proposals based on the United by Sport RFP guidelines that had been posted on our website prior to the start of the application phase. Applications that passed the eligibility assessment went through two rounds of evaluations by internal adidas Foundation staff and independent external evaluators. Those with the highest scores were introduced to an evaluation committee consisting of the adidas Foundation leadership team that selected the final runner ups who needed to pass our due diligence process before signing grant agreements. Choosing 34 partners meant a success rate of 9 % for the applying organizations (removing the organization failing eligibility criteria).
Since the selection process concluded, we have been onboarding our new partners to the program and aligning with them as they kick off their work. Please note that there are currently no plans for another Request for Proposals.
We happily welcome our first United by Sport partners and are looking forward to the collaboration and learning.