The Arsenal Foundation Story

Arsenal Football Club was born out of community when a group of munitions workers came together in 1886 to form a football team to escape the monotony of factory life.

Even in its earliest days Arsenal wanted to serve its community – always aware of the crowd, the attention it drew and how this could be used to positive effect.

Arsenal’s early matchday programme ‘cards’ were sold for a penny to raise money for Homes for Working Boys in Beresford Street, Woolwich, when the Club was located in its original home in south London. Just before the Club’s relocation to north London, in April 1912, Woolwich Arsenal organised a special match at which fans of the Club raised over £100 for the Titanic Disaster Fund.

Community remained at the beating heart of Arsenal Football Club over the years, with a regular ‘Boxers v Jockeys’ Football Match at Highbury in the 1950s in support of The Sportsman’s Aid Society, as well as visits by first-team players to the Holloway Hospital at Christmas to spread some festive cheer for young patients – a tradition which remains to this day.

With this ever growing demand and awareness that the Club could reach people in a way nobody else could, Arsenal in the Community was born to respond to social unrest in the 1980s. The department’s first education and training project, Action Sport, began in the mid-1980s and over the past quarter of a century and more, Arsenal has extended its educational offering to include numeracy, literacy and language programmes, as well as a number of social inclusion projects that often lead to accredited qualifications.

Over the years, society and issues may have changed, but Arsenal in the Community has been the constant – a continued and trusted presence for many young people in its local community.

To celebrate the Club’s 125th anniversary, The Arsenal Foundation was launched to help engage more young people than ever before and continually move forward in growing its community work. A fundraising and grant-making organization, The Arsenal Foundation will help to grow the reach and effect of the programmes the Club supports to help an increasing number of young people across the globe fulfil their potential and help their communities thrive. The Foundation will work hard to raise funds for and materially raise the profile of a powerful combination of charity partner projects including those of Save the Children and other key charity partners.

Since 2003, Arsenal has helped a number of charities such as Teenage Cancer Trust, TreeHouse and Centrepoint, all of which supported education projects to help young people fulfil their potential in challenging times.

With the help of The Arsenal Foundation, the Club will ensure that this long legacy of helping young people to become the best they can be continues to go from strength to strength.