As we near the end of our Reset the Stall crowdfunder campaign we want to say a special thank you to our new corporate sponsors and partners.  

HappyPorch provide digital strategy and custom software development for the circular economy.  HappyPorch founder, Barry O’Kane, volunteered for UK Ultimate for years, including a stint as chairperson.  After starting playing in 1994, he played for various clubs including Sneeeky’s, Catch 22, and Black Eagles as well as competing for GB on many occasions.

Thank you HappyPorch!

We published a Return-to-Play FAQs document for University clubs earlier this week.  The document includes questions about training, competitions, communications and other places to get more information.

Looking for ideas about what to do about training?

• Flik have compiled a helpful page with links to lots of covid compliant drills. 
• Felix has also created this page with some other ideas.
• This UKU site was set up to help organise training sessions for younger children, but actually quite a few of the ideas could be adapted for covid-friendly training sessions.
  

We have signed up as a non-profit good cause with Benevity, an organisation that works with many large corporations around the world to help them support causes that matter to their employees.  In some cases, employers match donations that their employees makes to a good cause.  We cannot access the full list of companies that work with Benevity, so you would need to check for your own circumstances, but if this scheme is available to you, and you are able to help - we would be really grateful.  Please get in touch if you need additional information, and thanks to Nathan Trickey for the suggestion.

Thanks again to everyone who has been able to support our Reset the Stall fundraising campaign.  Our goal is to put UKU finances back to where they were at the start of 2020 and we continue to climb towards our stretch target of £30k.  Less than two weeks to go! 

If you are able to help support the campaign with a donation, or perhaps by sharing the links, that would be amazing.  Thank you.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/uku-reset-the-stall

https://blog.ukultimate.com/

To help us monitor the ongoing Return-to-Play, we have created a Covid-19 Incident report online form.   Our aim is to:

1. Gather data on how often clubs are affected by a positive test result.
2. Improve our understanding of how Contact Tracing authorities approach the situation if the person testing positive had been at training.
3. Provide a mechanism for individuals to report concerns.

We hope in general that people completing the form will feel able to include their contact information, but it has been set up to allow anonymous submissions.

We thought it might be useful to provide a short update relating to some of the government announcements this week.

We are really excited to announce a new partnership with Greatest Bag, now the Official Bag of UK Ultimate.

Use the UK Ultimate members, friends & family discount code UKU10 for a 10% discount for you, and a contribution back to UK Ultimate from Greatest Bag.  Order directly from their website.  

They are also offering FREE SHIPPING to the UK for orders made on Sunday 11th October to mark our planned move to Return-to-Play Phase D. 

We are in discussions about a customised GB bag that we will make available to everyone and will publish more news later (see mockup below).  But please note that any customised bags won’t arrive until approximately late Spring 2021, so if you want one for Christmas you should order one of the regular bags.  Remember, the free shipping on Sunday 11th October!

In partnership with GoMembership, who provide the membership management system, we have been able to set up a Discounts & Rewards scheme offering thousands of discounts from over 270 online and high street retailers to our members.  

Enrolment is simple. As part of your membership renewal you have the option to join the scheme.  Simply tick the box underneath your membership selection to enrol and you’ll add the Rewards Scheme to your cart along with your membership.

As per our previous announcements, we confirm that as of Tues 15th Sept we are now in PHASE C of the Phased Return-to-Play.  

Please also see the announcement we published on Friday 11th September, which includes news about University competitions, return to play timetable, Indoor Ultimate, covid officer googlegroup forum, ideas for training sessions; and thanks to our UKU Medical adviser.

There are some relatively minor changes in the final version of Phase C Guidance compared to the draft that we published in August.

• Noted the Covid-officer training available from sportscotland.
• Added links to local travel advice.
• Additional line clarifying that active, normal defending is allowed (except on the thrower) but that players should make adjustments to avoid standing face-to-face within 1m of each other.