IAAF Olympic Athletics Dividend is rolled out to IAAF Member Federations

IAAF President Sebastian Coe has today announced to IAAF Member Federations full details concerning the ‘IAAF Olympic Athletics Dividend’ which offers $25,000 every year to each national federation to assist their development.

Athletics’ premier position in the Olympic movement secures the IAAF the largest proportion of the revenues which the International Olympic Committee distributes to the international federations who govern the 28 sports within the summer Olympic Games.

"How the IAAF invests the quadrennial fee received from the IOC to better serve its member federations was one of the major pillars of my election manifesto to become IAAF President," confirmed Seb Coe.

"This fund will be financed on a total of about $22 million over a four-year period which represents approximately half of the dividend received by the IAAF from the IOC.

"The fund, which we are calling the ‘IAAF Olympic Athletics Dividend’, has been put in place to assist Member Federations in designing and implementing structured and sustainable projects to develop athletics in their countries.

"The programme offers Member Federations assistance to develop and improve athletics where it matters most, with the full support of the IAAF.

"The IAAF must engage and work together with its members, listen to their needs and implement tailored solutions at a local and regional level. Only by doing that will we secure an exciting, prosperous future for athletics," concluded Seb Coe.

Structure and administration

The budget of the ‘IAAF Olympic Athletics Dividend’ – which is in addition to all existing IAAF development grants – will be distributed on an equal share basis.

The idea of this dividend is to help fund projects such as those involving construction, refurbishment or maintenance of facilities; purchase or hire of equipment; preparation and training of athletes, coaches and team officials including travel support; staging of national and regional competitions; and the delivery of development and talent identification programmes in schools and clubs.

The IAAF will carefully approve the projects/programmes submitted by the Member Federations in a transparent and thorough process in which the value and quality will be assessed.

The Member Federations in turn will provide dedicated human, technical, organisational and financial support to the project and report regularly to the IAAF on progress.

Developing a successful future for the sport of athletics was always going to be a shared responsibility, a collaborative process.

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