Stunning sport, lovely enterprise: Why this, why us, and why now?

We’re at all times in search of methods to assist encourage our small enterprise group, inspire the subsequent technology of small enterprise house owners and construct our model relevance globally. Soccer is the preferred and watched sport on the planet and girls’s soccer is ascending at a fast price in recognition. The chance to assist gasoline and contribute to this development is huge.

In April 2022 we kicked off a brand new international partnership as a FIFA Ladies’s Soccer Accomplice and since then we’ve signed a spread of different nationwide and native girls’s soccer partnerships world wide. 

For Xero, that is excess of only a model affiliation. We’re very clear on the chance to encourage, to face for one thing and make a distinction. 

Whereas the ladies’s sport is gaining in recognition, commercially there’s nonetheless some method to go. Soccer golf equipment are most frequently not-for-profit social enterprises and important for constructing the pipeline of expertise within the girls’s sport. Additionally they play an vital social and financial function in communities proper the world over. 

We all know Xero can assist drive business success in girls’s soccer main to higher outcomes for girls globally. Whether or not it’s by offering entry to academic sources for monetary administration, or serving to golf equipment join with accountants and bookkeepers. 

Our international partnership with FIFA Ladies’s Soccer

Xero was the second firm to change into a FIFA Ladies’s Soccer Accomplice beneath FIFA’s new business construction which got here into impact in 2023. We made a thought of determination to associate on the prime degree of the ladies’s sport as a result of we consider it’s a possibility the place we might each attain our targets and make a distinction. 

As a part of our partnership we’re supporting two FIFA girls’s soccer improvement programmes: Capability Constructing for Directors – utilizing Xero’s experience and expertise to assist girls’s soccer improvement – and Coach Schooling Scholarships – to create simpler pathways for girls to achieve teaching {qualifications}. 

Whereas recognising a worldwide platform like FIFA Ladies’s Soccer is a improbable alternative, we at all times knew we needed to take our assist for girls’s soccer additional, and do extra in international locations the place we’ve a presence and vital buyer base. 

Teaming up with Lewes F.C. (aka Equality F.C.) within the UK

In July 2022, we signed a multi-year partnership with Lewes F.C., the world’s first gender equal membership, which splits its enjoying finances and sources equally between the boys’s and girls’s first groups. As a small enterprise in its personal proper, Lewes’ personal aspiration for monetary sustainability we hope will change into a mannequin for different small soccer golf equipment to assist develop the sport and appeal to extra ladies into the game. We work collectively on a spread of initiatives to allow golf equipment throughout England to enhance monetary viability, and work with native small enterprise and accounting and bookkeeping communities. 

Our nationwide partnership with The FA in England

We take big delight in partnering with the Lionesses, and their triumph within the 2022 Euros was a watershed second for the ladies’s sport in England. However there’s a protracted method to go, with nearly half (47%) of soccer golf equipment in England stating that they might profit from assist with the monetary administration of their membership. 

By our partnerships with the Lionesses and England Soccer we work with The FA Grassroots Workforce, County Soccer Associations, and the FA Membership Consultants to supply entry to a complete vary of academic sources for monetary administration. We additionally present a platform for grassroots golf equipment to search out and join with native accountants and bookkeepers. 

Supporting grassroots with New Zealand Soccer

Our 5 yr partnership with New Zealand Soccer, which we introduced on the finish of 2022, will assist Kiwis stability higher numbers off the sector via a membership assist programme and create a legacy from the thrill of the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup 2023. The membership assist programme will set the benchmark for membership requirements nationwide, specializing in components corresponding to administration, management, financing, participant improvement, and group engagement. 

Xero’s Higher Numbers program

Along with every of our partnerships Xero supplies soccer golf equipment with sources and guides straight to assist them handle their books in addition to mobilising our group of accounting and bookkeeping companions with recommendation to assist them assist their native golf equipment. We name this our Higher Numbers Program. 

We’re happy with what we’ve achieved up to now, and had been honoured to be certainly one of 29 manufacturers chosen by a panel of specialists to be included on the Laureus Sport For Good Index 2022 for the work we’re doing to make a optimistic influence via girls’s soccer. 

With solely 50 days to go, roll on 20 July and the kick off of the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup 2023!