Redmen TV attends launch of LFC Foundation’s latest social impact report
Liverpool Football Club has always been about more than what happens on the pitch, and that was the message at the heart of the launch of the LFC Foundation’s latest independent social impact report.
Dan attended the event on behalf of The Redmen TV to learn more about the work being carried out by the club’s official charity, the people benefiting from its programmes and the long-term ambition to create lasting change in communities across Liverpool and beyond.
The report provides an independently assessed picture of the Foundation’s impact, covering areas including health and wellbeing, education, employability, youth intervention and community engagement.
It also highlights the scale of the challenge facing communities across the Liverpool City Region, and the role the Foundation continues to play in helping people access opportunities, build confidence and improve their lives.
More than football
The latest published figures for the 2025/26 season show that the Foundation supported 239,421 people across the 2025/26 season, an increase of over 93,800 from the previous year, including over 50,000 extra participants helped internationally.
This vital support last season included delivering 14,546 sessions, 629,104 hours of contact with participants and £54.2m in healthcare savings, creating a social value of £96m, meaning for every £1 spent by they were able to put £10.53 back towards the people they support.
Awarding over £1m (£1,019,331) in grants to provide resources and support that allow communities to develop their strengths, build resilience and drive change. These grants included £200,000 invested in Community Hubs across the Liverpool City Region in partnership with the Steve Morgan Foundation, providing pathways to support, participation and opportunity for people of all ages and backgrounds.
The Red Neighbours programme was able to donate £413,541 in gifted items and experiences – including 5141 match tickets for local school children, and 1,000 hot meals per week delivered to the local community.
Making a lasting difference
The Foundation has also set out an ambitious long-term strategy focused on improving health, championing learning and enhancing employability, with the aim of supporting 500,000 people per season by 2030.
For Liverpool supporters, it is a reminder that the club’s influence extends far beyond Anfield and that its connection with the city carries a responsibility to support the people who make it what it is.
A responsibility shared by the Liverpool family
The report offers a valuable insight into how the Liverpool family can make a difference beyond football, using the club’s reach to help build healthier, more confident and more connected communities.
As the Foundation looks towards its next chapter, its challenge is not simply to reach more people, but to continue delivering meaningful change — ensuring that the values associated with Liverpool Football Club are felt by people across the city and far beyond it.
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Speaking at the launch, former Reds goalkeeper and LFC Foundation Community Ambassador Chris Kirkland…
On the report: “In a way, you wish things like this didn’t have to exist. We’re involved with certain charities, and you wish people didn’t have to suffer or find themselves in situations where they need help. But the world we live in is the way it is. What the LFC Foundation does — and everyone here today, too — makes a difference. This room is full of people who make a difference in our community and further afield, but mainly within our community. All the charities, all the people who help — without them, none of this happens. People wouldn’t get the help they need. So, yeah, the numbers are going up, unfortunately, because that reflects the level of need. That’s the world and the community we live in. But the great thing is that there are some amazing organisations and donors who give money to the Foundation and other charities, enabling them to help people when they really need it. We’re coming up to a really tough time of year, too. We know that as Christmas approaches, and then through January and February, the impact of this work becomes even more significant.”
On the range of programmes increasing: “Hugely. You’ve just mentioned that it’s gone up by 65%, with nearly 240,000 people supported over the last year. I first came down to a Kicks session, I think, seven years ago, and I thought that was the only thing the Foundation did. I’d lived up here for 25 years, and I was actually ashamed that I didn’t know more about its work. Sometimes, when you’re involved in football, you’re in a bubble. But when I got more involved and started coming down to the sessions, they explained that they did much more than that. I was also at a stage in my life when I needed something to do, so I came down and met Matt, Katie and Gemma. They told me they were running nearly 30 programmes at the time. I think there are even more now, covering just about everything you can imagine. The biggest thing for me now is that people come up to me in the street. They still talk about football, of course, but increasingly they tell me that a family member or someone they know has been on a Foundation programme and explain what it’s done for them. That’s what people are coming up to us to talk about now. We’ve seen the numbers, and we want to get that figure up to half a million by 2030. The only way we can do that is by collaborating more with charities and bringing in more donors and funding. You’ve seen the figures here today. We’ve given more than £1 million to local charities through community grants, enabling them to help more people. Through Red Neighbours, we’ve also donated more than £410,000 worth of gifts and experiences, giving people the chance to do things they might never otherwise get to do. But all of that comes from the willingness to make a difference, as well as the money generated by the club, the Foundation and fundraising events. The Legends game is one of the biggest, and the Gala Ball will be coming up next year. To help more people, you have to do more. But we have an unbelievable team behind us. People often see the same faces, but there are so many staff members and people working behind the scenes who never ask for recognition and probably won’t get the recognition they deserve. Everything those of us who are regularly seen doing work for the Foundation achieve is only possible because of those people behind the scenes.”
On what’s next: “The more programmes we can put on, the better. I don’t know how they can fit in any more, because they already do everything you can imagine! I’ve been lucky enough to visit lots of these programmes, including many of the school-based initiatives. There are still programmes I haven’t been to, of course, but every time I visit one, I come away thinking, “Jesus!” You come away feeling incredibly proud, but you also come away thinking, “Wow.” When you’re around the staff and the people involved, you realise that we all have a choice in life. It’s easy not to think about what other people are going through, but when you visit these sessions, I always think: what if that was my daughter? What if that was my wife, my husband or my children? It’s heartbreaking to think about. That’s why you do it. You don’t want people to suffer, so you try to help as much as you can. We all think about it, don’t we? Imagine if that were you, or someone you knew. It’s heartbreaking, but you have to put yourself in that position if you want to make an impact and help improve people’s lives.”
On being proud of his own involvement: “Yeah, I appreciate that. But you do it yourself. You go to everything and support everything. I was at Woodlands Hospice the other week, and you do incredible things. But it comes down to whether you want to do it. Do you want to help people? You don’t do these things for awards or pats on the back. You don’t do them thinking, “If I do this, I want to be on TV,” or anything like that. You do it because it’s the right thing to do. It is nice when people recognise the work. As I said, people still talk to me about football, but increasingly they’ll say, “I was on that programme he was involved in,” or, “I took part in that LFC Foundation programme he ran.” Again, it comes down to whether you want to do it. I don’t have to do this if I don’t want to. There are other things I could do. But the LFC Foundation is probably the biggest and best thing I do now. People always talk about my football career, but the work I do with the Foundation means a lot more to me than the football side of things. That’s not meant to offend anyone or any fans. But when you see the impact you can have, and the real need for that work, it’s something I’m incredibly proud of.”
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Dan also caught up with Foundation CEO Matt Parish…
On the report: “I’m super proud of what the team do, what all our partners do, and the support we get from our fans, club partners and sponsors. That’s what helps make the magic happen. When we first started doing this six years ago, I think the figure was 20-odd thousand. We’re now just shy of 240,000, as you probably heard me say earlier. We’ve actually reduced that figure slightly because we weren’t 100% certain that 20,000 or 30,000 people weren’t being double-counted. As I always say, if Matt and Dan go to 12 sessions, that’s still only Matt and Dan. It doesn’t mean there are 24 people. We’re quite robust about that. We’re proud of the growth. Some of it was under-reporting, but a lot of it is down to how we’ve grown as an organisation and raised more funds. Ultimately, if you run a charity the right way, which we do, raising more money means helping more people. That money should be used to deliver your mission, and ours is to tackle social inequality. We have an aspiration to support half a million people. What we’re really focused on, though, and hopefully this came across today, is not just looking at the big number, but thinking about the stories underneath it. Quite often, those stories will be like the one you heard from Equival today. He was involved in a Premier League programme, then moved on to an education programme with Fowler College, one of our partnerships. From there, he went into an apprenticeship. He also did an SMF Works programme, another partnership, before getting an interview. Now he’s an apprentice with us. That’s the full journey.”
On where the support goes: “I live on Merseyside, and lots of Liverpool fans are passionate about the sport. They’re from Liverpool, and they support Liverpool. But we’re a truly global football club. There aren’t many clubs with that sort of fanbase and support around the world. Why shouldn’t we be proud of that? And why shouldn’t we use the club badge to empower us to have an impact globally? That said, given the needs in our region, we have to make sure our focus is here first. If you look at those numbers, they’ve spiked this year, and a lot of that is down to our international work. That’s not because we’ve shifted our focus towards it; it’s because we’ve been trying to get that work up and running for a while, and we’ve been able to do more over the last season. Of the nearly 240,000 people supported, around 150,000 were here, with the rest reached internationally. So the balance is still weighted towards our home region. We want to do more here, and we want to do more internationally. It shouldn’t be a competition. It’s about how we can have a greater impact wherever we work.”
On the offerings: “One of the things that struck me when I came here was that we did a few programmes really well, but we only did a few programmes, and it felt a bit disjointed. Initially, we just tried to do more. Then we focused on doing more of less. Rather than spreading ourselves too thinly, we’ve done a lot of work to focus our efforts. We have something like 60 programmes, although that number varies. In reality, there are probably 10 to 20 core areas, with smaller spin-offs. But ultimately, they all point towards an outcome in one of our three areas: health, learning or employability. Take employability, for example. We have a Creative Works programme, which we run in partnership with Kondansha, exposing young people to the creative industries in this city and region. We also run programmes in partnership with the Seymour Foundation. I mentioned earlier that we piloted a 50-plus employability programme. I say “older people” — 50-plus is me! It’s for people around my age who are unemployed. Fifteen people took part, and I think 12 or 13 have now got a job at the stadium on matchdays. As you know yourself, the stadium isn’t just busy for the 30-odd matchdays a year; it operates seven days a week. The reason I mention that is that, at their core, both programmes are about employability. They start in the same way, and hopefully they lead to the same outcome.”
On what next: “I suppose there’s the target we’ve set ourselves to test what we can achieve. We want to be supporting half a million people by 2030. We want to be working in 10 countries. For next year — this season, sorry — I think the target is six. We want to do more. If I had to pick one thing, particularly given that you speak predominantly to our fans, I’d like them to say they feel proud of the work of the Foundation. I genuinely think they can be. I’d like them to become advocates for what we do. How many fans have we got around the world? Is it a billion or something? Some mad figure! Whatever the number is, if even a small percentage of that billion talk passionately about the work of the Foundation — or, more importantly, the work their club does in the community — that would make a difference. As I said, that work stretches from Tanzania to right here in Liverpool, as well as the work we’re doing in Dublin. Find out more, look up what we do, share it and talk about us. Get involved, come to a Legends game, and watch this space — we’ll hopefully be announcing something soon for March. Just find out more and talk about us. Initially, we were almost a bit shy about promoting our work because we wanted to test that what we were doing was working and having an impact. That’s why the impact-report journey started. We think this report demonstrates that it is working. It’s been independently evaluated, so it’s been tested. You can trust it, shout about it, tell other people about it — and come and ask us questions.”
