Le­git­i­mate, well-or­ga­nized, and struc­tured sports or­ga­ni­za­tions and clubs are fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

The ques­tion is why and what are the caus­es of the prob­lem year af­ter year?

De­pend­ing on who you ask the an­swer will vary. One ap­proach is to give thought to un­der­ly­ing is­sues in the op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment which has been high­light­ed as an am­a­teur­ish ap­proach. But ig­no­rance is cer­tain­ly not an ex­cuse.

There is no respite or hid­ing place.

Gangs pro­vide pro­tec­tion, be­long­ing, and re­spect as they have for many re­placed the tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly up­bring­ing and wel­fare de­spite their rule which is in­tim­i­da­tion and fear. It is a re­al­i­ty of hu­man be­hav­iour borne out by hu­man his­to­ry that hu­man be­ings be­lieve in pow­er by num­bers and have two choic­es: join the pow­er group or form a group to go against the pow­er group.

Young peo­ple who find so­lace in gangs are no dif­fer­ent. Gangs re­gard­less of the eu­phemism have al­ways ex­ist­ed and for var­i­ous rea­sons.

Not all gangs are crim­i­nal gangs as we have seen over time with the for­ma­tion of clubs, lodges, cred­it unions, labour unions, as­so­ci­a­tions, fed­er­a­tions, groups, cham­bers, coun­cils, as­sem­blies, or gov­ern­ing bod­ies.

Gangs could be po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, fi­nan­cial, busi­ness, hob­by, or sport-ori­ent­ed.

Many start well-in­ten­tioned but hu­man be­ings tend to al­low hu­man frail­ties to over­take good in­ten­tions. Every or any­thing can be ei­ther used for good or evil, bet­ter or worse. It can bring out the best in us or the worst over time. Noth­ing de­signed or in­vent­ed by hu­man be­ings is im­mune. It's a choice hu­man be­ings have to make.

As it re­lates to crim­i­nal gang ac­tiv­i­ties with­in so-called at-risk com­mu­ni­ties pover­ty plays a ma­jor role in the for­ma­tion of gangs as neigh­bor­hoods re­flect on ne­glect­ed homes, a break­down in fam­i­ly life, derelict build­ings, etc. Schools be­come more vi­o­lent, in­creased se­cu­ri­ty and af­ter-school is­sues neg­a­tive­ly im­pact fence line com­mu­ni­ties.

A crim­i­nal gang's ef­fect on a com­mu­ni­ty can vary, but their im­pact can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly neg­a­tive.

Mem­bers and as­so­ciates of lo­cal gangs ben­e­fit from all that is il­le­gal - drug-deal­ing pro­ceeds and oth­er il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties, while those not af­fil­i­at­ed with the gang see less eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty due to that gang's pres­ence.

Crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty be it white-col­lar crime or oth­er forms of or­ga­nized crime in­tim­i­dates away law-abid­ing small busi­ness own­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs.

They al­so neg­a­tive­ly im­pact ex­ist­ing com­mu­ni­ty busi­ness­es, putting a bur­den on lo­cal economies. Schools in the com­mu­ni­ty al­so suf­fer, be­cause the gangs look to them as cen­ters of re­cruit­ment.

Gang in­volve­ment is re­lat­ed to the gang mem­ber’s re­la­tion­ships to the so­cial in­sti­tu­tions that are most im­por­tant to all youths—fam­i­ly, schools, and peer groups. Gang mem­bers are more like­ly than oth­er youths to come from bro­ken homes, to per­form poor­ly in school, to have peers who are in­clined to en­gage in crim­i­nal be­hav­iour, and to be un­em­ployed or un­der­em­ployed. The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem for gang mem­bers gen­er­ates neg­a­tive at­ti­tudes to­ward the po­lice and le­git­i­mate so­ci­ety.

The chal­lenge for those groups, or­ga­ni­za­tions such as le­git­i­mate sports or­ga­ni­za­tions and clubs, etc that are do­ing their ut­most best to ad­dress the is­sues and prob­lems that are the root cause of the run­away crime and gun vi­o­lence is the re­al­i­ty that mon­ey is hard to come by. The eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and crime wave are neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing ac­cess to fi­nan­cial sup­port be­cause fund­ing that would usu­al­ly go in­to sports as an in­vest­ment is now be­ing di­vert­ed to off­set se­cu­ri­ty ex­pens­es be­cause of crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in com­mu­ni­ties and na­tion­al­ly.

How­ev­er, it can be ar­gued that now more than ever in­vest­ment in sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties is need­ed more than ever since sports has proven to be one of the al­ter­na­tives to the life of crime. How­ev­er, it's not a sim­ple dis­cus­sion with easy an­swers or con­ve­nient so­lu­tions.

Now more than ever sports or­ga­ni­za­tions are called up­on to come up with so­lu­tions that re­quire a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing, op­er­at­ing, and look­ing at the chal­lenges. There is no avoid­ing the re­al­i­ty that these are dark days with un­prece­dent­ed chal­lenges.