Sir Clive Woodward's new-look programme for the BOA requires funding of £15million over the next four years and could be one of the first sporting casualties of the credit crunch.

The BOA has until the end of the year to raise the finance, but talk of finding the money through a renegotiating of its joint marketing agreement with the London 2012 organising committee is likely to fall on deaf ears.

It is ironic that Woodward's plan should hang in the balance now because, after nearly two years in the employment of the BOA, he has devised a programme - it goes by the working title of the Olympic Coaching Academy - that has found more support in the twisted world of British sports politics than ever before.

Before Beijing, Woodward's BOA programme was directed at certain elite athletes. However, with what Woodward calls a “switch in emphasis”, its focus is now on the coaches.

In order for the Olympic Coaching Academy to prevail, it requires two votes of approval. The first has to come from the member bodies of the BOA: the 34 sports that make up the National Olympic Committee (NOC) and whose representatives will meet a week tomorrow to discuss the Woodward programme. The second is simply the financial approval.

Woodward told The Times yesterday: “Unless we can raise the funding, there's no point in going ahead. But I'm so excited about this, I have no intention of walking away from it.”

Woodward's initial programme, focused more on the athletes, was given a test-drive first on Melissa Reid, the golfer, and secondly on Euan Burton, the judoka, who won bronze at the World Championships last year, but was a beaten quarter-finalist in Beijing.But Woodward said: “It became very clear very quickly that you cannot just coach the elite athlete. To win a gold medal, you need a gold medal-class athlete and a gold medal-class coach. We spend a lot of time focusing on and investing in the athlete, but how much on the coaches? That, for me, is the place to make a real difference.”

However, while the BOA attempts to fund the Olympic Coaching Academy, it is also looking to expand to bigger offices and with a larger staff after its growth strategy review earlier this year. One of the issues that will be addressed at the NOC meeting is how high on the priority list is the Woodward programme and to what extent focus should fall more on the BOA's core responsibility of providing a first-class service to its team around the time of the Games.

Rod Carr, the NOC representative for sailing, said: “In terms of the support services that the BOA provides during the Games, they provide some of the very best in the world. They probably score eight or nine out of ten, but they need to up it to ten.

“Compared to some of the best practice of the best sports in the United Kingdom, they need to move up. Colin Moynihan is ambitious and wants to expand the role of the BOA; I'm fine about that as long as we cover the Must Do's first.”

Other leading sports administrators are torn on the value the Olympic Coaching Academy will deliver. David Sparkes, the chief executive of British Swimming, said: “Elite coach development should be a matter for a sport's governing body. Do I see a value in the Woodward proposal? I remain sceptical. I see it as a confusion on an already confused landscape. We should build on what we've already built instead.”

Brian Stocks, head of the British Gymnastics Association, said: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime journey and we want to leave no stone unturned. We admire the work Clive has done and we are very keen that his programme should be supported.”

However, as Carr said, support may yet be irrelevant if the finance is not available. “There is already a great deal of coaching expertise in this country,” he said. “But is there expertise available like this at the highest level, in one organisation, to make a medal-winning difference? The answer is no. But until they get the cash, all this is pretty hypothetical. For me, the issue is whether it is affordable. I hope that it is.”

The success of the Olympic Coaching Academy is not only crucial to Woodward, but also to Lord Moynihan. The appointment of Woodward was driven by Moynihan without broad consultation through the NOC and the BOA chairman has part-funded some of the Woodward programme with personal loans.

The Woodward programme has also required the resources of Bain & Co, the management consultant, which has had a team of five working on it for five months. This is separate from the work of AT Kearney, another consultancy company, which has been working more on the BOA's growth strategy.

The bottom line is that the BOA can fund an “Olympic” programme only with companies that are already Olympic sponsors. In these hard financial times, London 2012 will not be keen on siphoning off a tranche of the funding that it has already managed to deliver.

Woodward says that any talk of him resigning if his Academy bites the dust is wide of the mark. But his thoughts are with its success, not its failure.

“We're putting something in place which can take some people to a whole new level,” he said. “There's no other programme like this; it's unique and it's world-class.”