How much have you raised?

A community-driven project like this requires a complex mix of funding, which could include everything from grants and awards, through to public fundraising initiatives. We’ve had talks with lots of funders, from Heritage Lottery to Sport England and more funds are coming online soon, like the Coastal Communities Fund, which we’ll be applying for this year. We’re also planning to engage the community a lot more in terms of fundraising and we have lots of ideas for this up our sleeve.

In terms of ‘how far’ we are, this is a tricky one to reply to.

The short answer is about £100,000 which includes revenue from events, sales of merchandise and donations from the public, plus £90,000 from the Coastal Revival Fund in two separate funding rounds. However, what this figure doesn’t include is an additional estimated £100k of pro bono work that has already gone into the project.

The slightly longer answer is ‘enough to cover pre-planning application requirements but nothing yet towards construction costs’.

Most capital projects like this usually have the funding in place for all elements before work starts. However, we’re doing things a little differently. Being a tiny charity, we can’t feasibly pull £8m or so together in one chunk, so we’re relying on whatever funds come in (donations, smaller grants, etc) to chip away at some of the initial work, like the survey and the EIA we’ve just carried out, etc.

Getting this work out of the way helps pave the way for larger funders to get involved, demonstrates that we’re confident that we will ultimately succeed, and makes the whole project much more of a viable and attractive proposition for anyone who wants to get involved.