Fund-raising Progress (as by 22 December 2005)
This article has been written to to help keep everybody in the picture with the progress of our fund-raising efforts to date. (For the previous May05 report, click HERE).
1. INTERNAL FUND-RAISING
Our Internal Fund Raising is proceeding very well although we do still have some way to go to achieve our overall fund raising target. As Chairman of the Finance Committee, I would personally like to thank very much indeed all those many people in our congregation who have made Donations and/or taken out Standing Orders during 2005.
To date we have actually received £259,000:-
This is a very good start - at this stage in the overall project timescale - and has enabled us to achieve the interim financial target of '50% of local funding' set by Methodist Property in Manchester. This amount has to be actually received in the bank for us to be allowed to begin work. Methodist Property has therefore now given us Technical Approval for the Building Project and has also given us permission to go out to tender.
2. EXTERNAL FUND RAISING
So far we have been successful in raising £79,000 from external sources, as follows:-
A list of the organisations that we have approached without success are:
The Redevelopment Project approved by the Church Council is set to cost in the region of £600,000, which means that we have a shortfall of some £190,000 between the total projected funding so far received (or promised) of £410,000 and the total cost of the Project.
The priority now is to see by how much we can reduce this shortfall of £190,000 between now and the end of March 2006 when the building work begins.
It now looks as though we will have to fund most of this shortfall ourselves as the chance of receiving any further grants from our External Fund Raising efforts looks unlikely.
To this end a letter will be sent out in early January by myself and Paul Wilson to members and worshippers at Knutsford Methodist Church with an appeal for additional donations for the Building Fund.
If we still have a shortfall at the end of March 2006 then we will need to take out a 4-Year Methodist Chapel-Aid Loan - so that we have sufficient money available to pay the bills as and when they are presented for payment by the contractors. Clearly we would like to keep the amount of this loan as small as possible so that interest payments on the loan are minimal. All additional donations over the next 3 months will assist us greatly to achieve this objective.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And we expect to receive a further £72,000:-
Taking all the above into account our Internal Fund Raising (including 3 year standing orders to end 2007) is currently projected to raise around £331,000.
The overall response to our External Fund Raising efforts has been somewhat less successful than we had hoped - with many of the Charities we have approached being unable to help us. From their replies it seems that they consider Knutsford Methodist Church to be a 'wealthy church in a wealthy town', and as a result they have 'allocated their funds to more deserving priority cases' (as they see it).
Also we are still waiting to hear from:-
3. ADDITIONAL FUND RAISING TO REDUCE THE SHORTFALL