Friends of Hastings Pier - Community Ownership bid

Dear Friends

As promised, we are returning your money in full and this will take 24-48 hours to process.  
 
Thank you for believing in us.  We still believe that community ownership of assets such as Hastings Pier has so many benefits over private ownership and that our bid was not given the consideration that it deserved during a commercial administration process.  So we are continuing our campaign.
 
We have set up a campaign and reserve fund so that we can: be ready to buy the Pier freehold, should the opportunity arise; explore revisiting the administrators’ decision; and maintain public awareness of our aim of community ownership.

If you are able to continue your support, moral as well as financial, it would mean a lot to us.

The link to our new Crowdfunder page is https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/FOHP, if you can continue the journey with us, please give it a click.  If you can't donate but want to stay in touch or offer support in other ways, please do contact us by email  on FriendsofHastingsPier@gmail.com
We are stronger together.

Yours
FOHP spokespeople
Jess, Adam, Lesley and James

Dear Friend of Hastings Pier

We are saddened and shocked by the decision of the Administrators to sell our pier to Mr Gulzar, as announced late last night. This decision was made despite our final bid being better in every way - a higher purchase price, a co-investing partnership between the community and an experienced and committed commercial operator, clear and transparent plans for immediate, transition and long term redevelopment, and an absolute commitment to good maintenance forever.

We tried to buy it back from Mr Gulzar on the spot, offering £65,000 to top the paltry amount he paid for this community and civic asset fully-restored at public cost. He refused. 

There are a number of actions we could take next and roles that Friends of Hastings Pier could fulfil over the coming years. We are going to take the next few days to reflect and discuss these options and will provide an update next week. As the announcement was made so late on a Friday night, we are taking time out to regroup and explore what options we might have, so for now we are continuing with our project to retain community ownership and our crowdfunder will stay live. 

If we find that there are no options for us to continue in our bid for community ownership, as promised, your money will be returned to you and if you wish to end your journey with us at any time, you can cancel your pledge. 

If you would like to support Friends of Hastings Pier with expertise or funding, or you just want to stay in touch, please contact us directly at friendsofhastingspier@gmail.com. Remember if you don’t write to us we won’t have a way to contact you and keep you informed in future. 

And of course, thank you again for all your support - moral and financial - it has meant so much to us and we have come so close to keeping the People’s Pier.

Yours in hope, 

The other Friends of Hastings Pier

Dear Friends

Thank you all for your support, we are now really close to hitting our target.

We know that in these last few days we have had a lot of publicity in the press and media.  We are seeing fantastic comments and getting support from all round the country as this is a national issue!

In the last couple of days our total has jumped up in leaps and bounds.

Please help us reach our target and show the Administrators that we all care passionately about community ownership, it matters to all of us!  There are rumours that a decision is due later today so it is definitely not over yet!

Each one of us has the power to make a difference.

Please share, donate and spread the word!

Thank you

Your other Friends of Hastings Pier

Dear Friend of Hastings Pier, 

Thank you for your donation, your support means a lot to us.  

Not only does every single pledge count, your comments, your sharing our message, all help us towards that finish line. 

Did you know that 53% of email shares convert to donations? That means if you share with ten of your family, colleagues and friends - five of them are likely to give too! All you need to do is tell them that you have pledged and give them the link to our crowdfunder.

You have helped us hugely along the way to preserving the community ownership of Hastings Pier that means so much to us all. We have a great plan, a potential commercial partner and great community support (we are over 1500 and growing!) -  we now need just over £75,000 to be able to get us to the finish line. Together we can do this! 

So please, keep up the good work, we are so close, but not quite there yet. 

Yours,

The other Friends of Hastings Pier

Thank you everyone who has donated and shown such tremendous support for our project to keep Hastings Pier in community ownership. You are amazing! We have raised over £400,000 in a little over four weeks!

So many volunteers have been working tirelessly to raise awareness and to get the message out that our Pier means a lot and faces real risks.  A special mention goes out to Cecily who broke her arm whilst leafleting but was worried who would take over her spot when she went to hospital!  A true Friend of Hastings Pier hero!

Right now we are really close to our target of £500,000 and we have an extension on our crowdfunder of one month, to help us reach our target. This is great news!

No announcement has been made on the fate of the Pier, and we hope that the extra money we can raise in that month will swing a decision in our favour. 

As always, if we don’t reach our target or are not successful in our bid, your money will be returned to you. 

 So it is not over yet!  And we are in a stronger position than ever – there are now 1,200 of us who are part of this crowdfunder. You can make a difference. If each of us gets just one or two friends or contacts to give, we will be a long way towards achieving our target. 

PLEASE  SPREAD THE WORD!

 Share on twitter, on facebook, on Instagram, on email, even in person, everywhere…..  

As always, we are here to answer any questions or concerns you may have. Please feel free to contact us on friendsofhastingspier@gmail.com or via Crowdfunder or Facebook and we will do our best to help. 

We want to thank everyone who has donated on this Crowdfunder - you have been amazing.

We set ourselves what many would consider an impossible challenge – a crowdfunder to raise £500k by 31^st May.  But then, saving the pier in the first place was an ‘impossible’ task.  It was achieved through dogged determination and community support.  We have that in spades.

Already over 770 people have donated, raising more than £76,000 with donations ranging from £5 to £3,000. Check out the inspiring and cockle-warming comments people have left on the site.

And yesterday we moved much closer to target, thanks to an interest-free loan from igloo Regeneration (“the UK’s leading responsible real estate business working… to make the world better one place at a time”). And we are still working on other sources of funding for the next phase of investment.

But now it’s the FINAL PUSH!!!  Can we do it? That’s up to us all…

SPREAD THE WORD - share on twitter, facebook, instagram etc

The deadline is 9pm 31^st May 2018. Don’t be late…!!! Please share and encourage on Facebook/Twitter/ Instagram/everywhere…