East Boldre Community Stores - The Final Step

Aim

We've created the space - Help us raise the final £28,450 we need to buy shelving and energy efficient chillers to equip our community shop.

Our Vision

A convenience to many the shop and Post Office are a lifeline to some local residents, particularly those who lack their own transport. Retaining the village shop saves 180k+ car miles/year to the alternatives for groceries, postal service, banking and bill payment that are 5+ miles away.

We are now so close to establishing our community owned and run shop, ‘Chapel Stores’, in the former Baptist chapel; our village's first church. We will develop it into a vibrant focal point of our community simultaneously securing the chapel’s continued community use.

 A local hub for volunteering, paid staff will be supported by volunteers of all ages in a range of roles. Volunteering with us will be a great way of becoming known in the community and will allow local people to put existing skills to purposeful use or to learn new ones.

The chapel is the best option we explored in our challenging 5-year search for premises;

• Its large retail area will accommodate a broad range of products at multiple price points to suit different budgets.  
• The chapel's former vestry will provide a flexible social space that will be used for shop events, coffee mornings, workshops and as a place where residents of all ages can meet and socialise informally, helping to build a better connected community.
• In partnership with St Barbe museum, the vestry space will host their touring exhibitions bringing arts, culture and heritage into our rural village community.
• The site provides dedicated off-road parking and is close to the population centre of the village maximising the number of people who can walk or cycle there.
• We are sustainably reusing an existing building and a solar system will halve our electricity costs.
• A focus on local food will help to reduce food miles and we’ll offer refillable cleaning products that are septic tank friendly. 
• Energy efficient chillers (retail fridges use 1% of UK’s electricity) will minimise our energy use.
• Thanks to 'I dig trees' we will enhance the 0.23 acre site’s biodiversity with 50 native trees/shrubs.
• Our heritage project will engage people from all backgrounds in the research, interpretation and commemoration of the chapel's history at this point where its community role changes. This helped us secure £54,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Our Successes

Help Us Take the Final Step in Our Journey

Our journey to create Chapel Stores started in July 2017. We have researched and produced a detailed business plan, purchased and renovated the village's former Baptist Chapel and we are just 3 months from opening for business.

We have raised £690,000 of the £718,450 needed to make Chapel Stores a reality. Our community share offer reached its maximum target and 12 out of 15 grant applications were successful (an extraordinary 80% success rate given the currently highly competitive funding landscape).

Our 'Big Help Outs' and 'Painting Parties' have seen over 70 local volunteers working together to achieve a common goal and have saved our project £16,000.

Why We Are CrowdFunding?

We are committed  to start trading on 19th January 2024 but currently lack the funds to buy the shop shelving and chillers.

• A key grant application for £25k was shortlisted and we had very positive feedback on our application but it was eventually unsuccessful as the funder prioritised projects in more deprived areas.
• Problems encountered during building works have increased costs and absorbed our contingency budget.

We need your help to raise a final £28,450 to cover:

• Energy efficient chillers - £17,590

• Shelving and accessories - £10,360

• Landscaping the site - £500

We will rally the community to install the shop shelving ourselves in a 'flat pack weekend' (rather than pay shop fitters) and to landscape the chapel site to minimise these costs.

A second share offer is not an option at the moment given HMRC's Social Investment Tax Relief rules.

Having thoroughly researched alternative grants there are very few that cover equipment. Of those that do, none fit our timeframe to enable us to hold to our 19th January opening date (which is now firmly set by the Post Office).

The only way to meet our target opening date is to cover this gap in our funding through this 6-week crowdfunding campaign which launches on Saturday 28th October.

Project Costs

Update 06/12/23

Not everyone wants or can make a donation online. We are very pleased to have received an additional £1893 from nine ’offline’ donors.

A HUGE thank you to all of our supporters so far who have helped to raise a quarter of our target amount.

This project successfully funded on 8th December 2023