Ground Improvements @ Doncaster Town CC

Aim

We’re raising money to install 2 hybrid cricket pitches on our square for children, women and men to use from our community.

Who are we?

We're a city centre based cricket club who provide cricket and physical activities to everyone from our local community. We  run sessions and teams for boys and girls from 5 years old up to men's and women's sessions for all ages. U9's, U11's (boys and girls), U13's, U15's & U18's. We also have 4 senior Saturday teams, a Sunday League and Evening League team. More recently we have started a Women & Girls hardball Team and more recently a Softball team. We also run open sessions for our community, targeting refugees, women and disabled people. Local schools and groups also use our facilities throughout the year. We're a welcoming club that is at the heart of its local community. We really are a club that is open to all our community!

Why are we crowdfunding?

In 2021 we ran a successful Crowdfunder Campaign to knock down our old groundsmen shed and build a new one, this allowed us to hugely improve our off field facilities, we thank you once again for your support and help, it wouldn't have been possible without you. We're now in desperate need to improve our on field facilities form the use of our community. We're now Crowdfunding to raise money to install 2 Hybrid cricket pitches at our venue for everyone to use. 

Our club and community has been adversely effected by Covid but we have worked hard to continue developing our facilities and offer for the local community, when they needed it most. We lost most of our fundraising activities to Covid in 2020 and 2021, which we're still recovering from. We have supported our community to come back out and get active after Covid, in a safe, structured and fun environment. This project will help us provide further activities and facilities to our community users, helping to keep people active and bring people together for years to come.

The hot summer in 2021 and some of 2022 along with a large amount of junior, women's, mens, walking, district, county and community cricket played on our ground has negatively effected our playing square. The bounce is inconsistent and the performance has significantly deteriorated over the last 2 years.

We have a root break on our square caused by the recent dry summers and over use, with matches happening most days of the week. We have fundraised as a club over the last 12 months in order to renovate our square this autumn. This will see Koro used to take off all the surface vegetation, the surface tilted and terra spiked before been laser levelled, loam, seed and fertiliser added to finish the work at a cost of £11,500. We will also be installing a Water Harvesting and Irrigation System this winter to allow our groundsmen to water our square and pitches during the night, when games and activities are not taking place and evaporation levels are at their lowest, helping to maintain and prepare the square to a high standard moving forward and help ensure the ever changing weather doesn't have a detrimental effect on our square in the future.

Once this work has been carried out we would like to install 2 hybrid pitches on our square in 2024 to help ensure our square doesn't become damaged again and require further renovation. Hybrid cricket pitches deteriorate less and allow more cricket to be played on them, helping to increase participation, ensure we get the game on and make sure our wide variety of community users get to continue playing competitive cricket at our venue. This project will see more of our community users playing on the pitches, increase participation levels yet further and reduce the damage on pitches and the pressure on our groundsmen to prepare multiple pitches for our wide variety of community users each week during the summer.

How we’ll spend the money raised

ALL the money raised during this campaign will be used to purchase and install the 2 Hybrid pitches which will be used by our local community for many years to come, the total cost for these 2 pitches is £14,500. 

Community Impact

Our project will impact the whole community. We have Children, Women and Men using our facilities as well as refugees, disabled people and a walking cricket team. Our ground is also used by local schools and other teams. We also host District matches and County age group, academy and 2nd XI fixtures. All of whom will benefit for the installation of 2 hybrid pitches.

We also have a number of different groups using our facilities, such as drama groups, book clubs, a range of societies and the general public/community use the facilities for funerals, christenings, parties and events. As a club we continue to organise and deliver events for our community, including, race nights, summer galas, party on the pitch, BBQ's and, Halloween and Christmas parties and much more. This is all to help and stay in touch with our community to ensure we remain central to community life.

Rewards - Grab yourself a great deal! 

We have managed to put together a wide range of rewards that will hopefully appeal to a wide variety of our local community and encourage people to donate to our campaign. Check out our rewards to see if there’s anything that takes your fancy, there are some bargains to be had! 

How you can play your part

There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!

Your HELP matters and is REALLY APPRECIATED!

We need your help to achieve our target and realise our dream of providing 2 hybrid cricket pitches for our community users to play on, helping to safeguard the future mass participation at our ground. This will help us recover from the impact of Covid, continue to invest in essential facilities, that will allow our users to continue staying active and meeting new people from our community for many years to come.

This project successfully funded on 24th November 2023