Sport England: Active Together has provided £3,600 of match funding
Irrigation, Sightscreens and covers
Bristol, Bristol City, United Kingdom
Aim
Install a new sustainable irrigation system to improve and maintain the playing surface and buy new sightscreens and full covers.
Who are we?
Golden Hill CC is a thriving club situated in Henleaze, Bristol. The club boasts a membership in excess of 400 playing members across and caters to youth boys and girls and senior men and women alike. We are ECB Clubmark Accredited and a Disability Champion Club.
Why do we require funding and what does the club need?
The club's rapid growth in recent years with a huge expansion to our youth offerings for boys and girls and high levels of transition through to senior cricket our pitches are under pressure.
The demand in playing and training time means that we need to look at ways in which to improve and maintain a decent playing surface for all members. We are looking at a sustainable option that involves harvesting in water from the clubhouse roof and storing this for later use. The new system will be controlled remotely by the grounds management team to ensure that the irrigation system is turned on after matches, which will save time and manual labour on the part of club volunteers. It will also improve efficiency and add to sustainability as pitches can be watered in the evenings rather than during the day when evaporation happens more rapidly.
Full covers will further help the grounds management team to prepare pitches and manage the rather unpredictable British weather conditions to ensure that we can fulfil more fixtures and avoid backlogs.
If our fundraiser is successful, we will also be able to invest in new sightscreens for our 5th and 6th XIs to improve facilities. A large number of our youth members transition into these teams as they move up to senior cricket and this would be highly beneficial.
We hope to be able to carry out the necessary work in March/April 2023 to ensure that the facility improvements are all implemented by the start of the upcoming cricket season.
We have already obtained quotes from suppliers who are experts in the field and the work has been approved by the Gloucestershire Cricket Foundation.
What impact will this have?
The entire cricket club will benefit if we manage to raise funding for these projects. By becoming more sustainable and efficient we will save money despite rising energy costs meaning we do not have to just go to our members to raise these funds. As a club we have risen so fast in terms of numbers and playing standards across the last 5 years. The Men's 1st X1 are now in WEPL Premier 2 and the Women's 1st team will be competing in the brand new WEPL Women's Premier League in 2023. Add to this all of our youth teams and the need for irrigation and covers to help better preparation of pitches is essential. With the ECB aim of Get the Game On, the covers will also ensure extra income across the bar is not lost, an essential addition of funds for the club.
Impact of Covid
As with everyone covid had a major impact on our club. Due to the fantastic work of our volunteer base we managed to start back coaching our youth teams with a ratio of 5 children to 1 coach to stay in the bubbles of 6 on the first day this was allowed. The mental health impact of this on our youth could not be understated as a result of this and the parents were so appreciative of all that we did. Finances as a result were down for the whole of the cricket season in 2020 due to a reduced season and impact on the bar.
This impact is still being felt though and with the rising costs across the board in 2022 and going in to 2023, we are still recovering financially. With energy costs rising massively, as a good community hub we are trying to keep the costs down for our hirers that include arts clubs, dance clubs and fitness classes for people of all ages.
We had a fantastic crowdfunder in 2022 as we raised £20k for our new net project and are hoping that with your help we can achieve our target again this year! With such fantastic support as a club and community the donations made our nets project a reality and without this it would not have been possible! So please help us achieve this years target! How could you help you say.....................
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 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. If you want to run your own fundraiser to support us, 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!
This project successfully funded on 24th March 2023