Help Gateshead and Whickham swim club to THRIVE

Aim

I’m doing the GAW 3000 challenge and raising funds for my swim club to replace £10k lost grant income and offset a £5k increase in pool cost

Why am I fundraising?

Gateshead and Whickham swim club (GAW) can no longer get funding from the Gateshead Thrive fund which has been discontinued post COVID. Before COVID, we regularly received £10,000 from this source, which helped offset our operating costs.   Last July we also experienced a £5,000 increase in our pool hire costs due to the energy price rise.

So we are raising funds to replace this lost grant income and offset the increased pool hire cost.  Our target is to raise £15,000 and Sport England will contribute 50% to this target, as long as we raise the rest ourselves.  We also have a stretch target of £18,000.

If we raise these additional funds, it will enable the club to break even in the current financial year.   This is really important to me and to other swimmers at the club, so we can continue to swim with Gateshead and Whickham, a club that we have grown up with and love.

What is the GAW 3000 challenge?

Over a 4 week period during our Crowdfunding campaign, swimmers from the club, including me, will be swimming lots of miles in our training sessions.  The challenge is that together we will swim 3000 miles or 4,800 kilometres, which is the total distance that GAW junior and masters swimmers will travel to galas during the 22/23 season, and equates to 192,000 lengths. 

What are my personal targets for the GAW 3000 challenge?

I want to achieve a distance of 72 kilometres during the GAW 3000 challenge, and raise £200 for the club through donations made by supporters to my page (individual swimmers should set this at an amount they think they can raise on their own page with support from friends and family).

How you can help me raise funds for the club

Please help me to reach my target of £200, by making a donation to my crowdfunding page.  Your donations will count towards the overall target, and for every £1 donated, Sport England will also be contributing £1.  

You can also help by buying one of the great rewards we have on offer on the main GAW crowdfunding page, which are often at discounted prices. Many of our rewards relate to swimming, but there are plenty which will interest people who are not involved in swimming.

Here is the link to the main GAW crowdfunding page:

https://crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-gw-swim-club-to-thrive

This project successfully funded on 3rd March 2023