Who are we?
Home to over 300 members, Sevenoaks Indoor Bowls Club first opened its doors in 1990 and is a Community Amateur Sports Club. Run almost entirely by volunteers, we cater for all levels, from beginners who participate in social matches through to competitive bowling at county and national levels.
Our club really is at the heart of the community. Our doors are open to 15 other organisations who hire the centre on a regular basis, from mother and baby groups to health and fitness classes and evening community groups. We also offer external hire for events and functions. Our facilities include an 8 - lane rink, two separate meeting rooms, a kitchen and a bar and lounge area complete with a dance floor.
Roughly 400 people from in and around Sevenoaks make use of the Club premises each week. The Centre has superb facilities for the disabled including designated parking spaces, ramp access, a wheelchair lift, rink wheelchairs, walking sticks and lifters which are used by some of our members and others suffering from a range of disabilities.
Why are we crowdfunding?
Due to financial constraints the Club only opens on average for approximately 50 hours each week. We want to increase participation in Bowls and make the centre’s facilities available to a wider range of organisations and more members of the community by opening for longer.
How do we achieve this? Well, one of the Club's biggest items of expenditure is electricity where we spend, at current rates with existing opening hours, £26,000 p.a. and a 50% increase in opening hours would see that rise to nearly £40,000. Removing that cost would provide us with a real opportunity of delivering on our aim of having the centre open for longer.
So, for the past year, three of our members have been involved in looking at the viability of installing solar panels on the centre roof and looking at ways of financing this. We were advised that by installing 200 solar panels, (yes, it is a large roof!) we could virtually eliminate the electricity bill and as a very valuable additional extra, reduce our carbon emissions by a whopping 33 Tons. The cost of the installation was quoted at £180,000.
So how does a small Community Amateur Sports Club finance that large sum?
Because the project will deliver significant environmental, economic and social benefits to the community we have been very well supported by our District and Town Councils who have offered funding of £100,000 and two other grant giving organisations, Tarmac and West Kent Rural Grants who have each offered £20,000 to provide us with funds totalling £140,000. We can contribute £25,000 from our own reserves, taking the total raised to £165,000.
That brings us to this appeal.
Sport England have made us a conditional grant offer of £7,500 which we will receive if we can raise a further £7,500 through crowdfunding. If we can do that, we will have achieved our target, and the project will proceed.
So, this is the Last Piece of our Jigsaw and where we are asking for your help.
How we’ll spend the money raised
All the money raised will go directly towards paying for the installation of solar panels, a mansafe system for the roof and storage batteries, enabling our centre to be open for longer, contributing to the reduction of our carbon footprint, and saving us over £25,000 per year.
Community impact
Our club really is in the heart of the community. Our doors are open to 15 other organisations who hire the centre on a regular basis, from mother and baby groups, to health and fitness classes and evening community groups. We also offer external hire for events and functions, estimating between 800-1000 users of the building each year.
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/donation 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!