Aim

We're raising funds to fit 80 solar panels onto the club house, in order to cut daily running costs and support the environment.

Who are we?

We are a local community rugby located in the heart of rural Suffolk, luckily within the club we are blessed with strong mini, youth, girls and senior men's sides who all operate from the clubhouse.

We provide stunning grounds with some of the best pitches to be found for some distance for our teams to both train and play on, two of which are floodlit. We are also able to offer indoor space for training needs as required, including a large hall and a gym from our club house.

With three senior men’s teams and 12 other teams throughout the ages, we welcome approximately 50,000 of visitors to our club house each year both supporting our own teams and our opposition. This figure includes the parents that we welcome at our annual mini’s festival, together with approximately 1000 children who come to play. A fully functional fitted kitchen allows us to feed hungry players and spectators alike.

Our club house is used by the local community for functions and events, including parties, community meetings and business conferences. We welcome approximately 2500 visitors for such purposes through our doors each year.

Our fundraising project for the summer of 2017 was to raise enough money to install a community defibrillator and this proved a huge success.

Why do we need help?

We hope that we have given you an insight into what we offer the community as a club above but unfortunately the running costs for the club house are significant. We are constantly put under strain by increasing utility bills and attracting people through our doors on the days/months when our teams do not play has, therefore, become a necessity for the Managing Members of Sudbury Rugby Club to look into ways of cutting our costs so we can continue to support all of the Playing Members alongside the local community. This has the inevitable and positive effect of protecting our environment.

Following our internal discussions, we decided tackle the running costs head on with the introduction of Solar Panels onto our roof . This allows us to optimise a large area of the club, previously unused with minimal disruption to the day-to-day goings on for our club community.

To date we have contacted and met with a number of local specialist installers and received quotes from each. Following these being received, the most suitable contractor was asked to visit site with us and carried out a survey to ensure the most accurate quote had been submitted. Furthermore, planning consultants have been notified and they have advised that the project will not require approval from them due to the nature of the project.

Internally a review of the potential savings has been carried out utilising industry specific data and analysed with the buildings running costs to highlight the positive impact of the project going ahead. This revealed that the club would be able to eradicate our electricity spend by the value of the initial investment within 12 years of installation.

What effect will this project have?

Should we be lucky enough to successfully achieve our fund raising goals, then in addition to reducing our day-to-day costs the knock on effects will allow us to substantially improve the quality of the club’s service to our local community and members alike. Examples of how we anticipate this effect taking shape include:

• We will be able to open the club for longer hours due to reduced costs, making our facilities available to the community on a much larger scale and for a significantly reduced cost; 
• The financial savings within the club itself will enable us to put more money into the development of our players at all ages, providing them with tools they need to grow as athletes but also individuals;
• We will be promoting the ideal of Sustainable Energy to not only our members and community, but also the huge amount of visitors that come to us, with the hope that they can see the benefits we will receive and look to undertake such investments themselves.

This project successfully funded on 20th October 2017