Staplegrove CC new benches & electronic scoreboard

Who are we?

Staplegrove Cricket Club is a friendly village club based in Staplegrove on the northern outskirts of Taunton.

Founded in the early 20th century, the club boasts a proud record, with ex players including former West Indies captain Richie Richardson, England international John Jameson and numerous county professionals.

Currently we have two adult league teams, as well as under 11, 13 and 15 junior teams. We are also very keen to continue last years introduction to cricket for Women and Girls.

As well as this we offer our ground to other clubs and organisations to use for games and events.

So as you can see, we are a club which is passionately engages in our local community.

Why are we crowdfunding?

As with any cricket club, it’s an expensive thing to run and keep updated and relevant for the community it seeks to service.

Crowdfunding is new to our club, so we hope you will look at our campaign sympathetically. We have tried to raise funds through other means, such as grants. But unfortunately in this competitive process, we were not successful. So we thought we’d turn to the people we know best, the Staplegrove and cricket community!

As a way of letting you know what we require, here’s a statement from our Chairperson, Matt Dunn:

‘One of the areas in desperate need of improvement is our outdoor seating area. Our aim is to obtain new picnic benches, providing a more welcoming feel to parents, players, supporters and anyone who wishes to sit in comfort, enjoy some cricket and the English summer. Some of the benches we currently have on site have become rotten, proving not to be at all comfortable.

An electronic scoreboard would take the club into the 21st century, enabling players and spectators alike to have “Ball to Ball” updates, as opposed to just updates that have to be manually changed.

We would be very appreciative of any donations to our appeal.’

So there you go, it’s quite a modest total compared to other appeals of this sort.

We hope you can help us. We also have some fantastic rewards which can be claimed, so please have a look.

Many thanks.

How we’ll spend the money raised

We will be using a local company to replace our current picnic tables with four new ones. Electronic scoreboards can be expensive, so we are looking at purchasing a small 9 digit scoreboard. It has clear LED numbering, and is low energy. With this comes a remote control, so it can be operated easily by scorers. The board is also compatible with Play Cricket, meaning your phone or tablet can connect to the Play Cricket Scorer by Bluetooth to the controller allowing you to automatically control the scoreboard ball by ball.
If anybody requires more information on how the funds raised will be spent, don’t hesitate to ask.

Community impact

We believe our cricket club has a significant impact on benefiting the local community. This is shown within our fully inclusive policy on promoting cricket related activities. Because we share many of our facilities with the local football club, Staplegrove Football Club, this would benefit many of their players and supporters in that the outside benches would be available to them during the football season. As Staplegrove Cricket Club hosts other teams such as the Somerset Stragglers and County Cup games, for example, means our reach extends beyond our local community. It’s with great pleasure we host these teams, but we need to keep them interested in using our facilities. The updating of our facilities affords us to offer an enhanced experience to our welcome visitors.

We are particularly keen to improve people’s experience at our club, and see these small and attainable improvements as a good way to get the ball rolling with much needed improvement projects. We believe increased participation by groups who in the past may not have chosen cricket as a means of making connections is our goal. Success with this will not only benefit the future of our club, but will also contribute to the wellbeing of all its participants.

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!