Pre-contract Meeting and Another Grant

Let’s start with the grant. We heard this week that we have been awarded a grant for £10,000 by the Garfield Weston Foundation for our refurbishment. This is terrific news and we are hugely grateful. Just over a month ago we took a step of faith and pushed the ‘go’ button on the project. This grant fills the gap, and more than that, I see it as a sign of God’s blessing on this project. We are not doing this in our own strength but in the Lord’s.

Refurbishment is Go!

Tonight at our members’ church meeting we made the momentous decision to move from the fundraising phase on to the next phase – the actual commencement of the refurbishment.

£2000 awarded by East Midlands Airport

It has been a quiet summer, but we’ve been busy beavering away at grant applications. We received notification on Monday that we have been offered a grant of £2000 from the East Midlands Airport Community Fund towards the costs of our kitchen refit. This wonderful encouragement brings us closer still to our target.

We are now not very far off reaching our goal. We started off at the base of a rather daunting mountain, and now the summit is in sight. Praise God!

Nottinghamshire Historic Churches Trust Grant

More good news – the Nottinghamshire Historic Churches Trust have made a grant offer to us of £3,500 towards our church refurbishment. We are very grateful for their generosity.

This brings down the amount remaining to be raised to £62,500. We are making progress. We have a couple of other grant applications in the works.

Grant Awarded by Congregational And General Trust

Wonderful news! We have just been awarded a very generous grant of £15,000 by the Congregational and General Charitable Trust for our refurbishment project, for which we are very grateful indeed. This is a great start to our fund-raising. With the money already raised by the church, this leaves £66,000 still to raise.

The Art of Grant Applications

We have just heard that our grant application to the Garfield Weston Anniversary Fund was not successful. So it is time to start working hard on finding other sources of funding. We are putting together a list of bodies that provide grants of various sizes for this kind of work.

Making grant applications seems to be a bit of an art-form. We have to consider which funds we have the most chance of securing, and also to apply in the right order because some will only supply matched funding, others like to provide the final top-up to get a project off the ground, etc.

Refurbishment Progress

Sorry for the lack of updates on our refurbishment project. Quite a lot has been happening over the last six months.

Certificate of Authorisation Received!

Today we received our Certificate of Authorisation! Praise God! It has been a long and bumpy road to this point, so it is a matter of great relief that we now have our plans approved and can get on with the next stage, which is put the work out to tender and get some quotations.

Pressing On Towards Refurbishment

We have been thinking hard about how to respond to the objections to our refurbishment scheme and what we can do to move forwards. We have reluctantly come to the conclusion that if we do not agree to retain the rearmost three rows of pews then the refurbishment simply will not happen.

A Setback

Very disappointing news regarding our listed building application, I am afraid. We heard a couple of days ago that the Listed Buildings Advisory Committee have decided not to approve our application as it stands.