Stephen Fry promotes crowdfunding appeal for Glyncoch community centre
Howard Lake | 28 February 2012 | News
Author and comedian Stephen Fry has backed a bid to save a seven-year project to build a new community centre in Glyncoch, south Wales, by asking the British public, or at least those using Twitter, to donate their “loose change” to fill the funding shortfall.
The town needs to raise £30,000 to reach its target of £790,000 to fund the centre before 30 March or they risk losing most of the grant funding already secured.
The town is using Spacehive.com, a new crowdfunding site to enable communities to fund neighbourhood improvement projects, to collect donations.
Well, it seems you can crowdfund a community centre for the price of a cucumber sandwich. Join in! bit.ly/yAzAdY #sandwichsacrifice
— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) February 23, 2012
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Fry’s fundraising appeal to his four million Twitter followers was to “crowd-fund a community centre for the price of a cucumber sandwich”. The campaign has attracted other high-profile supporters including Martha Lane-Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com, and Scott Quinnell, former Welsh international Rugby captain. Professional services firm Deloitte has today pledged £1,000.
Spacehive is backed by the Royal Institute of British Architects and aims to “shake up neighbourhood planning” by allowing anyone to put forward ideas for capital projects and anyone to pledge funding.
Doug Williams, Deputy Mayor of Rhondda Cynon Taff Council said: “Glyncoch is a deprived area. People are used to being let down. But if we can finally get this new centre built, people will start thinking ‘we can get out of this rut’.”
www.spacehive.com/glyncochcc
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.