MF8) MONEY

Raising money to keep your campaign alive will be a perennial issue. In our case money has come from:

·         our initial public protest meeting

·         a grant from a local charitable body concerned with regeneration of the local area away from a dependence on coal

·         from an appeal from our members and supporters.

The latter was far more successful than we hoped for. Having done our research and publicised it in our newsletter (issue 10 of Minorca Protest News) we were able to remind our members and supporters of the risks they faced to their health and wealth if UK Coal were to be successful with their planning application. The money came in after a bit of a stiff letter from the Chairperson.

I think the real message here is if you and your Co- coordinating Committee invest in running a professional looking campaign, do their homework   never make claims you cannot substantiate, build confidence in your members and supporters that the campaign is improving its knowledge base and it is articulating its arguments through a newsletter, press releases and media coverage then the reward should be contributions to an appeal for funds.

We have now been going for nearly 6 months and in this email age it is very cheap to run what is really a ‘virtual’ organisation. We have only had to have 2 meetings in that time, and our costs so far have been about £500.

However you must remember that we are experiencing ‘The Long Wait’ as I write this as no formal planning application for the Minorca site has been submitted yet. When it does money will become an issue again.

For more information on MOPG go to Leicestershirevillages.com/minorcaprotest

UPDATE ON                                                                              6/4/10

We have now been going for 16 months and we are still in being with money in the bank. Two other methods of fund raising have been utilised. Firstly we had a stall at a Car Boot Sunday Market which sold donated goods and secondly we published a calendar.

On the second method, the calendar we organised a photographic competition based on pictures taken that were associated with scenes from the local district on or near the site. Then 12 pictures were selected for the calendar, one for each month. One person worked at getting each month sponsored by a local business as a form of advertising. Then the calendar was printed published and sold through local shops, by post and by word of mouth. This has kept us in funds during most of 2010 so far.