We would be delighted to see you all again at our Easter Eggstravaganza which is once again taking place over the Easter weekend on Saturday 26th March 2016. Come and enjoy our Easter trail (offering a standard size Cadbury's Easter egg as a reward!), bouncy castle fun, face-painting, delicious home-made bakes from the Old Coulsdon Cupcakes W.I.'s stall, arts and crafts with the Under 3s and more. This is another fantastic opportunity to raise significant funds for the playground. We look forward to seeing you there :-)
Blog
Confidence builds for a new playground for Old Coulsdon
*UPDATE*
2015 was an amazing year for our campaign – the support from the local community was unprecedented. Our Easter Eggstravaganza, Village Fair stall, Autumn Fundraising Appeal and Yulefest stall were all a huge success and the help, donations and financial sponsorships we have received from everybody has been overwhelming.
We feel very confident that, with your continued support, we’ll be renovating the playground this year.
NEXT EVENT – EASTER EXTRAVAGANZA!
We’d love to see you at our next event, the 2016 Easter Extravaganza, which is being held in Grange Park on Saturday 26th March, 11am to 3pm. Come and try the Easter Egg trail, bouncy castle, face painting, arts and crafts with the Under 3s Club, refreshments, plus lots more including meeting Grange Park’s very own Easter Bunny! We will be reaching out for volunteers to help us to host this event- more info coming soon!
See you there!
The Friends of Grange Park Trustees and Volunteers
The Friends of Grange Park's trustees and volunteers at the 2015 Easter Eggstraganza
2015 Fundraising Success!
Thank you to you, our local residents, schools, residents' associations, unformed groups and local charitable organisations for making 2015 a HUGE fundraising success. We have our fingers crossed that 2016 will be the year that we are able to deliver an exciting new playground to Old Coulsdon, as our community so rightly deserves. We have applied to a major grant funder who we hope will see how worthwhile our project is for the community and disability groups in particular, and fund the balance of project costs. Please check back for further updates, or your can follow us on our Facebook page (Friends of Grange Park, Old Coulsdon).
Autumn Fundraising Appeal Update
It's been non-stop for the Friends over the past two months! Following a high profile media campaign for donations towards the playground renovation and successful fundraising launch party in October with M.P. Chris Philp and Theatre Workshop Coulsdon we are absolutely delighted to announce to the community that we have raised over £50,000! We have been overwhelmed by the generosity shown by so many local residents, charitable organisations and businesses and it is uplifting to know that this initiative is so firmly supported by our community!
We would like to thank the whole community for their generosity- we raised £5,000 from local residents through our MyDonate account along with £7,650 from our local businesses and other community groups and organisations. This is an incredible result! We would specifically like to thank Waitrose DFC for their generous donation of Prosecco for our fundraising launch party and Morrisons Caterham for the Cava!
We are making an application to Biffa Award for the balance of our project costs (£50,000), and we have everything crossed for a successful outcome in early Spring 2016. The hard work doesn't stop here for the Friends. We will continue our fundraising efforts at Coulsdon's Yule Fest on 5 December 2015. We look forward to catching up with you then!
Fundraising Appeal- Help us to raise £12,000 before December 2015!
Sadly, we were not successful in our recent funding bid for the remaining project costs. Following discussions with another grant funder we have been advised to raise a further £12,000 (taking our total fundraising to £50,000) to enable us to make a bid for the remaining £50,000 of the funds we need. By securing 50% of our project costs, this will give our application priority over those applications which have not reached this milestone.
So there we have it- just over 2 months to raise an extra £12,000! We are confident that with the help of the local community and our local businesses we can achieve this ambitious target! Please see our DONATIONS page to find out how you can contribute towards this very worthwhile cause that will help to rejuvenate the heart of our community.
Fundraising success at the Old Coulsdon Village Fair!
At the Old Coulsdon Village Fair on Saturday 4 July 2015 the Friends hosted a double pitch stall to exhibit 4 potential designs for the new playground and to continue their fundraising efforts.
All 4 designs were very well received and adults and children alike were impressed to see the range of equipment and play experiences we can potentially include within the footprint of the existing playground.
We hosted a luxury raffle with all 25 or so prizes generously sponsored by local businesses with family days out, restaurant meals, ladies jewellery sets and the STAR prize of a photographic canvas print of Grange Park at dawn by local photographer Gary Watson.
We also offered a brand new toy tombola for the children, with all toys generously sponsored by wholesalers and toy manufacturers in England.
Overall our fundraising efforts on the day made £1,000 towards the playground renovation.
Of course, we haven't yet raised all the money we need for a new installation, though we are doing very well. So far we have raised just over £30,000 out of the total project costs of around £100,000. We are determined to make this project a success, and with the community's continued support, we can make it happen!
