Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Taking Crowdfunding to Another Level

Well, blimey. 

As many of you already know, about two weeks ago we were robbed. About £600 was stolen from behind the counter by a sneaky opportunist thief, as Tim was helping someone choose some books.

It was a bit of a sickener. It was a huge sickener. 

Having heard news of the robbery, Sam Jordison, co-director of the brilliant Galley Beggar Press, decided to start a Crowdfunder to see if it would help us get some of the money we'd lost back.

Then something amazing happened. People all over the world started donating money. The original target that Sam set was reached and passed in a matter of hours. And it kept on coming.

As I type this, over £5500 has been raised. And not only that, the messages of support and the wonderful things that so many people have said about the Bookshop have blown us away.

I wrote about my feelings in The Guardian HERE, and Tim and I are still in total shock at the response.

Thank you isn't a big enough word on this occasion. Imagine it typed in a font size of around 48250. It still isn't big enough.

We've been discussing how we can best make use of the money raised, so I thought I'd share some of them with you.
  • We've recently introduced something called The School Reward SchemeEssentially, every book you buy from us, 10% of that money will go to the school or nursery of your choice to spend on books for their library. So, we're going to give 10% of the money that's raised and split it between 5 local schools/nurseries that we feel could really do with it. 
  • It's going to help us pay off some of the big old bills. This one particularly springs to mind. 
  •  

  • We've been researching funding options to help finance Big Green Education, our not-for-profit company, which aims to promote the love of reading in schools. This boost will allow us to work more closely with the local schools, hopefully leading to more Patrons of Reading being put in place.                                                                                                                                              
  • Some of the bookcases in the shop are getting a little battered, so we're can hopefully replace these for shiny new ones from Ikea.                                                                                                          
  • We are commissioning a statue of Sam to have in the window of the shop*
There's so much more we can do too. Essentially, this extra money will give us a bit of breathing space, something many small businesses like us very rarely get. You lot have given us this breathing space and it means the world.

We will, of course, be throwing a big "Thank You" party, of which you are all invited.

Meanwhile, if you have  a minute or more free might I suggest you go over to Galley Beggar Press website and have a look at all the amazing stuff they've got over there.





*this isn't true. Sorry Sam.

3 comments:

Cath aka Worzel Wooface said...

I've only just spotted this. Been busy writing and standing in an election... yes, I know, no excuse.

I'm reminded of something you did about a year ago when you organised for thousands of books to be sent to the Calais Jungle. You might remember you ended up with rather a lot of Amazon parcels thanks to a wish list I set up?

Anyway, I know it's a cliche and I should know better but what goes around comes around. My own small contribution to your amazing campaign also lead me to make an amazing new friend and also get a publishing contract. The new friend was definitely down to the Calais Jungle, the publishing contract? I put that down to the cliche :)

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