Virtually There!

What a great start to the launch of the Maidstone United Virtual Stadium with over £1200 raised in the first 24 hours of launch! There's been a lot of work going on developing the idea but it finally launched yesterday and has already attracted over 1000 hits. This is the ideal opportunity to get the people of Maidstone involved in building the new ground, so get referring people to the site and we hope to follow this up by doing one or two roadshows in the town to further increase the profile of this campaign.

The idea is pretty unique and we hope that it will not only attract the attention of the population of Maidstone, but also further afield and fans of other teams. So please do all you can to spread the word and the idea could teally take off.

Coupled with the success of the Christmas draw which raised a further £1600 for the campaign, the totaliser has been ticking over very nicely and we now find ourselves reaching £15,000 as we get to the end of 2009. So thank you to everyone for their efforts so far, lets push on from here and really get the fundraising ball rolling.

Filling Up On Smarties?

One of the first fundraising intiatives set up by the fundraising committee was the 'Smarties Challenge'. A simple concept which allows you to firstly enjoy a tube of smarties then fill it back up with £1 coins. The scheme has been a great success and this month hit the £1000 mark. If you want to take up the challenge then just register with Lyn Brockway and start collecting.

Another very successful fundraiser has been those knitted scarves and teddies. They have been a big hit with fans and have raised over £200 for the campaign. So next time you are in the club shop, have a look at what's on offer, those scarves could come in very useful for those cold winter games!

Finally, don't forget the bucket collections at home games all go into the ground fund, so remember to bring any spare change along to games. This intiative has already raised over £300 so next time you see that bucket, drop in a few pennies, it all counts.

Campaign Gathers Pace

Over the last couple of weeks we've seen the launch of three new events as we aim to reach out to the people of Maidstone and get them involved in fundraising.

The first is the return of the Maidstone United Quiz Night which raised £1000 last time round and we're looking to beat that this year. Entry is just £7.50/person and that includes nibbles plus a chance to win some great prizes in the raffle. Tables are already being snapped up so either email us at the usual address or download and send off the booking form.

The next event organised is a great evening of music with Hobo Jones and The Junkyard Dogs which is taking place on Saturday 27th February at Riano's on Tonbridge Road, Maidstone.  What promises to be a great evening kicks off at 7pm and tickets are prices at just £10 which includes a fish supper. Why not download a poster today and advertise the event at work, local pub etc. and get as many people along as possible.

Finally, most people will remember the fantastic cakes which were on offer at the last 'Fan Cake Day'. Well, the aprons are going back on and it's back on the 28th November for our home game with Convey Island. Once again, we're hoping to go one better than last time out where we raised £231. The match coincides with the comminity day where all of the clubs affiliated team will be coming along.

Finally it's a big thank you to Trudi McLeod our local Avon Rep. Being a Stones fan too, she is combining the two and come up with the idea of all orders received from Stones fans/players/families and The Fox, she will donate 10% of all sales to BTSH. Trudi distributes the catalogues at home games and then returns with the goodies at the next home game!! Easy money maybe a little but often!! Trudi's mobile number is 07718 316026 ander e-mail address is trudley@live.co.uk or on the smtwtgh messagebaord she is 'stone of destiny'.

So things are really taking off with our fundraising efforts and these coupled with our Xams draw (tickets still on sale!) should make a significant impact on our totaliser which passed the £11,000 mark last week. Dn't forget, our first target is £36,000 to get the sub-station installed on the ground, so who knows, we could start the year halfway to that total.

Keep the faith and keep going with those fundraising ideas!

Ticket Sales Going Well

We hope that you all now have at least one book of tickets to sell amongst your family and friends for the Stones Xmas draw. John Robins is your man if you have still to get a book or you can email us directly and we'll send one out straight away. We have also been receiving emails from one or two local businesses who are actively selling tickets, so that's encouraging and hopefully the proceeds from the ticket sales will make another significant contribution to the totaliser. £500 is a great prize and is certainly helping boost ticket sales and we'll be able to announce other prizes on offer very soon.

It was great news last week to see the totaliser tip over the £10,000 mark with it currently standing just below £11,000 and that is of course a great effort in just over 6 months. Remember the last ground appeal campaign which successfully funded our planning application? Well that took a year to reach £10,000 so it just goes to show that we have a bit more momentum now and hopefully we can sustain that. It does also mean that we are almost a third of the way to the cost of a substation, our first target for this campaign so keep selling those tickets!

Don't forget the 400 Club!

Whilst we concentrate on raising funds for the new ground, it is equally important to remember that the club is without a home game in October. By joining the 400 club not only do you stand a chance of winning the monthly prize of around £300, but also maintains a valuable stream of income to meet the day to day running costs of the club. You can join by following the this link.

Anyway, back to the BTSH campaign and don't forget the Christmas Raffle is now underway and you can start selling tickets to anyone and everyone! With a top prize of £500 it's a draw worth entering so make sure you get your tickets from John Robins either on matchdays or by contacting us at maidstoneunited@live.co.uk

BTSH Starts Blogging!

Welcome to the first blog from the BTSH campaign in what will hopefully be an opportunity for you to keep up to date on the latest fundraising news as we look to raise £250,000 to Bring The Stones Home!

So what’s happened so far? Well our current totaliser reads £7556 which is a great effort considering fundraising only really kicked off in March this year. Many of you have come up with ideas for fundraising and some of these have already taken place, including the quiz night, the Derby Draw, the smarties challenge and of course the Sponsored Walk and LEJoG.

The two big problems we do face is that one, whilst ideas seem to be coming in most seem to focus on raising the money through supporters of the club, and that’s a big ask from a supporter base of 3-400 supporters. The other problem is that whilst ideas do come in, these ideas need people to lead them to fruition and whilst the committee has been working hard to run as many of the projects as possible, we’d need a committee of about 100 to implement all the fundraising ideas that have been sent through. However, we do consider all ideas and the committee tries to prioritise them accordingly within the resources we have.

And so to the big complaints about the campaign. First of all, we continue to emphasise that this campaign is completely independent of the football club and any decisions to be made about the funds will be made by the supporters and supporters alone. We have established a structure of area reps who will act as links between the fans and the main committee and it will be this structure which will be used in order to make any decisions about the use of the funds.

Secondly the committee itself is being run by supporters for the supporters, and since Bill stepped down as chair, we are now a fully independent committee of supporters with Peter Phillpott as chair. Ian Tucker, whilst a being a club official has been co-opted to the committee in order for us to benefit from his expertise in terms of publicity and communications which will be important for the campaign if we are to raise its profile to the general population. If you want to know more about your committee, details of who’s who are now online in the ‘Get Involved’ area of the site.

Finally it’s a big thank you to all our fundraisers for the efforts that have gone into the campaign so far. It may seem a big target to reach but if you think that our first target is this sub-station then we have already made significant progress towards that total. Many of you know that we made our one-off donation to the club of £2333 so now every penny we raise will be used to Bring The Stones Home!

Keep the Faith!