New stretch target

Firstly, thank you.

Thank you so much to everyone who has donated, shared and supported this project. The London LGBTQ+ Community Centre has taken a huge step forward into opening its doors by hitting our target, and we couldn’t have done that without all of you.

Every donation, whether £1 or £1000+, is going to change the lives of LGBTQ+ people today and for generations to come. Your generosity means the world, and we really mean that. History is being made.

With your help, we have managed, thanks to you, to reach our £50k target with six days to go. That’s 144 hours, to be precise.

Because of your incredible support, particularly in the last couple of days as the clock ticked on, we’ve decided to extend our target. We could never have dreamed of doing this weeks ago.

It’s a huge task, and one we aren’t taking on lightly. We know how generous our nearly 1,500 supporters we have have already been, and we know how much of your time, energy and cash you have already given.

But, we wouldn’t be setting out to stretch our target if we didn’t think it was possible, and, more importantly, it’ll take us a whole lot closer to making London’s LGBTQ+ Community Centre a reality. Here’s why:

As it says on our Crowdfunder page, we have estimated we need £100,000 in the bank to fit out a 4,000 Square Foot space. Initially, we intended on raising half of that money from this crowdfund, and the other half from grants, trusts and individual donors. But, here’s the thing: we’d much rather be approaching funds, trusts, City Hall and councils to help us provide support and services in the Centre, to employ staff, and to provide for our community.

Those income streams are much better suited to helping us carry out our work once we open, and we can then ask for regular support.

We didn’t think that it would be possible for us to do it this way, but thanks to you, it looks like we can.

This means in the next few months we can focus on continuing to learn from and with every member of our community, to make a centre that is for everyone. When we approach those major donors and trusts, we know already we’ll be able to open our doors.

We’ve also been busy working hard behind the scenes holding fundraising events, which means we had about £8,000 in our bank account yesterday. And then today, something magical happened - a generous donor transferred us £16,000. More on that soon.

So here’s where we are. In the next 144 hours, we want to do what just a few weeks ago seemed impossible. We want to finish this Crowdfunder with £100,000. To get there, we’re going to stretch our target to £75,000. That’s half again of what we have raised, in just six days. We’ve raised over £12k in the last three days alone - so if we keep up this amazing momentum together we can make this happen.

We cannot tell you how excited and grateful we are to have got this far already. The support this project has received - both in donations and love - has confirmed just how needed the London LGBTQ+ Community Centre truly is. With your help, by stretching our target, we’re going to get a whole lot closer.

And don’t worry, if we don’t hit our stretch target, we don’t lose everything that has already been raised.

Thank you so much for your support. Let’s do this, together.

London LGBTQ+ Community Centre x