Donations and preparations

We are working frantically to get things ready for Saturday morning, which will be our first Open Morning offering merchandise. We have ordered newspapers, fresh eggs, local icecream, croissants, sweeties and chocolates, and have many samples of local produce to show people. We hope to have our bake-off oven up and running, and on Friday we are collecting (thanks to David Jakes and his van!) a chiller cabinet, drinks fridge and upright freezer kindly donated by Paul Teague. In addition Paul and Tony Moriarty are giving us an electronic till. Alan Wyle is bringing us some Sussex produce.
Meanwhile Gordon Saxby has sorted out the website and that should be live in a day or two. It gives people the opportunity to download share application forms, should they wish!
The donations keep coming in steadily at the rate of about three or four hundred pounds a week.

Logos and certificates

With a great combination of artist and graphic artist, Tania Coffey and Trevor Reaveley respectively, we've got a terrific logo and the artwork for the share certificates, to be printed by Netherne Print shortly, and then Liz Knight has volunteered to writes people's names on certificates with her calligraphic skills. She may need some help as 350 is a tall order for one person!
Kelvin Bagley of Netherne Print is being tremendously helpful - we have just had 1500 leaflets about the Open Morning on May 3rd printed at incredibly short notice. These have now gone out in the May parish mag, thanks to Graham Power and all the distributors.

Open Morning on 3rd May

We are having an open morning on Saturday 3rd May from 9.30am till 1pm, and we hope plenty of people will come and sample what we're offering: a range of local Surrey and Sussex produce, including ice cream from St Joan's Farm in Leigh (which we shall offer by the cone as well as tubs - so we hope the weather improves!), newspapers, local eggs, croissants, sweets, cakes etc. We are asking people to donate to this by providing us with home-made and home-grown produce (we understand allotment produce can be donated but not sold by the grower), good quality magazines, books, CDs and DVDs, and plants - both seedlings and divided perennials to help with everyone's spring planting. So please - get baking and growing! We'll also be serving tea and coffee and fruit juices. Hopefully this will become a regular event in the fund-raising months.
We have been donated a large bake-off oven from a shop in Burgess Hill (just need to figure out how to plumb it in!), and we are hoping to receive some other equipment shortly. The committee has been a bit depleted during the Easter hols but hopefully everyone will return full of vigour!
Share applications keep coming in - we're up to approx £12600 - and Leigh Residents Association have made a generous donation - thankyou all so much!

Climbing the mountain of red tape

Progress with share sales continues - over 330 sold to date - so we are preparing to print the share certificates. The website is progressing well and we hope to have it running soon. Meanwhile Jane has struggled to get some feedback from Surrey CC Highways, as we hope to have the footpath/kerbs altered to make for safe access in and out of the new shopfront. Finally she got through to Helyn Clack, our County Councillor, who has sent us a message of support - "I wish you every success in your new venture!" - and has arranged for the Community Highways officer to give us a call. Here's hoping!
We have lots of fundraising plans which we hope to put into operation next month onwards. Everything seems to have rules and regs attached, so that takes up a lot of time!
The Dorking Advertiser has published a good article this week on our Core grant. Hopefully that will remind a few people to fill out their share applications! If anyone wants a new application form, please email us on stroodgreenshop@gmail.com.
We'd love some feedback!

Fundraising update

We are almost 3/5 of our way to £20,000. The latest total is £11,960, which is magnificent. We have to keep the momentum going and Jo is contacting various local organisations to appeal for more. We've also got some fundraising schemes in the pipleline, the biggest of which will be the event on the 4th of July, so keep the date free. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far, it keeps us going when we see the support we have in real terms. If anyone has any other ideas they think would create more money we would love to hear from you.