John Hallam, Maindee Unlimited's Programme Manager, explains in this blog where the charity gets money from to pay its bills:

Who pays the bills?

We started working on the broad regeneration of Maindee in April 2015. Now lots of things have and are happening - and there are bigger plans for the future.

Much of what we do, like connecting people together, costs nothing at all. But there are still bills to be paid and we often get asked where the money comes from for all this.

So here's a run down of our current funders and others, like the Council, who are providing us with things, like the library building, at no charge. 

By the way, if you are interested in this (dry but important?) subject of money, you might also like to have a look at our first set of annual accounts for 2015/16.

 

Arts Council of Wales

In 2015 the Arts Council of Wales awarded us a whopping £365,000 grant for our Finding Maindee project. This pot of money is kickstarting the overall programme and putting the arts in the driving seat of a lot of the change that is now starting to happen. There are six other projects across Wales that received similarly large grants from ACW for "arts-led regeneration. Click here to see more about the other  "Ideas People and Places" projects.

 

Newport City Council

 

In 2015 we approached Newport City Council with an outline plan to redevelop the library and the land on the other side of Chepstow Road  where the public toilets are. Since October 2015 we have been using the library (rent free) under license from the Council on a trial basis. In May 2016 we submitted our full business case for the longer term plan to NCC - who are currently looking at it. The idea is that the library and the land would be leased to our charity by NCC, at zero rent, for 99 years. This arrangement is known as a "community asset transfer". We hope to hear the outcome of all this in Autumn 2016 - and will keep you posted.

 

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation has granted us £50,000, over two years so we can employ paid project staff for Finding Maindee. Aled Singleton and Fez Miah are now both working for us thanks to this fund.

 

Garfield Weston Foundation

The Garfield Weston Foundation has also generously granted us an additonal £20,000 towards the costs of our Finding Maindee project.

 

Big Lottery Fund - CAT2

As part of its "Community Asset Transfer 2" scheme, The Big Lottery Fund awarded us a grant of £50,000 in October 2015 to help us pay for the professional and legal costs of developing our detailed plans for Maindee Triangle. We have now spent all this money by contracting a team of architects, artists, quantity surveyors, landscape architects, highways engineers and so on, to do all the technical, planning and consultation work that is needed for a big project like this. We now have a detailed capital plan, planning permission in place and a full buisness case that explains how the project will run and be financed over the next five years.

As a result of all this, we applied to The Big Lottery for a further £1m to implement these plans. In October 2016 we heard that The Big Lottery liked the social aspects our plan but felt that our proposals were, financially, too ambitious. They have invitied us to resubmit a modified plan in 2017.

So, for now, it's "back to the drawing board" on CAT2 as we work out the best way forward on this.      

 

Big Lottery Fund - Create Your Space 

We are on a bit of a roll with the Big Lottery at the moment as they have have just (June 2016) granted us £20,000 as part of their new Create Your Space programme.

Over the next few months we will be using this money to work with Groundworks Wales and Wastesavers to develop plans to make a real difference to outdoor spaces in Maindee.

Please contact us now at info@maindee.org if you want to become an active part of this exciting new plan.