We have tried to answer some of your questions about the Railway Museum extension and its funding below.
- Is the match funding dependent on all of the money being raised? Is it all or nothing?
- The match funding is applied as donations are made. So if you donate £100 then it matched by our match funding donor straight away. If we can claim gift aid on your donation then your £100 becomes £125, and it is this sum that will double via the match funding. So your £100 is worth £250 to the project.
- Will match funding be withdrawn if we don’t reach the target by the end of the year.
- If we are short at the end of the year the match funding already given remains in place. We will obviously discuss with our donor the possibility of extending his match funding generosity. He has said though that he hopes that the public’s support for the project will be as strong as his and we should have reached our target well before year end! Let’s hope that the public do support the appeal and our match funder is not disappointed…
- Can Gift Aid be applied to my donation regardless of the amount?
- Yes, it doesn’t matter how much you donate, we can still claim Gift Aid as long as you pay UK tax. The amount we can reclaim can’t exceed the amount of tax you have paid in the tax year.
- Does all the money need to be in place before the project can commence?
- No. As soon as we have enough for the building work we will place the order for that.
- Can you save money by doing much of the work yourselves?
- Absolutely! The project has been costed based on our volunteers, doing everything they are able to do. Track laying, timber work, path lay, painting. You name it, if we can do it, we will be doing it. This obviously means that we need as many volunteers as possible to come along to our work parties. This is not just for the museum extension project, but we need to make sure we have finished other tasks so we are ready when the time comes. We’ll be having a big push to clear the decks, most notably with the line-side clearance work. Your help is just as valuable to our projects.
- Have you applied for grants to help fund the project?
- The railway museum project is difficult to fund via grants. It isn’t an old building being restored, the new extension area is a restoration space so we are not even adding museum display space. The Discovery Project will be a much better fit for grant funding, plus you can’t keep applying for grants to the same sources. It’s a case of grant funding being better suited to upcoming projects rather than the railway museum extension.
- What’s happened to the Discovery Building project? Are you no longer going to do that?
- The Discovery Project is still, most definitely, in the pipeline. It’s far too important to us. Much work is going on behind the scenes to explore funding possibilities. One of our project partners, De Montfort University, have very kindly agreed to employ a funding researcher to seek out possible grant sources that are a good match for the project. This person will be on an 18 hour a week, 6 weeks contract, purely for our benefit. This is fantastic of the university to do this for us and shows their strength of feeling towards the Discovery Project.
If you have any queries or you would like to donate on-line then contact us via donate.2019@heritage-centre.co.uk.
If you would like to donate by cheque then we have a Donation Form which includes a Gift Aid Declaration for you to complete. Please send cheques made payable to “DCRT” (The David Clarke Railway Trust) to 240 Swithland Lane, Rothley, Leicestershire. LE7 7UE (Please write ‘Museum Building Extension’ on the reverse of cheques).
