We’re on our way—but with a large mortgage, we still have further to go.
The big St. Ives news of 2023 has been that we bought the Edward Hain building from the NHS and created the new Edward Hain Centre for Health & Wellbeing. A long-time dream come true, this was achieved with the donation of considerable funds raised by our Friends from their amazing events, as well as a number of very generous individual donations.
But did you know that we have also have a £400,000 mortgage? It turns out that many people don’t.
To explain: the funds raised over many years by the Friends (including in 2022) did not meet the building’s purchase price— especially when you add in the substantial legal, accounting, advisory, and other professional fees involved over long months of negotiation. To bridge the gap, while making sure we had enough in hand to cover our first year’s running costs, we applied for a building society loan which, thankfully, we received.
Reality check 1: our mortgage repayments cost us about £2500 per month. 😱
In addition, we’ve had other costs: some expected, like safety checks, certifications, new IT and phone lines, insurance, and our fabulous full-time manager; and some unexpected, like boiler and lift repairs (still ongoing) and tree removal after Storm Ciaran. Then of course there are pesky utility bills. Despite all this, we were nevertheless able to get some refurbishment done in order to accommodate the NHS Diabetic Eye Screening clinic in November.
So a LOT has happened in the 3 months since our open weekend launch. (See also our earlier post, Behind the Scenes). But there is still a LOT MORE we need to do to get fully up and running.
Reality Check 2: In order to achieve this, we still need funds!
Where we’re headed in 2024
We have enough in hand to cover running costs into 2024— but not for repairs and refurbishment. The centre manager and trustees are hard at work on a road map for renovations, which we’ll outline as early as we can in the new year. And the Friends are hard at work planning events for the year ahead. Together, we are working on other fundraising strategies to obtain more immediate funding.
One of these will be a series of ‘Asking for Angels’ posts on social media, starting immediately – so keep a look out for those! We are also applying for grants, which we feel confident about receiving; but they can take months to come through. There is also a building team lined up to renovate. So all we need now is for it to rain pounds (and pounds…)
Turning Dreams into Reality
2023 saw the realisation of our dream to buy the Edward Hain and start the new centre. Our dream now is to see a fully-opened Edward Hain Centre, with health and wellbeing services of all kinds being available to the community. We know it will take hard work and time to get there. But we also know that dreams do come true— after all, that’s how we got where we are. So let’s keep dreaming and make sure that the big St. Ives news of 2024 is a flourishing Edward Hain Centre for health and wellbeing, with lovely, newly renovated rooms. Are you ready to help us get there? We hope so!
