We would like to send a big thank you to all who voted for us in the Energyshare competition for funding. We did fantastically well and kept Portobello & Leith Community Wind Energy Project on their toes to the end. We managed to accrue 4,712 supporters before voting closed. Unfortunately not all these supporters voted in the final phase and we finished 53 votes behind the leaders.
Our project will continue as planned and your on-going support in our fund raising efforts is essential to our success. We believe that participating in this contest has raised the profile of our project and given us experience in large fund bids. Watch this space for more updates!
You are magnificent! I have been overwhelmed by the momentum that you have generated amongst your friends and colleagues. I am afraid that I must ask that you continue to engage others in the conversation about what we are trying to achieve and encourage more people to vote in the final few days. With a little extra campaigning I am sure that each one of us could get at least one more person to vote each day.
With less than four days of voting left it is incredible that the contest has been so close in the Medium category. Our challengers are pushing hard to capture more votes than us each day and they have shown that they can catch us. We need to be sure that we are out of reach by Saturday or risk everything in the final sprint to the finish!
I wish to remind all our supporters that it is also possible to vote in the other categories; this does not harm our chances. You may wish to consider the groups listed in my previous update if you have no particular project that captures your vote for other reasons. The key message here is please vote in all categories!
I have been a little more low profile in recent days due to other pressures. As a consequence, my opportunities to tweet, blog, update and campaign in a more conventional method have been limited. To my delight I have seen evidence that many of our supporters have taken matters into their own hands with public displays, poster campaigns and general lobbying!
Thank you all for everything that you have done so far and all that you will do to support our campaign and project in the days and months ahead. If we keep this up our community energy project could be a reality and our Scout and Guide groups will be at the heart of it all showing us all how much more can be done!
When you login to vote (500 registered supporters have still not voted) or just to monitor our progress please think of the groups in other categories. We have received great support in this final round from a number of groups. Some are local to us, others are focussed on supporting young people and some just like what we are aiming to do.
I would encourage you to look at all the other projects and make your choice about who to support in the Large and Small categories. Most are not in the close race that we are experiencing but all could be better off with votes from a significant number of our supporters. Voting for them will not harm our campaign.
In the large category:
The Hub at Lyme Regis is fairly local to us and has encouraged members to vote in support of our project. We also hope to work with them (and other local projects) to attract more media attention in the South.
In the small category there is to be two awards but you can only vote once:
All Saints Wokingham is our nearest group. They have encouraged their supporters to vote for us.
Southern Unitarians have also asked their supporters to vote for our project.
Millhouses Mill building project in Sheffield has also contacted their supporters to vote for us
Thank you for your patience and support.
Regards
Andy
@oldbasingtweets
Voting has started. We are falling behind. We need everyone to log on and vote at www.energyshare.com/voting and find Old Basing Baden Powell Centre for Scouts and Guides in the medium category (red). Please vote as soon as you can and pass on this link.
You simply must take a moment to look at our new team photo and share the link! We were all so excited to be through to the voting round that the young hopefuls nearly bounced of the planet. Please make sure that everyone knows that voting starts on Tuesday 15th November.
We need everyone in the UK to vote if we are to get these bouncing beans back in their own building by the end of 2012!
With your help our number of supporters continues to grow; thank you. We need to keep this trend up and grow more quickly if we are to win the national vote stage. If you tweet please search for #scouthut and retweet those messages. Your followers could become our supporters!
We have 694 registered supporters today. Our target should be a couple of thousand if we can. We can achieve this if we all find two more supporters before 15 November! With more supporters we have a chance of earning more votes.
I will provide more detail about the voting process when we have it. The good news is that we are in with a very good chance of winning this grant.
I have some fantastic news for everyone who has supported us in our bid for Energyshare funding. We are through to the final round; a public vote!
There are 30 projects through to this final stage but they are subdivided into three categories; based on size of bid. We are shortlisted in the medium scale category of projects and do not know how many we are competing against. There will only be one winner in our category so we need to muster as much support as possible in the next few weeks.
Please spread the word and look out for more information by these updates, local press, posters and postcards that I will get printed and distributed around the village. If anyone has any links to help us with a bigger campaign your support would be much appreciated.
Thank you all for your support so far and your ongoing help to get this award.
We have some more news to share about our bid for funding from Energyshare. We have submitted our second stage proposal and this is being assessed by the experts. There will be an announcement on Wednesday 26th October to confirm those that have reached the final 30 projects in consideration for this round of funding.
If we get through this last formal sift our chance of success will be down to the level of public support that we can develop by voting in the week of 14th November. Please spread the word so that we can get all our supporters to vote (and their freinds).
It is excellent to see that support for our group continues to grow especially after so many supporters rushed to register before 30 June. Your efforts were well appreciated and we reached the first round deadline (midnight on 30 June) with 612 votes of support; we are now at 635. This level of support will improve our chances of including a community renewable energy aspect in our plans to build a new village Guide and Scout HQ building.
Energyshare have just set up a blog to keep you up to date on what's happening. They will post some general feedback and helpful tips after the 12th July and we do not expect confirmation of the short list until them. Thanks to your support I expect that we will be on the short list and we will then continue with our bid.
We are in the process of selecting an appropriate Architect or Chartered Surveyor (RICS) to draw up our new building plans. We are also plan to arrange for a ground survey to be completed shortly. These activities will continue in parallel to our work on the Energyshare bid documentation.
If you are on twitter you can search on #scouthut to follow what we are doing. If you tweet in support please include #scouthut in your message.
