A roof on the boat shed
The last unroofed structure on the river frontage. It holds nothing but stacked timber now. Covered, it would be a workshop for the boat-building group who currently meet in a car park.
The Foundation
Money that comes off the leases before anyone here sees it
A small fund, spent close to home, run by the people paying into it.
The Ravensworth Wharf Foundation is funded by a fixed share of every rent on this site and by the pitch fees from the Sunday market. It is taken before the quarter's own accounts, which means it does not depend on a good year, and nobody has to be talked into it annually.
It is governed by the tenants. Four trustees are elected from the businesses here, two are from the streets immediately around the site, and none of them is the landlord. That arrangement is the reason the fund spends on things we would never have chosen, which is a feature and occasionally an argument.
What it will not do is fund the quarter. No grant has ever gone to a building on this site, to a tenant's own business, or to anything with our name on the front of it. The fund exists because a place like this changes the streets around it whether or not anyone plans for that, and this is the only part of the change we get to plan.
Grants are small, decided four times a year, and applied for on two sides of paper. Anyone within about a mile of the gate can ask.
Open now
What the fund is being asked for at the moment
Four appeals, all open. We do not publish a running total while one is live, because a number on a page changes how people give and not for the better. What was raised and what it bought is published when each one closes.
Tools for the makers' course
Hand tools and safety kit, kept by the studios and lent to anyone on the course who owns none. Most people arrive owning none, which was not what we assumed when it started.
Lighting the river path
The stretch between our gate and the bridge is unlit, and that decides who is willing to walk it after four in the afternoon for half the year.
First-winter market pitches
Pitch fees covered for traders in their first winter here, paid by the fund rather than by the traders around them. Winter is where new stalls fail, and it is rarely about the trading.
Give
Give to the fund
One-off or monthly, and it goes into the fund rather than to a named appeal unless you tell us otherwise in the box at the bottom.
What the fund paid for, three times a year
Three emails a year: what was asked for, what was given, and what it turned into. Nothing else is ever sent to this list.
Used for these three emails and nothing else, and one click stops them for good.