What is Spacehive?

Oving Scarecrow Day is a not-for-profit event. The only money we make is by selling refreshments and raffle tickets. The small organising team is joined by a larger group of volunteers on the actual day. We are all volunteers, none of us take any money out for doing anything. The money we receive from the sales of teas, etc., is kept in the bank so that we can afford to put on the day next year. This money is used to pay for insurance, signs, barriers, supplies, etc. That way we keep all costs to an absolute minimum to ensure that everyone can join in without having to worry about whether they can afford it. We have four local sponsors who sponsor the trophies and they are very loyal and generous in also supplying the tractor / trailer rides, space at Madam Green Farm, etc.

The day is becoming a mini arts festival and, whilst we have local choirs, local music groups, local craft groups, we like to encourage other groups and explore what they can offer, such as the fantastic Sussex Steel band and the very popular Wessex Ferret group. We had been fortunate in receiving funding from WSCC for theatre groups such as the Human Juke Box two years ago. These acts we book through applause.com which is funded by rural county councils with the purpose of bringing live theatre and music to rural areas. Thereby giving new Acts a chance to perform and us a chance of seeing some amazing talent.

However, WSCC changed its way of dealing with grant applications last January to working with spacehive.com, a crowd funding site and we felt unable to make an application. But we are trying this year and we have applied to the WSCC Community Initiative Fund (CIF) via Spacehive. com.

Having made our application and had it verified, we need to show community support to demonstrate that the community appreciate the celebration day before it goes before the WSCC funding panel. We understand that we have been pledged £200 ( not yet in writing) from WSCC (CIF) but we still need to show community support.

Please could we ask that you show your support by ‘liking’ Oving Scarecrow Day.

To do this go to your web browser and type in spacehive.com

Go to the bottom of the home page

Search for Oving Scarecrows

Ours is the only Oving project, so tap or click on the scarecrow image

Tap or click ‘like’

You will now be asked to ‘create your profile’, by this they mean put in your email ID and password. This is so that they can inform you of how the Oving Scarecrow Day project (their word for us) is progressing. You can change your preferences when you get your first email if you don’t want to know.

What are Pledges?

If you feel able, please make a pledge, this need only be a pound or two. It is the equivalent of setting up a one-off direct debit, which only gets claimed if and when the project is successful in raising the total funding. Our cutoff date is the beginning of May 2019. This is to demonstrate that we are willing to put some of our own money in to show faith in the project.

If you don’t want to leave your bank details here, although the site says they are secure, you can always put some cash in an envelope and we will make the pledge on your behalf. We will keep records, so we can give it back if we do not raise enough money through this grant application. But we will still have Oving Scarecrow Day!

Thank you for reading this and thank you in advance for ’liking’ us.

Oving Scarecrow trustees and organising team.

Should you wish to contact anyone on the team directly about any matter to do with the day, please do so via the Facebook page (see the link at the foot of this and every page).