Appeal for Support of Tractor Raffle and Club Lotto
St Michaels has gone through a significant period of expansion over the past number of years. The development of Deerpark has enabled the club to grow in both LGFA and GAA.
Currently there are 236 juvenile players in St Michaels which is 40% higher than 5 years ago. We are very proud that 50% of our juvenile players are girls and LGFA is thriving in our
club. We became a ONE club in 2021 and are committed to equal support for our LGFA and GAA members. Both of our Adult Mens and Ladies teams have equally club supported
Management Teams in place. We are committed to adopting new practices, for example, we have introduced a Strength and Conditioning program for all of our players from u15 up to
Adult level for both Ladies and Mens and are in the process of completing a club gym for members. We currently have 46 coaches at juvenile level alone and are rolling out a series of
workshops and training to continue to grow and develop knowledge in coaching and games.
This years 2022 projected Club Budget spend is 94k euro to run the club. The breakdown of the spend is;
• 42keuro directly on Football Coaching and Games related costs (coaching, physio, team affiliations, strength and conditioning, player injury fund and insurance)
• 52k on facilities operations and maintenance costs (both pitches, lights, hall, Deerpark walking track etc..)
We wish to appeal for your support to contribute to the day to day running of the club for 2022 to meet our fundraising target in our 2022 budget of 44keuro. In previous years our
club lotto has been the main source of funding but its support has declined significantly throughout Covid and has not recovered and is trending at 45% of pre-Covid sales.
You may have recently read that we have received approval for a 99.5k euro Sports Capital Grant to develop a Multi-use Games area(MUGA) in Deerpark. Whilst we are very grateful to receive the approval it doesn’t cover the full projected cost of 147k euro. In some ways, the approval may give a false impression that we are now on a sound financial footing for 2022 but nothing could be further from the truth.
Our plan is two-fold to separate out the immediate 2022 Budget need (44keuro) and the shortfall funding of a MUGA construction project (47.5keuro).
(1) Short-term Raise 44k euro for 2022 to cover day to day immediate running costs through tractor raffle and lotto.
Tractor Raffle – The budget targets to generate 20k euro profit from the Tractor raffle. Our target was to sell 600 tickets but we have only so far sold 175. 200 ticket sales only breaks-
even on the cost of the Tractor and the 5keuro we spent on its restoration.
Club lotto – The budget targets to generate 24k euro this year from Lotto. Our sales last year were only 13k euro which was well down on previous years.
(2) MUGA - raise 47.5k euro shortfall for the MUGA spread out across 4 years loan but beginning with a fundraiser towards the end of 2022.
Our plan is to begin design and tendering of the new MUGA this month and establish accurate pricing. Once this is understood we plan to hold a larger fundraiser towards the back-end of 2022 coupled with a 4 year loan. The MUGA is envisaged for use by all of our local communities not just for our immedi ate Carlanstown/Kilbeg area. The idea arose from a community survey in which this option was selected as most preferable and catered for Basketball, Mini-tennis, One-wall, Soccer as well as GAA sports. We appreciate the need for
such a sports facility for our community and don’t wish to delay in its construction as every year is precious for our young people especially coming out of Covid.
We appeal for your continued support and wish to be fully transparent on the club finances and the challenges we face. If you wish to find out more please do not hesitate to contact any member of the Executive Committee or email Secretary.stmichaels.meath@gaa.ie.
