Capital appeal support helps £2.2m church renovation over the line

Background
Beeston Methodist Church is one of five Methodist churches in the Nottingham area that consolidated into one, Beeston being that one. The sale of the other churches raised £1.5million, to be used towards modernising the Beeston church.

A project budget of £1.7million was set, leaving them with £200,000 more to raise. Having encountered Action Planning several years earlier in connection with a seminar on capital appeals, they contacted our CEO Sean Tully to discuss how we could help.

“We originally said we could do it ourselves,” said trustee Martin Weir, “but as time went by it became obvious that we hadn’t either got the expertise or the time to do it on our own. It was the recognition that to put a project together of this nature is a big undertaking. There weren’t a lot of us and none of us had any fundraising experience. It was a big job and we’re all busy, so it made sense to put some money into the budget for fundraising and it was well worth it.”

Brief
After several conversations with Martin and his fellow trustees, we were briefed to help put together a capital appeal to raise £200k.

Process
They had already asked their congregation for donations and they had contributed, so the first step for us was to look at the grants funding opportunities. We researched grants funding pots relevant to what they were doing, gathered evidence and wrote a case for support, drafted funding applications and acted as a critical friend with their bids.

Emma Goulds did most of the work, while Sean managed the relationship locally (Beeston is very close to where he lives). There were several meetings and numerous emails back and forth, adapting the case for support for each application submitted, and giving feedback where they didn’t understand what a particular question was asking for.

“Sean and Emma challenged our ideas,” said Martin. “For example, we talked about making our church a hub for local musicians – we have one or two people who were into music – but that wasn’t in the original bid. They said you’ve got to be able to justify what it is you’re putting forward, so we watered that down a bit.”

Outcome
In the end the total project cost came to just under £2.2million inc VAT, but the capital appeal, along with the congregational donations and the land sales, covered that to within about £5,000.

For that they renovated the worship space, taking out the old pews, two of the side balconies, levelled the floor, installed step-free access, new accessible toilets, a new AV system, refurbished the pipe organ, new heating, a new boiler and solar panels discreetly installed on the roof (the church is in a conservation area). The result is a flexible worship space that is available for community use, eg concerts, classes and conferences.

“We’ve had to make a few alterations as we’ve gone along to make sure we don’t overspend, and we’ve used up all the contingency, but to be only five grand short is pretty amazing really,” said Martin.

Consultants’ insight
This was a prime example of how a seed sown one day can germinate several year later into a highly productive relationship. Our initial conversations with Beeston Methodist Church took place in 2019, in relation to a capital appeals seminar that never took place. A follow-up phone call sowed the seed and Martin contacted us again in 2023, by which time they had the money from the other church sales and congregation.

We started work in 2024, five years after that initial contact, and continued to support the project almost to completion early in 2026. This is the typical lifecycle of a church capital appeal and we were delighted to see the outcome of their patience and dedication to the cause.