Joining the Play Revolution

A common misconception about Eureka! is that we are a commercial visitor attraction …many people simply don’t know we are a non-profit charity.  This is something we hope to tackle in the coming months, as we give you, our visitors, a lot more information about the work we do in the museum and beyond in our outreach programmes.

As an educational charity we receive no government funding. Our museum and activities are funded by our admission fees, fundraising and commercial activities like our shop and cafe. Therefore, every single voluntary donation makes an incredible difference.

Our next major project is the development of our new flagship exhibition Me and My World.  This will replace the much loved Me and My Body gallery, but don’t worry – we will make sure we retain and update some of your favourite exhibits!  The new exhibition will cost a grand total of £2.9m of which we have already raised £2.1m, so we are well on our way to reaching this total but there is still a lot of work to do.

As one of the thousands of people that read our blog every year, we hope you can do one simple thing to help out.  Quite simply, we need 5 minutes of your time.  Eureka! has registered on the Co-operative Revolution campaign where you can vote for your favourite revolution.  Eureka! of course is leading the play revolution so simply follow the link provided and register your vote.  The most popular revolution in each region will be awarded £5,000 and if all our readers take a few minutes to do this, we’re in with a good chance! 

It won’t cost you a penny, and will help us achieve our vision of an exhibition which will inspire a whole new group of children who, like their parents before them, will look back on days spent at Eureka! as some of the most magical learning moments of their childhood.

You can register and vote online on the Co-operative Revolution website.

Kate Goldring is the Fundraising Manager at Eureka! The National Children's Museum.

Making a 'Big Give' for Eureka!

As a charity, fundraising at Eureka! is always busy, as we develop and fund new outreach programmes for schools and the local community or raise money to improve the museum itself. But 2010 has been a particularly interesting and varied year, not least of which because we’ve been working to raise 2.9 million pounds!

The majority of our efforts this year have been spent fundraising for the new flagship gallery, Me and My World.  Me and My World will be the reinvention of the existing Me and My Body Gallery, one of our most famous and beloved galleries.  With the financial climate as it is currently it has been really difficult at times to make any headway, but now we are in a really good position, having raised £1.7m towards our final target of £2.9m. With the gallery set to be launched in 2012, we still have a long way to go, but the progress has been good.

Artist's conception of exhibits in Me and My World

Our most recent adventure in fundraising for Me and My World is something totally new for Eureka!.  We have been selected to take part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge.  This is an online fundraising idea that aims to get our visitors and supporters donating online.  All donations made between 6th December and 10th December will then be doubled.  This felt incredibly daunting at first as we have not tried to fundraise in this way before and we were unsure how it would be received, so we have been working hard to make sure that we get it right.

First of all we had to secure a £5,000 pledge to act as some of the match funding.  Eureka! is in the fortunate position that our Chair of Trustees wanted to make this pledge which made things much easier for us.  We could then set about talking to other trustees and ex-trustees to seek their support during the fundraising week in December.  This exercise was also successful and we have secured pledges to donate on the 6th December totalling £5,500! 

Our next step will be to send out e-mails to all our visitors and business contacts to seek their support.  It’s hard to gauge how much people will want to support our campaign, but we won’t know until we try.  With Eureka!’s success as a visitor attraction many people will not recognise our role as an educational charity which makes it even harder to ask for support in reaching our £20,000 target.

We hope that everyone who has visited Eureka! (including me back in 1992 when I was ten with my brother Dan and my Auntie Carol) and had an amazing experience talking to Scoot, learning about Archimedes and most importantly playing in Marks and Spencer’s will see the value in making sure the museum is renewed and refreshed for the next generation of children.

The Big Give will be taking place from 10am on December 6th 2010 and donations will be doubled up until December 10th.  You can donate by visiting the Eureka! Big Give website or learn more about what we have been up to on our website or by contacting the Fundraising Team.

Kate Goldring is the Fundraising Manager for Eureka! The National Children's Museum