We were going to wait until “Giving Season” starts in December to start a fresh fundraiser, but now can’t afford to do that. We have several things in the pipeline to bolster our case (charity registration, compiling more outputs, more fundraising posts detailing the case for the hotel, hiring round for the Community & Projects Manager, refining internal systems), but they may not reach fruition in time unfortunately.
I’d expect the EA hotel to have fairly constant operating costs (and thus reliable forecasts of runway remaining). So I’d be keen to know what happened to leave the EA hotel out of position where its planned fundraising efforts would occur after they had already run out of money.
More directly, I’m concerned that the already-linked fb group discussion suggests the EA hotel bought the derelict building next door. I hesitate to question generosity, and it is unclear when this happened—or how much it cost—but CapEx (especially in this case where the CapEx doesn’t secure more capacity but an option on more capacity, as further investment is needed to bring it online) when one has scarce reserves and uncertain funding looks inopportune.
I bought the hotel next door with my own money, and I’ve not spent any of the EA Hotel’s money on it. Given it’s relatively low cost, I see it as a decent investment largely independent of the EA Hotel (i.e. even if the EA Hotel fails I think there’s a reasonable chance property prices will go up in Blackpool in the next 5-10 years).
Perhaps in terms of maximising my positive impact it would’ve been best for me to donate the money to the EA Hotel. I think that remains to be seen though. Although I think I probably was a little over-optimistic about the funding prospects for the EA Hotel at the time, in hindsight.
(Note the timing of the purchase wasn’t ideal. It came up for auction. Strategically, I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to enable the EA Hotel to easily expand (i.e. through knocking through the wall and using all same resources in terms of kitchen, appliances, stock etc) in the event it is successful enough to warrant it.)
From the body of the top post and this page: https://eahotel.org/fundraiser/, it sounds like they had estimated they would spend £5000 per month but instead spent £5700 per month. That may have contributed to running out early.
The £5000/month was an estimate based on earlier spending. Our costs are variable dependent on occupancy, hours worked by staff, random maintenance costs etc. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t adjust the totaliser earlier based on the actual spend, and I considered just paying out of my own pocket to hide the mistake, given that it’s likely to be a black mark against me/the EA Hotel (and there seems to be very little tolerance for mistakes in EA these days). I hope at least some people appreciate the honesty.
I’d expect the EA hotel to have fairly constant operating costs (and thus reliable forecasts of runway remaining). So I’d be keen to know what happened to leave the EA hotel out of position where its planned fundraising efforts would occur after they had already run out of money.
More directly, I’m concerned that the already-linked fb group discussion suggests the EA hotel bought the derelict building next door. I hesitate to question generosity, and it is unclear when this happened—or how much it cost—but CapEx (especially in this case where the CapEx doesn’t secure more capacity but an option on more capacity, as further investment is needed to bring it online) when one has scarce reserves and uncertain funding looks inopportune.
I bought the hotel next door with my own money, and I’ve not spent any of the EA Hotel’s money on it. Given it’s relatively low cost, I see it as a decent investment largely independent of the EA Hotel (i.e. even if the EA Hotel fails I think there’s a reasonable chance property prices will go up in Blackpool in the next 5-10 years).
Perhaps in terms of maximising my positive impact it would’ve been best for me to donate the money to the EA Hotel. I think that remains to be seen though. Although I think I probably was a little over-optimistic about the funding prospects for the EA Hotel at the time, in hindsight.
(Note the timing of the purchase wasn’t ideal. It came up for auction. Strategically, I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to enable the EA Hotel to easily expand (i.e. through knocking through the wall and using all same resources in terms of kitchen, appliances, stock etc) in the event it is successful enough to warrant it.)
From the body of the top post and this page: https://eahotel.org/fundraiser/, it sounds like they had estimated they would spend £5000 per month but instead spent £5700 per month. That may have contributed to running out early.
I guess the question could remain where the extra £700/month came from.
Is this really important? A discrepancy of £700 relative to the £5000 projection seems acceptable to me.
The £5000/month was an estimate based on earlier spending. Our costs are variable dependent on occupancy, hours worked by staff, random maintenance costs etc. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t adjust the totaliser earlier based on the actual spend, and I considered just paying out of my own pocket to hide the mistake, given that it’s likely to be a black mark against me/the EA Hotel (and there seems to be very little tolerance for mistakes in EA these days). I hope at least some people appreciate the honesty.
I was just thinking that I didn’t really answer Gregory_Lewis’s question.
The Facebook link isn’t working for me. Can someone from the EA Hotel confirm: did you buy the building next door?
I bought it, for £47k (see above).