Darlington fans hit £1m fundraising milestone
A group of non-league football fans who began raising money to save their football club over six years ago have just hit the £1m mark on their mission.
Darlington FC is now a supporter-run club and the fans have been raising funds since the club entered administration in January 2012.
At the beginning of their fundraising £50,000 was raised quickly but since then the fundraising has continued and supporters are responsible for providing the financial support still to this day and in their time running the club the Quakers have returned to playing their home matches in Darlington and recently a new stand was added to Blackwell Meadows.
The new stand allows Darlington to achieve promotion to the National League after last seasons heartbreak when Darlington were set to play in the play-offs but due to the number of seats in the stadium the club was unable to achieve promotion so were disqualified from the play-offs.
The new stand officially opened during last weekends 1-0 victory over Curzon Ashton and John Tempest, director of Darlington, has spoke out about his joy of the financial support the club receives from fans.
“Ever since that day six years ago when the club almost died, the financial backing of our fans has been magnificent.
“They have played a most crucial part in helping the club to where it is today.” Said Tempest.
During a breakdown of the £1m raised it shows that a huge £200,000 was raised in the first six months of the club being supporter owned and ran.
As well as the incredible fundraising the supporter ran club then introduced a new season ticket initiative and got new dugouts and goals posts installed at the ground as well as increasing the playing budget and introducing fundraising schemes such as the fan lottery and sponsor a seat.
Chairman Chris Stockdale has spooke about reaching the huge milestone in fundraising for the club.
“Passing the £1m figure is a real milestone.
“To raise this amount of money illustrates just how much our core supporters have bought into the concept of fan ownership after years of disastrous private ownership.
“We should all be very proud of our progress over the past six years.
“The challenge going forward will be to deepen and broaden our support as we seek to continue to grow our football club.” said Stockdale.
Credit to Darlington FC for the 9imagery used in this article.