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$50K Matching Challenge - Pop Up Portsmouth

On June 24th, the City of Portsmouth Task Force voted to release $50K of their special projects budget to help fund the Pop Up Rooftop at the Foundry Garage project!! We need your help to match it, and this is an urgent, time-sensitive request.

Pop Up Rooftop is a grassroots collaborative of business-people, designers, and other community leaders working to use one particular piece of city-owned property to help mitigate COVID-related financial losses to local businesses, and thus workers and the tax base, by turning it into a socially distanced pop up market and performance space. We recognize the Foundry Place Garage as both an underutilized space, not close to meeting its revenue goals for the city, and as a space where community can safely gather - where food, drink, and alcohol can be safely served, and where performance can be enjoyed with social distance and with minimal impact to the surrounding neighborhood. We intend to use this unique space at the Foundry Garage equitably, safely, and conscientiously to serve as a community asset, preserve a portion of the tax base in conjunction with other efforts, protect workers, and do our part to undo some of the damage the pandemic has done and will do to our community.

The City has released $50K to be put into escrow, and these funds will be released when our working group is able to match these funds. All matching donations or sponsorships will also be put into escrow, and if we are unable to reach our goal, all funds will be returned to donors, and no spending will have happened.

Your donations or sponsorships are tax-deductible.

There is an urgency to our ask, as each day we go without expanding our capacity is loss to our businesses and organizations. Our goal is to have a July 15th opening, which leaves us with a lot to do, all at once. There will be one restaurant that is our anchor restaurant, which will be run by Evan Mallett of the Black Trumpet. The rest of the restaurants will be rotating in and out, as they are available. We need to start building our restaurant sheds, our stage, and purchasing commercial grade restaurant equipment. We need to start making purchases of sanitation equipment and supplies. And we need to be putting out job postings, yesterday.

Because of this ambitious timeline, we're hoping to match the $50K challenge by Sunday June 28th, so we can have access to funds next week, and then be able to put our team to work.

Another way you could help is by sending this to your network of friends and businesses who might want to pitch in. This is going to take a small army of support in many ways. It seems daunting, but I know we can do this. This project, and the way the community has come together to make it happen, will go down in Portsmouth's history.

Together with other efforts we can play no small role in preserving not just life, but lives and livelihoods in Portsmouth by giving space for our community to do what it does best - create community.

Donations 

  • John Hopkins
    • $100 
    • 4 yrs

Fundraising team (3)

Kathleen Cavalaro
Organizer
Raised $10,675 from 97 donations
Portsmouth, NH
Seacoast Repertory Theatre
 
Registered nonprofit
Donations are typically 100% tax deductible in the US.
Laura Brown
Team member
Mike Daigle
Team member
This team raised $24,369 from 193 other donations.

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