THUNDER BAY — Finding a way to raise $1 million for the indoor turf facility may be harder than first expected.
“Our revenue streams are restricted primarily due to limitations on the facility,” said Soccer Northwest president Michael Veneziale in his presentation to city council Monday night.
“We are not the owners of this building, so we have limitations on the types of fundraising we can do. After meeting with the administration, we found out that we won't have the ability to do any interior advertising rights. We can't have any naming of any fields or change rooms or any of those types of ways we can generate revenue,” said Veneziale.
He also said that Soccer Northwest would not be able to get provincial or federal funding through NOHFC or FedNOR.
This would mean that Veneziale’s team, which is made up of various user groups, would have to look at a community-driven fundraising campaign instead.
Coun. Rajni Agarwal asked Veneziale how they are going to raise the money without corporate sponsorship.
Veneziale said that it is key for the city and Soccer Northwest to work together in raising capital for the indoor turf facility.
Because Soccer Northwest can not approach corporate sponsors, City manager John Collin said administration would do the leg work on raising the capital on the corporate side through naming right contracts and marketing.
Soccer Northwest’s community fundraising would look at implementing both a physical donor wall that would display key contributions and a virtual donor wall.
Agarwal pressed Veneziale for more detail on ways Soccer Northwest would raise the money, but Veneziale wasn’t able to provide additional information.
“This for this evening is just mostly an introduction. We are going to be coming out with our full campaign release in due time, when it's ready for us to be able to be more successful. So simply said, we're looking into every avenue possible,” said Veneziale.
Coun. Dominic Pasqualino said he doesn’t “want to look a gift horse in the mouth” but asked how Soccer Northwest was planning on giving the money to city and if they had any plans to attach “strings” to their contribution.
Veneziale said that the money raised would go toward bringing down the capital cost of the building.
As previously reported by Newswatch, the campaign won't start until city council gives final approval to the $42 million project.
Sometime this spring, council is expected to tender construction to one of three companies for the work.
Once that happens, the participating user groups will operate under a new name, and their campaign will last 18 to 20 months to keep in line with the construction timetable.
“I actually would like to address that because this is kind of the 2nd or 3rd rendition of this plan and how it's gone forward. There has been a lot of communication from the community, from council, from administration on our group's fundraising for this effort,” said Veneziale.
“The last time we came forward with this, I think it was kind of sloughed off when we said we were going to do these efforts. There has not been one time that city council or administration has asked us for anything that we have not done.
“So, our track record is proven. We're here, we're saying it, we're going to do it.
