First of all thanks for the really excellent words of support from those of you who've played in our games before, we're glad you enjoyed your experience!
We wanted to answer kipeye's question about the funds raised and how they are distributed: For those who might not know, all the profits from our games are donated to charitable projects, whether they are projects nominated by our parent charity Field of Dreams or those nominated by the club.
Like any non-profit organisation or charity we do have costs associated with organising our events and these include purchasing all the kits and footballs for the games, travel and accomodation costs and just like any other organisation we have staffing, admin and office costs as well. However we run a very tight ship, with all the members of our board being non-executive status and giving up their free time to help and advise, we have a very small core team employed full time, we rely on free marketing methods to promote our events, we often use volunteers to come along and help at our events, in addition all of the ex-players who come along to support our events do so free of charge unlike many other high profile charity matches.
All this allows us to donate a considerable percentage of the funds raised to charity projects and our auditors tell us this compares favourably to other charities who don't always advertise the costs that it involves to administer their organisations. Over £1,600,000 in total has been paid out or designated as payable to charities in the 10 years since Field of Dreams was established and thanks to the continued support of the many 100s of football fans who support us each year we hope to raise many thousands more in the coming years for the charities we support all over the UK.
As Legion helpfully pointed out the Field of Dreams charity pages on our website have further details of some of our major grant awards for those of you interested in the specific charities we've supported over the years.
Just to say thanks again to anybody who's supported us over the years and good luck to anybody bidding this season!
