The British Bouldering Team has been blown away by the level of support they’ve just found in the climbing community. In one day they’ve raised the entire £8,000 they needed to help fund their summer of competing. We caught up with team member Mina Leslie-Wujastyk to find out more.

Why were you running a crowd-funding campaign?
We ran this initiative as a last-minute attempt to regain lost funding. One of our team sponsors had financial problems and was unable to come through on the contract we had. This happened six weeks before the season was due to start and funding had already been allocated for selected team members to compete. This had to be withdrawn and many team members were faced with dropping out due to the change.

Crowd funding was an idea to see if we could get back to where we had been and send people as planned (still only part-funded), and amazingly it worked! The climbing community really came through for us and we cannot thank you all enough.

But don’t the BMC support the team too?
Yes, they do, and we appreciate that very much. Half of our funding comes from the BMC and the other half was from the private sponsor that we lost at the last minute.

So, we hear it’s gone pretty well?
Yes! Obviously we didn't expect to hit our target in one day; it was supposed to run for six weeks.

Did you expect this level of support?
Not at all. So we’d all like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported us. We have raised our target and this gets us back to where we were before our lost funding. We are now able to part-fund three team members for the full season and seven team members to four European events. We couldn't have done his without you all.

What next?
We had a meeting last night and decided that we will shorten the campaign to three weeks so that it finishes just before the first World Cup in China. But we’re not going to push it loads. We all felt that the climbing community has been so amazing and really come through for us and we don't want to move the goalposts or ask for more than the original target.

So, we will just leave it up for people that may still want to be involved, or for organisations outside climbing, that may come across it. All further donations will continue to go towards travel costs for the team, reducing the level of self-funding for team members.

What will people get if they’ve helped fund the team?
People could select various rewards on the crowd funding site that corresponded with their level of donation, we‘ve tried to make these varied and interesting so people feel they are getting something (albeit small) back. We are also trying to organise getting a logo on our kit that reads something like "Supported though Crowd Funding by amazing people".

When’s the first competition?
The first competition is in China on 26-27th April. Eek! We’ve hit our target, so now it's time to say thank you and get back to training. 

Support the GB Bouldering Team:

Support the team on Crowd Funder

Watch the Team in action in the 2013 British Bouldering Championships on BMC TV:

MEET: Our BMC Ambassador Team

WATCH: Mary-Ann Ochota in Great Walks: Catbells on BMC TV

WATCH: BMC Ambassador Steve McClure on BMC TV

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