FROME FM is thanking all its supporters, whose votes have won the station a grant of £6,000 from NatWest’s CommunityForce scheme.
The money will help FromeFM prepare to go on air as an FM station next year, as well as contributing to running costs. Frome’s radio station was one of only three successful applicants in the Salisbury area, with over 5,500 applications made throughout the UK.
Phil Moakes of FromeFM said, “A big thank you to everyone who took the time and trouble to vote – the money will be well spent!
“Because we’re building up to FM, a lot of the things we had in our plans to deal with at some point have had to come forward, and the money is incredibly useful in allowing us to do that. We are going to spend £3,500 on refurbishing our mixing desks – they’re all extraordinarily old. The rest is for running costs.”
In total, over five and a half thousand eligible applications were made to the CommunityForce scheme, with 395 projects winning an award after a public vote in September and October. FromeFM was one of only three winning projects in the Salisbury area.
Phil explained that every vote had been particularly important as competition in the area was fierce. “It was one of the strangest grant application processes I’ve seen. You had to do a description of what you do and what it’s all about and what you want to do with the money, then it all literally comes down to people voting for you. Every person had three votes and you could vote for any project anywhere in the country.
“Thanks to our voters we had 451 votes in the end. It was quite an intense process, trying to promote what we were doing and getting the votes in. We were up against quite a lot of projects that were very good at getting their votes in – if you look around at the other regions, there were some winning with half that number of votes.”
FromeFM can be found at www.fromefm.co.uk
