It was midnight on Thursday that the association finally got their answer: they had reached their target. Exceeded it, in fact. They needed 300,000 euros in order to meet their repayment obligations this summer. To achieve that goal, activities were organised during the so-called building weeks and new securities were issued.
It was touch and go for a while, says Daniël Peereboom, external assessor for NSG. ‘But during the last two days, we gave out about 100 securities’, he says. ‘We wanted to raise at least 300,000 euros for the refinancing, which we amply met. There are still some loose ends and other commitments, so the final amount will be definitively announced during our first pub night following the winter vacation.’
The NSG hosted an auction in early December to raise funds. With the motto ‘We’d rather be bald and in the news than lose our house’, the male members of the board promised to shave their heads if the association met their fundraising goal. Now that they have, Peereboom and his fellow men will have to say goodbye to their hair.
But he is certainly not complaining. The board member says that it is ‘really great’ to have raised even more money than the association absolutely needed. ‘We feel blessed. We can pay off the long term loans more quickly and trade them in for short terms loans, which is cheaper.’
Festive mood
The association hopes to give out progressively fewer securities in the future. ‘According to our calculations, we should be able to pay everything off in 20 years. But we’re done for the time being, anyway. Everyone here is in a festive mood’, says Peereboom.
The Christian student association purchased the property on the Harderwikerstraat nearly five years ago and had to pay 300,000 euros on top of the mortgage. They managed to do so by giving out securities worth 1,000 euros for a period of five, ten or fifteen years. Now that the first five years are almost over, a large number of the loans are being redeemed.