A charity has raised the £100,000 it needed to complete the purchase of a new base in a matter of weeks.

Educational charity IslamBradford successfully bid for former Bradford Council youth service buildings in City Road at an auction in February.

The winning bid was £300,000, and at the time the charity had raised £200,000 – meaning it still had to raise another £100,000 by the end of March.

A fundraising drive, which included an online JustGiving page, saw an average of £4,000 a day donated – and £7,666 of that was given by a man who only told volunteers that the charity had benefited him and his family.

IslamBradford is now waiting for a planning application to be approved to change the use of the building from offices to an educational centre with space for community events.

The charity, based on an upper floor of a warehouse on Preston Street, Listerhills, teaches in English and runs a madrasa on weekdays.

However, the building is leased and the charity wants to run its own base which it says would “contribute to both the social wellbeing of the area through education and initiatives to address social problems and economic wellbeing through general education”.

Although an Islamic charity, IslamBradford plan to open the centre to people of different faiths.

Trustee Masood Chowdry said: “We’ve now been able to buy the building outright. I was optimistic we would be able to raise the money and it looks like our optimism was correct.

“We are still fundraising for renovation work, and we hope to be up and running by the end of the year. It has been really amazing and people have been very supportive.”