Category Archives: Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Giving, Donations, Fundraising

free food and sleeping bags.

Servants has been significantly blessed the last day of 2 with vast quantities of free food – from our friends at Fare Share and then today Mark and I went to the Gluten Free Festival to pick up food at the end of the Festival. Apart from the time Mark and I invested today this was a very worthwhile exercise – we learned how at the Festival in 12 months time we could walk away with a still more significant result.

A teacher friend at Wesley College gave Servants 6 quality, laundered sleeping bags. Hugely useful. I love it when people think of us!

Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Conference

The Philanthropy & Fundraising Conference I attended in Sydney for 3 days last week was, overall, of great value to me/Servants. I met some interesting people – as well as some extremely dull ones!! Many of the sessions were of real significance to us, others less so. I have come away convinced that we are in a very strong position to capitalize financially, should we choose to do so, upon many of the decisions we have made in recent years.

As familiar as I am in attending community based conferences it was fascinating to attend a conference full of fundraising types!! At the standard community gathering there are, to be sweepingly general, people with their arses hanging out of their trousers, many people one would be presuming who enjoy alternate lifestyles, people on low incomes, do gooders, loads of fresh faced graduates intent on changing the world who will have burned out with 18 months and food that is barely edible. In stark contrast I could barely pick any individual from an alternate lifestyle, people dressed in suits and dresses of PURE GOLD, food of a quality I have rarely seen before and people intent on making squillions out of their donor bases – although I was far from convinced that they all held truly altruistic intentions.

Just my reflections ………………………….

Advocacy, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Team Servants ’14 update

The Run Melbourne event has been run and won. To date, and there is still money coming in, Team Servants ’14 has raised $15,500 in online donations and $2500 in other donations. This is a particularly pleasing result in light of the fact that our top 6 individual fundraisers from last year raised a tiny amount between them – indeed, 4 of them did not participate this year. We had 101 registered runners (65 last year) and our presence in the team tent alongside the team t-shirts worn by most team members made quite an impression. Such an impression in fact that the event organizers invited me to meet with them yesterday to let me know of the significant changes for the event from 2015 and to let me know that only 35 charities will be eligible to raise funds – rather than the current 700 charities – and we have been invited to be one of the 35. I believe this is really quite significant. It was also fascinating to see just who participated and supported our Team – people from all the different networks and relationships we have developed over the past few years – Rotary, corporates, LV, Housing Registrar, Council, schools both public and private ………. not to mention committee, management and residents!

I had some fascinating conversations on the day with people who were intrigued by our presence there.

All in all I believe Team Servants ’14 can only be considered a success – I think Team Servants ’15, should we decide to do this, will be our biggest and best year to date.

Thank you to all who participated, donated, walk, ran, organized etc ………..

Advocacy, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Team Servants ’14

This coming Sunday sees TS ’14 hit the streets – we will look resplendent in the almost-posh TS ’14 t-shirts Tim had printed for us! The team has grown in number and donations are coming in quite nicely. I think it’s fair to say that the exposure Servants has received from various advertising/talking opps for TS ’14 has been more than significant.

Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Donations

I attended a lunch at Hawthorn Rotary today where Servants was presented with a cheque for $6500 to buy a new freezer for Carrical as well as raised, sustainable garden beds for Romana and industrial slow-cookers for all 3 commercial kitchens.

The mail included a $1000 cheque from a church group who recently attended a Community Dinner @ Carrical.

Someone gave Servants a $20 donation at the Romana launch on Saturday.

Giving, Donations, Fundraising

1000 + 42

One of the immediate consequences of last Saturday’s Community Dinner at Carrical was a donation of $1000 from one of the groups who visited.

Also, donations are off and running for Team Servants ’14 with 2 x $21 donations received this week.

Advocacy, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Cocktail Party

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Last night Hawthorn Community Chest held their annual Cocktail Party – with Servants being the charity they chose to support on the night. It was an eye opening occasion in many ways. Mike & Alison Cutter, Amanda and Grace Donohoe and Esther Ling and Zoe Bradley joined me in representing Servants on the night. I spoke about Servants for a few minutes – and then much discussion ensued!

Ted Baillieu introduced me to the audience before I spoke and he said some wonderful things about Servants.

There have been some quite immediate outcomes of this very posh occasion – one of which has me being offered a guest speaker spot at this Sunday’s ‘Festival of Ideas’ @ Swinburne. My talk on Sunday is entitled ‘It’s All About The Key.’

I am sure that many good things will come out of Thursday night’s gathering.

Rarely, if ever, has a group of people representing Servants looked so glammed up!

Development projects, Finances, General, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Yajilarra

I had a meeting today with David Allan from the Yajilarra Trust. Yajilarra have supported Servants with various financial gifts over many years now.

A successful look around Carrical and Romana (including meeting a couple of Carrical resos) concluded with David explaining that Yajilarra remains very keen to continue partnering and assisting Servants into the future.

It was terrific to be able to finally understand what makes Yajilarra ‘tick.’

The thing they are most interested in supporting us with is seeing our unique model replicated in other places/with other groups.

There will doubtless be significant further dialogue into the future – but today’s meeting in itself was a success.

Advocacy, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Cocktail Party

Hawthorn Community Chest are hosting their annual Cocktail Party this coming Thursday, 1st May, at Hawthorn Common in Burwood Rd, Hawthorn.

All funds raised from the night will be headed towards our Narrative book project.

I will be speaking on the evening. All are welcome to attend.

Tickets are $40 each and can be purchased here: http://www.trybooking.com/Event/EventSearch.aspx?keyword=president’s%20cocktail%20party&d=1&m=5&y=2014

 

General, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Thanks Connie!

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This morning at Hawthorn West Baptist Church Connie did a FANTASTIC job in advertising Team Servants ’14 to the assembled masses. Lots of encouragement was given to people to sign up, run, get fit and generally support this wonderful Team! If anyone happened to take a photo of Connie this morning in her running gear please Pulse it – to give the true idea of the lengths that Servants committee members go to in order to get their point across! Thank you Connie!

General, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Postcard link

Below is the link to the Team Servants ’14 postcard – thanks as usual to Mike for making this look excellent. As some of us will be aware the sign up process is P A I N F U L!! Thanks too for Grace for the time invested in ensuring the clarity of the sign up info. Please feel free to advertise/distribute the postcard to interested parties. I know that Connie will be talking with committee/members/HWBC in the near future about plans for the Team.

SCH Team Servants 14 Postcard Draft 4

Finances, Giving, Donations, Fundraising, Houses

$6450

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I had a phone call from Ngaire (pronounced Nyree) from Hawthorn Rotary this morning. They will be giving us $6450 for a new freezer at Carrical, posh raised garden beds at Romana and industrial sized slow-cookers for each of the 3 houses. The new freezer for Carrical is particularly important.

Good news!

I was also informed that they have approved their Club funding the set-up costs of a ‘Men’s Shed’ type facility at Carrical. This will equate to a few thousand dollars.

Advocacy, Finances, General, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Printer

Following the financial/Narrative book quantity decisions taken at last night’s extraordinary committee meeting I talked to Printer Chris from Southern Color this morning. He remains excited about the job/publication and is now working on figures etc to make things work. All good. In many ways little changes from my end – I still intend to hunt each and every dollar down for the project so that we are not out of pocket and the Yajilarra money can live to seed still more adventures for us.

Giving, Donations, Fundraising

$580

Chapel Service at Carey on Tuesday morning saw $580 raised for Servants.

More importantly than this significant amount of money raised will be what will come out of this talk/introduction to Servants for Fullard House @ Carey.

Giving, Donations, Fundraising, Romana

Rotarians, Romana and Mark

14 Rotarians spent many hours this morning/arvo working alongside Brian & Pat and Mark on the bathrooms at Romana. A huge amount of tile removal was accomplished. I am hopeful of posting a picture or two to the Servants Facebook page tonight. The community support we have for Romana is remarkable. It’s so lovely to finally be showing off Romana to people – all are stunned at just how terrific the place is. There are many more work days ahead for volunteers – I cannot even begin to imagine how many tens of thousands of $$$ this might be saving us – let alone continuing to develop mighty relationships and opportunities left, right and center!! In fact, whilst considering how many $$$ of labor we are receiving it would be remiss of me not to mention the work that Mark Hislop continues to give us, as project manager, in getting Romana ready for occupancy. I have learned a great deal just in watching Mark at work and how he has attacked the project in front of him/us. And of course, this has all been free of charge too. I think a nice ‘thank you’ bottle of scotch or something similar will be the order of the day once the project is complete.

Advocacy, General, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Carey. Morning #3

This morning was my third talk to a Carey Chapel Service in the past few weeks. This was the best talk of the 3 – and we clearly have another 10% of the Carey community well on board, and well intrigued too, with what we are on about. I have not heard to date how many $$$ were raised from sending round the plate – but I do look forward to hearing this information! The staff of this particular house, Fullard, seemed particularly keen to visit our houses to fully understand what we do and to see where there might be some student input.

Advocacy, Finances, General, Giving, Donations, Fundraising

Can’t get enough …………

The interest in our work from Carey continues to grow. Having been chosen by 2 of their 10 houses as the charity of choice for 2014 I was approached by a 3rd house a couple of days ago to talk at their upcoming chapel service. And why not?! Seems the Carey theme this year of ‘making a difference’ means that we are loved! I speak there again a week on Tuesday. I have been informed that on average each house raises $6000 per annum for their chosen charity. This should put us somewhere in the 18k minimum bracket over the course of the year – and probably significantly more.