Fundraising is the lifeblood that keeps some organisations in our community up and running.
The mechanisms that generate those funds have been shut down during coronavirus. Think basic fundraising like the reliable sausage sizzle disappearing along with the fundraising they generate with them.
But it goes far beyond the humble sausage sizzle. Paula Muddle, General Manager of The Trust, Nelson Marlborough Rescue Helicopter said, “Pretty much all of our fund sources dried up”.
Helirescue had to cancel all their fundraising events over lockdown to the equivalent of $100k. And although it’s not the biggest component of their fund sources these cancellations had other impacts.
Paula says, “It’s the public awareness of what our organisation does that’s also been majorly affected”. It’s given organisations like Helirescue a chance to reflect on how reliant they are on fundraising sources like gaming machines through Pub Charity.
With pubs closed, all the funds sourced from the gaming machines evaporated and future payments might not come through for another five months.
“We had a lovely gentleman come in just before lockdown wanting to donate $10,000. Two days later he donated $5,000 because he wasn’t confident enough with what the future of the coronavirus would look like”.
Meanwhile, the helicopters are still heading out on missions. During the lockdown, Helirescue had 40 missions, twice the previous month’s amount and 10 missions more than the same time last year. Part of these missions were stress-related emergencies specific to the virus.
“The stress-related emergencies we’ve been seeing during Coronavirus are similar to the emergencies seen during the Christchurch earthquake”.
Paula has contacted their major stage holders, however, and they’re still on board along with a lot of their regular donors. They also received some more individual, one-off donations during the lockdown. People made use of their less busy lives to check out how their bank accounts were looking and make donations accordingly.
For sports organisations like Wanderer’s Sports Club, a resilience fund is being filtered down to them from the government via Sports Tasman as a result of the virus. There is also the chance to access a no-interest loan from the government if it’s paid back within 12 months.
Diane Drogemuller, club manager of the Wanderer’s Sports Club says, “we’re in the middle of a shortened games season”.
As well as losing the funds from gaming machines the clubrooms have lost funds as a direct result of the loss of games.