The LEAD Group has made great progress but, in
order to consolidate our position and achieve all our aims, we need help
with fundraising.
The Community Lead Information Centre, which The
LEAD Group runs, is remarkably effective, considering its minuscule
income.
The reasons are:
our Centre Manager, David, works four to five
days a week, completely voluntarily. Without his excellent work we
could not operate;
the office space, computer, fax machine, photo
copier, most of the furniture, and the electricity are donated;
our Information
Officer works six days a week,
voluntarily, and other volunteers, including
LEAD Group office bearers, members, and many
others, contribute a vast range of skills.
This
is where our small amount of money goes:
each
time the phone rings and our Information Officer is out - at a meeting,
giving a lecture, appearing on TV or doing a radio interview - she
then has to return the call. Most advisory calls take a minimum
of 20 minutes and calls for help come in from all over Australia, as
far away as Broome;
The
Community Lead Information Centre runs an excellent library, for
which no money is allocated for resource material. We have to gather
material from whatever source is available. When students use our
library, we ask no payment. Instead, we invite them to contribute
articles from other sources. Our library running costs are very
high, since photocopying, faxing, stationery and filing cabinets
must be paid for (we desperately need another filing cabinet);
networking,
the backbone of all community groups, is a very expensive exercise,
involving many STD fax and phone calls to people in other lead
affected communities and other costs in disseminating information.
Steps
already taken by The LEAD Group to raise money include:
applying
for three Government Grants. Two applications have been rejected,
the third is still under consideration. (While we await the decision
in December about our grant, we have severely restricted use of the
phone, fax and photocopier.);
incorporation
as an Association, and an undertaking to audit accounts since
incorporation, in order to give possible donor Corporations
confidence that we are a legal entity with rules governing all our
operations, including accounting;
currently
the major fundraising project is to write a letter seeking financial
assistance from companies, municipal councils and individuals.
Because of the high costs of such a letter and accompanying
documents, we need to locate likely donors first, by phone. This
will require a group of volunteers working from a prepared script,
to contact the appropriate person within an organisation, and assess
the likelihood of success of our written request for a donation.
Even
if you can't make phone calls for us, we would appreciate your ideas on
who to phone. We look forward to hearing from you.
