At the School for Social Entrepreneurs this past Wednesday we were told that next Wednesday we will spend the day at Westpac Foundation in Sydney's CBD meeting with various executives from that institution. Westpac is a great supporter of the social enterprise model giving giving away over $16m in the past 10 years to promote social enterprise in Australia. I went straight to their website and began to read all about Westpac Foundation and soon realised that, at the moment, gaining a grant from this Foundation would be next to impossible for a number of reasons (and I won't go into that right now). After shaking off a bit of discouragement, I reminded myself of something: we are in a building process, Ron. To use the Nehemiah illustration (which is what we are using these days at NationsHeart Christian Community), NationsHeart Connect's walls are just taking shape. We are probably not even half way through the building process. We need to simply keep working one brick, one stone, at a time. The Westpac Foundation stone is not for us at this moment.
These thoughts made the vision come a clearer for me. I suddenly realised: What if we set our sites on becoming a Social Enterprise model who would actually one day become viable for receiving such support? Now that's a challenge I could take on. And that excited me. I am looking forward to meeting these executive next Wednesday who are setting the bar high for us in the social enterprise sector.
On Thursday, when I returned to Canberra to my office and shared this with my PA, we could envision the steps that we need to take to build the wall and develop an organisation that not only would meet Westpac's standards but be effective in the community. The vision now had a plan and some short term goals.
And then came the thrill.
Opening the mail an hour later, we discovered that we have been awarded a $26,000 grant from the ACT government for a Health Promotions grant we applied for months ago. Now $26k is not a huge amount of money in the world of grants out there, but for us, it's a huge milestone. It's our first real programme grant, it's our opportunity to demonstrate our ability to provide social service with quality and good planning. We just entered the arena of being a viable recipient of grant moneys for social enterprise projects. This is our first step in being able to qualify for grants from the big boys, the Westpacs, out there.
We are building: one brick at a time.
Ronaldo
20/06/09
The $26k grant we received is for a new program we call "More than a Food Bank" which will enhance our FoodHut program at NationsHeart by providing nutrition and cooking information to our Community. The grant will increase our staffing for a year and provide us with an industrial dishwasher. We believe that we will help people provide for themselves and their families nutritious and affordable meals.
Also. Westpac Foundation website
Also. We continue to promote our Belconnen Business Breakfast for the Belconnen Town Centre on Friday 3 July 2009 at 7am. See www.nationsheartconnnect.org.au for more info.
Thursday was one of those unforgetable days...
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Congrats on the funding Ron, from SSE UK :0)
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