Money Money Money – the very popular ABBA song from the 1970's - makes the world go round. This is so true and never more so than this time of year for businesses and organisations, including local governments who are currently planning and delivering the budget for the next financial year.
It is incredible to be involved behind the scenes at this level, especially when you have a very tight budget with not much wriggle room.
Over the past eight weeks, I've also been involved in a grant writing workshop.
The aim of the grant writing workshop was to empower local communities and encourage local groups to apply for grants and funding. We all know that our Council is very small – in terms of financial spending ability and available staff resources – and this has a flow-on effect on volunteer organisations and the community.
A very wise comment made during one of the sessions was, that money coming into a community raised by volunteer groups, is helpful in strengthening the local capacity of the community to deliver services and contributes to community capacity building. In other words, more resources to deliver more services in the community. Everyone is a winner.
A second round of the grant writing workshop will take place after the school holidays, in the evenings. Annually, billions of dollars available as grants are not allocated, because nobody is asking. Tim Costello made a comment on the Community Directors website, that community and volunteer groups are operating in silos and that these silos need to be broken down to make for more efficient service delivery. The grant writing workshop was great in allowing people from different groups to interact on a different level, sharing experiences and ideas.
