Monday, March 21, 2011

At last, at last....the Grant is done at last!

Yes, today at 2pm I drove to City of Sydney council and handed over our appliction for a 2011-2012 Matching Grant that we so hope will see the much anticipated extension and expansion of our COW Belles craft initiative into a small wonder of the Glebe community area.

One big block to community initiatives in our modern society is the huge cost of Public Liability insurance for even the simplest, most modest community-based ventures. This too, was to be a big stumbling block for us but the City cleared the way for our progress by accepting the responsibility liability for our group at the Old Firestation on Fridays and also for our proposed new group at the St. Helen's Community Centre. This is fantastic news for us as it saves us about $1500!! that we would obviously prefer to spend elsewhere.

Extra money will now be allocated to our promotion and advertising budget for our fundraising efforts which will now concentrate on sales made from the community centres themselves, from the local stores who may stock our products for us and from our up coming online shop. These options for fundraising mean that expenses and volunteers for a regular market stall will be channelled into less consistently dispruptive situations. A little easier for all of us I think.

So, fingers crossed for a positive outcome late in May and the opportunity to see our wonderful COW Belles grow in it's new and challenging directions over the next year.
Irene