It seems that a very large part of my life is taken up with raising money for the City Mission. Because we want to rebuild most of the Mission we have two fundraising areas to cover. Firstly to raise 10.5 million dollars for capital purposes (rebuilding) and secondly raising in excess of 3.2 million dollars each year for operational (day to day) expenses. That is a lot of money and clearly I can’t do this alone. Many people are involved in helping the Mission. Office people, factory workers and people from many different walks of life give us money and they often have creative ways of raising funds. Some firms subsidise, dollar for dollar, money given to the Mission by their staff while others put on concerts and other functions and donate the money they raise to us. Over and above this the Mission needs to actively collect money and food and we need to work alongside professional fundraisers.
The City Mission is lucky in that it has the services of Compton Fundraising Consultants. They are as committed to the Mission as we are and some of them have worked for us in the past. Over the last few days I have been hearing tales of other agencies paying large sums of money to make money. Michael Laws' column in the Sunday Star Times talks of some agencies being charged exorbitant rates. I am so grateful that we have such a loyal, hard working and - dare I say it - cheap team helping us. They have been working with us for years and charge us a very modest amount, nowhere near that quoted by Michael Laws.
Money that is given to the City Mission is a sacred trust. We are under an obligation to spend it wisely and well for the benefit of our clients. We do need to spend some money on fundraising but we need to spend as much money as possible on helping those who need us.