Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal pleads for more WA donors as crucial funding for communities lags

Not-for-profit community-building group Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal is calling for more funding to meet the needs of regional WA community groups. Out of the $1.4 million spent towards 129 community groups in their most recent round of funding, only $130,000 went towards 14 groups in WA. FRRR place portfolio lead Jill Karena said some funding was tied to where it came from and having no WA-specific donors meant communities were missing out. “In some States we have a lot of State donors, that means we can fund more projects in that State,” she said. “In WA, we don’t have any specific WA donors, so we can only use the national donation pool to fund projects in WA. “They are only those projects that meet all of the criteria, they’re charitable, they have broad community benefit, there’s some kind of sustained benefit for the community are the ones that get funded.” In this round of funding three South West groups received funding, being the Collie Men’s Shed, Pemberton’s Youth Emergency Service Cadets and Bridgetown’s Grumpy Old Men. They will get a total of more than $25,000 for a variety of uses such as building upgrades and boosting volunteering capacity. Ms Karena said one area of funding which was particularly desired was for maintenance of community halls and shows. “It’s a fast-changing landscape, but one of the observations we had on this round was that we’re starting to see more and more applications come through for things like annual shows and community halls that previously were supported by local government,” she said. “For one reason or another, and it’s probably different across different States, local governments are reducing or eliminating in some cases their support for these kinds of local infrastructure and events. “If local government starts stepping out of the picture, then it makes it really important for funding programs like these to be able to step in and support communities because things like a local hall are so integral to how that community might function. “We’ve really got to try and find a way to keep it viable.” Ms Karena said any funding would help, regardless of the size. “It can be from anywhere, if you look at our granting, we had over 1300 individual donations,” she said. “The smallest one was $1 from a child who wanted to give some of their pocket money through to our largest donor which was $7.9 million. “It can be all of those. It can be corporate organisations, it can be families, it can be individuals, it can be government, it can be anything.”