From the pen of one of our new board members – Brad Butcher
Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to join the board of BeefBank. BeefBank exists for one whole purpose – to provide meat to front line charities to feed the homeless and the needy. They are not very big but certainly hit well above their weight in terms of delivering on their goals.
Charities such as BeefBank have always impressed me. We seldom hear about them but they play an important part in the social enterprise space. For many front line services, without charities and other organisations such as BeefBank they could simply not operate as effectively as what they do.
Using BeefBank as an example, they supply meat product to front line groups who provide meals to the homeless and needy, often these are children and the elderly. Without BeefBank doing what they do, spaghetti bolognese simply becomes spaghetti, bangers and mash is just mash and beef stew becomes pea, carrot and celery stew.
Whilst you can get by on these, on a cold night or during a period where you may get to eat only once per day, there’s no doubt that the benefits of meat can make a big difference to surviving.
This is just one example of where smaller, focused charities are making a big difference by helping the front line helpers.
For these types of charities, funding their programs is much harder to come by. Because they don’t provide a front line service such as feeding the poor and needy, they aren’t directly dealing with DV victims, they aren’t ensuring that kids are being fed and given the best chance to succeed at school – more often than not individual donors and corporate giving don’t even take a second look at providing support. Lets face it – the media return for the investment just isn’t there.
So the next time you’re considering where to contribute back to society, or perhaps helping your work decide where to contribute this year, please consider these small, well run, well focused charities who sit behind the scenes helping the helpers. Tax deductible donations are treated the same whether it comes from the large charities or the small.
P.S. In case you’re interested BeefBank donations are fully tax deductible. They have used these donations to supply enough meat for over 300,000 meals in the last few years. Like I said before, a small charity punching well above their weight division.