Grants Only Group. Inc (G.O.G): July 2014

Sunday, July 27, 2014

GOG History Part 3

GOG was very active in the second 1/2 of 2012. August saw Kathy attend a Grants Boot Camp held by Our Community in Melbourne. We were lucky to have her place at the seminar sponsored by Our Community. Also in August GOG purchased some new equipment, including a laptop, a screen and projector and a laser printer. We also held our first AGM.
September saw Bob Stannells resign from the group and we welcomed new member Doug Don. It was becoming apparent that GOG would need some sort of Strategic Plan in place to keep us focused on achieving our goals. Patrick Moriarty, from Our Community was brought in again by the Gardiner Foundation, to do a seminar on this. We were approached by the Miranda sector from The Weekly Times, where Genevieve Barlow wrote an article about our group.
Here are a couple newspaper articles documenting our progress

In October we completed our strategic planning course and set to work with 3 applications for the Gardiner Foundation round of grants (which were a part of their Strengthening Small Dairy Communities Project). We were asked if a GOG member would like to join the assessment pannel, and Wendy Don took up this offer, which was a really great learning experience.
The end of 2012 saw GOG assist with 4 successful grants, including an Electronic Whiteboard for our group. Our total for 2012 was 8 successes out of 14 applications, bringing in a total of $25,106. This brought our Grand Total to $40,106 plus we assisted (with advice) in another $15,000 worth of successful grants.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Tarwin Football Club Success

GOG is happy to announce their client, Tarwin Lower Football Club, was successful in receiving $3,500 for the South Gippsland Shire Small Equipment Grant Program to contribute to the purchase of a mower/tractor.

GOG History Part 2

In October 2011 GOG submitted 3 applications to the Gardiner Foundation, who were offering the grants as a part of the Strengthening Small Dairy Communities Project. We were successful in receiving $15,000 in November 2011.
In January 2012 GOG was lucky to be awarded $500 from Our Community as an incentive to continue the work we had begun.
April saw GOG undertake further grants training as a part of the Strengthening Small Dairy Communities project, run by Our Community.
By June GOG had submitted 10 grant applications to various grantors, and were successful in receiving $6750 for our Clients. GOG received $3,500 for equipment to get our operations running more effectively. We also attended the Community Engagement Conference held by South Gippsland Shire Council, where we networked with other community groups and took in a lot of information on one day.
We held our first AGM in July 2012 which was also a celebration of our new equipment grant success.
Wendy and Kathy began to compile information that we could give to prospective clients when they approach us. We called it our Application Pack. We are now (2014) onto Version 3 of the Pack as we have refined and changed the information we give and the information we ask for.

So in summary the 2011/12 year saw GOG with 14 Application Packs sent out, 15 grants submitted and a total of $25,250 brought into our community.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

GOG history part 1

Grants Only Group was formed to encourage, support and assist community groups to access funding.

It all began back in early 2011 when Dot Kennedy provided some basic grant writing training. Then October in 2011 the Gardiner Foundations 'Strengthening Small Dairy Communities Project, Lower Tarwin Valley Project' further training was provided by Our Community. Here's a video Our Community made about GOG CLICK HERE. Following this training, GOG was officially a group and adopted the protocol of meeting every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month. The founding members being, Wendy Don, Doug Grigg, Bob Stannells and John Abbott, with Kathy Lagoudis joining late 2011.

From this point, we became an Incorporation, got an ABN and started sending in grant applications. We began with an application fee of $20 and a commission on successful grants of 10% up to $200. See the Successes page for details.