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Community Sponsorship Program brings returns

Gosnells' Sponsorship and Funding Officer, Patrick Quigley, is responsible for managing requests for financial assistance from the community, under Council's Community Sponsorship Program. He explained that Gosnells has formalised the approach to considering financial requests with this sponsorship program, which has a specific budget and sponsorship criteria.

"It was essential to move away from an ad hoc approach by establishing proper criteria for sponsorships to ensure equity and minimise duplication," Patrick Quigley said.

Gosnells has had a Community Sponsorship Program in place since 1998. This includes thirteen defined categories for sponsorship. Sponsorships are granted in two rounds, one in September and a follow up round for remaining funds in May.

The reason that Council's sponsorship program is so innovative is that it is very wide reaching and covers a wide range of sponsorship needs in the community.

Most of the sponsorship applications are for sports representation, and other popular categories include: community service, community arts, education, community safety, junior development, and minor capital works.

Last year three new sponsorship categories were created to meet additional needs in the community &endash; volunteer recognition, community support and marketing.

Applications for the sponsorships are assessed by a panel according to precise eligibility criteria. Where applications fail the criteria, advice is offered to applicants on how to refine their submission. In many cases, the applicants are advised about other funding sources that they may be able to access, such as state and federal funding programs.

The Council is also working to encourage commercial sponsorships.

"Basically, I am a local source of sponsorship and funding information," he said.

"The main criterion for Council's Community Sponsorship Program is that projects must benefit people within the City of Gosnells in some way.

"Some sponsored activities have been outstanding in their contribution to the City.

"For example, this year a community arts sponsorship was awarded to the Sambanistas Percussion Group to assist with a major festival organised by the Council, called 'Goz Carnivale'.

This group conducted artistic workshops, enlisting community help, to create a giant paper mache dragon to parade through the City's streets at the finale of Goz Carnivale.

"The return on Council's investment was unbelievable, and people are still talking about the dragon," Patrick Quigley said.

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