The Power of Grants in Fueling Organisational Growth | Jessica Macpherson OAM - Founder of St Kilda Mums and Blaze Your Trail

Foreign. Hi, I'm Jessie Ballantyne and I love grants. I sold my house to fund the launch of the Grants Hub because I truly wanted to make grants easier to find. In the very early days, I ended up running the Grants Hub from the ICU board of a children's hospital. Let's just say I'm committed to the cause of helping you find grants. If you're looking to get real with grants to learn what works and what doesn't, to hear from grant experts from across the country and have some fun while we do it, then Grants Uncovered is the podcast for you. Today we have the privilege of chatting with Jessica McPherson, founder and former CEO of St Kilda Mums. Under Jessica's leadership, St Kilda Mums has grown into a highly respected organisation. St Kilda Mums now has thousands of volunteers supporting more than 20,000 babies and children each year across Victoria. The extraordinary growth and impact of St Kilda Mums, Geelong Mums and Eureka Mums has seen more than 340,000 prams, cots and other essential items saved from landfill and given to families in need via a network of social workers. In this episode, Jessica shares a lot of information about how they have grown St Kilda Mums from the ground up, how she has brought funding partners together to make substantial difference and across Victoria. I'll quote Jessica now, every significant leap has had a grant behind it. So if you would like to learn how you too can use grants to trigger growth in your organization, then keep listening to this episode. There is a lot of invaluable content in here. Now, a little side note, Jessica is a mum of kids and the headphones went walkabouts, so the sound quality is slightly down on this one, but the content is gold. We have very, very lucky to have Jessica here today and I'm truly thankful that you're spending the time with us here.

Thanks for having me. Great to meet you.

So the story goes that St Kilda Mums was born from a working bee that you organised in your local maternal child health centre. How did you take that idea and then turn it into what it is today?

Well, it was a really simple idea and the reason why it was so easy to follow and build and grow on it was that it gave us so much pleasure on the day that we got together. Now, it was a long day and we all had newborns and toddlers and it actually was literally a day because we had to keep stopping for breastfeed. Nappy changes meals and sleeps, but in a day we. We managed to pull everything out of this storage cupboard. That was overflowing with those horrible old coals, you know those gray bags Coles used to package the groceries in? There's just bags and bags and bags of things had been donated, but nothing had been sorted and there hadn't been any quality control run on it. Some of the clothing was very old and tired and we just packaged everything up by size, labeled it clearly and put it on the shelf. And the nurses were blown away because we took what was essentially a dumping ground and a problem for them that is they couldn't reach the photocopier and it turned it into a valuable resource. So whenever the enhanced care nurse had to go out into the community and see a new family for the first time, she would be able to take some goods with her and that really helped break the ice and form a strong, supportive relationship right from the get go.

So people have been donating directly to the Maternal Child Health System Center?

Yes.

Instead of, say to an OP shop or whatever, they had a facility to receive donations but nothing to do with them afterwards?

Well, I mean, it's not, it's not that they were asking for donations and it's not that they had the time or the people to deal with the donations, but there were a lot of parents who had the same idea as me, which was, I've got some Premier clothing or I've got some Premier nappies or I've got some formula that, you know, I bought 10 cans of this formula and my kid doesn't like it. What am I going to do with his cans that are unopened? Like, a lot of people have had the same idea and these are items that OP shops don't want. So 12 years ago in Carlisle Street, St Kilda, the op shop there didn't want a pram or a car seat or a cot or a. Or cans of unopened formula or anything baby related because it wouldn't sell. And they were worried about the safety issues. And also a lot of baby gear can be quite filthy when it's donated secondhand. They didn't have the time to wash it. Yeah. So there were people out there, like me, who wanted their baby gear to somebody who needed it and they didn't necessarily want to see their baby gear being sold, even if the OP shops would sell it, which meant that they weren't interested in selling or trading their goods on buy, swap and sell sites. There weren't as many around back then. You know, there was ebay and there was Gumtree, there wasn't Facebook Marketplace, but even then people were Like, I want to make sure my baby gear goes to somebody who really needs it and I'm determined to make that happen. And I think that's. That was the birth of St Kilda Mums and all the other sister organizations around Australia that do what we do today.

You were really frontrunners in the space. Like from my memory, anyway, you were really frontrunners in there, so you must have learned so much the hard way. Like so many successes, but so many hard lessons along the way. I'm interested in this from perspective as well. There are a lot of not for profits in this space. The health crossing over with support space that don't know how to register themselves or they don't know which DGR should we be going for or are we eligible? You know, are we health promotion, Are we support? Like, how did you make those decisions?

Oh, it's quite easy really. In the end. First of all, we operated as a grassroots community support service for three years before we even thought about getting dgr. You know, we were so focused on getting goods of stuff, we didn't think about getting cash donations. We were able to get some small grants from the local council, for example, and some small amount of support. But then I think it was an FY12 when we had an annual budget of $12,000, which was basically all insurance, and we were really running out of storage space and we realized that we needed to have a decent warehouse, you know, if we were going to scale up and help more families. And I was the one that got the DGR status. I literally rang the ATO and said, I need your help. This is what we do. You know, I've been told I have to do this, how do I do it? And it was 28 days later that it came through. But it was very, very straightforward. We qualify as a deductible gift recipient because we offer a public benevolent pbi, one public benevolent institution. We didn't have any limitations on who we supported other than all the goods would be distributed through maternal and child health nurses. So it was a very simple, it was very clear cut that there was a public benefit with St Kilda mums. So I believe that DGR is now managed through the ACNC. Back in 2012, it was the ATO. I found the whole process very straightforward and I found the person that I spoke to and the Taxation Department incredibly helpful. And I applied in early January. We had it by early February, so it was even during the holiday period that it happened. So I didn't have the nightmare experience that some people do and in fact, some charities sort of wait on the. Wait on a law firm's pro bono list for years before they get sort of to the top to. Before the, you know, the partner who's the only person in the law firm who's allowed to do these applications, get the shot of it. So yeah, I think it all depends on the service that you're providing. But I would, my first place to start would be to speak directly to the people who, the regulators who are administrating the process.

It is a great tip and I honestly don't hear many people with a process that's as straightforward as that. It's great to hear that it was that way for you and I think this will be helpful for people to hear and just go, just ring them. Like, just ring them and ask them and find out what category do you fall into? Like they're helpful, they're there to be helpful. They're not just regulators, they actually genuinely want to help organizations get up and running and ask questions.

Yes.

So I'm guessing, you know the grant's eligibility wasn't sort of sitting there at the beginning. You didn't have a direct need straight away for grant funding when you got the dgr. Was the purpose for that so that you could get grant funding or mainly so you could issue tax deductible receipts?

It was the latter. We did know that there were. There would be more grants we could go for with the dgr, but. But mostly we realized that we had a huge list of supporters subscribed to our newsletters who were previous goods donors who were highly engaged in what we do. And in fact that has, as St Kilda Mums has continued to grow, our biggest source of revenue, like when you think about your revenue in a pie at about 60% is the biggest segment and that is still parents like you and me. So the everyday donor, the cash donors of the Christmas appeal, the tax appeal, the regular donor, the individual giver, is the biggest supporter for St Kilda Mums. Followed by grants and philanthropy and then. And then much further down the list, corporate volunteering is an ever growing revenue stream and bequests is virtually non existent because we're still a very small organization. We've had a couple of bequests that have been complete surprises to us. But that's all future.

You know, that's something. Yeah, that's right. You know, that's a work in progress, that side of it.

Yeah, yeah.

So grants, how important have they been to the success. Success of St Kilda Mums?

They have been at every point where we've had a growth spurt, grants have been the reason. So it was the first grant, the impact grant from Perpetual Trustees, that meant that I got to be employed as employee number one. Bank of Melbourne, for example, funded a corporate partnerships program probably five or six years ago now, which has continued to thrive. You know, employing a person in that role who went on and is now serving as the partnerships manager, who's done so much to bring in corporate sponsorships and run events and that, you know, that was definitely very important. Grants have always rested behind the expansion into the other cities. So it was give where youe Live and their impact grants that allowed us to both hire the first employee in Geelong and rent the first warehouse in Geelong. And it's a. It's a recent gift from the J.T. williamson foundation that has meant that we have been able to expand, expand our warehouse operations in Ballarat. So a grant, a significant grant has been behind. And of course, the grants that helped us get into the new warehouse in Clayton. So that was a combination of bank of Melbourne, again with Gandalf Philanthropy and Ian Potter, or got behind the expansion. The Dream House project. The Dream home project is what we called it when we went, when we trebled in size, warehouse size from St Kilda to Clayton. So, yeah, every, every significant leap has had a grant behind it.

So bringing on those various partners that you've done now for the warehouse project, that's a difficult thing that a lot of people don't know how to do. You know, getting multiple donations for the one project or multiple grants for the one project. How did you manage that?

Well, I think what's really interesting about bringing multiple partners in to fund a large project is actually how collaborative they can be and how often they can be the one. So I definitely know with the Dream Home Project that both Ian Potter and Gandel Philanthropy mentioned each other, like mentioned co funding. That's their style. They like to fund that way. And it's exciting because you're more likely to be successful. Their application, if one knows the other, you know, they talk to each other, they all talk to each other. And that's what I've found when it comes to collaborative projects is that.

You.

Know, you have a dream for what you want to be able to do and, and there's a possibility that the funder that you're speaking to can only fund part of it. But if you can ask them if they can think of any, anyone in their network who you should be speaking to, a lot of projects won't get up at all if they're not fully funded. Right. Because you just cannot take the risk, especially when it comes to doing things like taking out leases and employing people and buying vans. Right. Like it's just a project that can't happen. But there are other projects where part funding might mean that you just scale back the size of the project or you have a part time project instead of a full time project, for example. So, yeah, I've always found people to be incredibly collaborative and open to ideas and I think you've got to involve people really early on. And one thing that we always love to do is to get people into our space because as soon as we can get a grants manager into one of our warehouses and show them around and explain what we do and let them see the impact of what happens every day, then that, that's, that's a very good, that's a very good base for building a relationship on. And I think it's a little bit harder if you don't, if you're not handling physical inventory. I think it might be more difficult to have that experience, you know, but you've got to play to your strengths. So I think if you were a small, let's say you're a small health charity, you know, supporting a very small group of people who are affected by a health problem, well, then you would hope that you might be able to introduce the funders to some of the families that you've. Or some of the people or the families that you've. That you've helped and let them tell in their own stories. What a difference, you know, with their own words, their own story about what a difference made.

Yeah, yeah. And I think some people have got the physical space, like you've said, you can use that to your advantage. Other people, if they're in tech, need to know how to use their customer experience or sell the story or, you know, how do you bring people into what you're doing? It's, it's winning people's hearts. Not just sharing content, I think, or sharing data or, you know, you want to get people behind the mission that you're, that you're working on, which you guys have done exceptionally well at St Kilda Mums, like, it's very clear what you do. You're well known for that. So it's not surprising to me that you've been as successful as you have been in the grant space because you're very good at communicating what you do.

Yeah, we do talk a lot about, we do talk a lot about impact Measurement and also impact reporting. So that's across multiple channels. So often there'll be little infograph that's shared on Instagram. Um, you know there'll be, we, we do publish on multiple platforms and we also have multiple pages for the three brands because it's, it's St Kilda Mums and it's Geelong Mums and it's Eureka Mums, you know, and so we've got three Facebooks, three websites, three Instagram, three LinkedIn and we recycle a lot of the content in multiple places and, and we do kind of a monthly update and then we do a six monthly update and then we also do put the annual report together and we're kind of talking all. And sometimes the numbers are so big, right? Sometimes the numbers are just so huge, you know, the numbers too big to absorb. And actually that's fund crushing, right? Talking about big numbers. But the, you know, the family, the one family help that you made an enormous difference to, you know, that's also really important and I guess when it comes to grant funding is that, you know, there are always goals, key performance measurements, you know, targets, things that we're trying to achieve and you've got to have a great way of being able to demonstrate those achievements. And what's been kind of baked into the way that we, you know, track information and keep data at St Kilda Mums is to, is to have that data live in real time, always on, always available. And we've built all of our back of our system so that's the case so anybody can log in at any time. And when we had the first lockdown last year with COVID when I was speaking to our major donors or our grant managers, I would often just share my screen and I just show them like, this is the wait list, you know, this is the wait list in Geelong, this is the wait list in St Kilda, this is the waitlist in Ballarat. You know, this is how many cots we're going to need to, to fill every order in the next month. We need 63 COTs in Geelong, right? So we've currently got five part time staff members, no volunteers, and we've got to get 63 cots. So do you understand why I need your money to buy new cots? Because there's no way that we're going to be able to recycle 63 cots in the next three weeks with five part time staff members and, and no volunteer help. So having that information at your fingertips is really important. That is super important.

It is so important. Yeah. Was that something that you tracked early on or you sort of learnt that you needed to track it later?

Absolutely. No. No. And I'm not going to take the credit for it either. One of our founding committee members, Michaela McIntosh, was working at the Sacred Heart Mission at the time that we started St Kilda Mums. And she said, you know, measure everything, count everything, track everything, know everything. And in fact, in the early days, and this was all done in an Excel spreadsheet, of course, because it was the early days, but in the early days we used to track who gave us what and who we gave it to. Right.

So that got tracking in a spreadsheet of like, who gave it to you and who, you know.

Yeah, well, it was very manual. It was very manual. But, you know, in the first, and we only did it for about six months and then we thought, well, actually, it doesn't really matter that Mary got Jones cop or da da da. Like, like, it doesn't matter. We're all helping. And that's really quite. And particularly because a donor might give you 20 different things and her 20 different things go to 20 different other people. And then, of course, as we became more sophisticated, we realized that for privacy reasons, we couldn't actually report back to every single donor and let them know where all 20, 20 women that their 20 items went to. That was a breach of privacy, etc. So we simplified things. But that's another thing that, you know, was always such a thrill for me, is that I would be in a playground in St Kilda and I would see someone pushing along a pram with our blue sticker on the handlebars and I'd just be like, oh, that's great. That's what it has. I might have. I might have replaced the puncture on that pram, you know, so it's a great feeling.

Yeah, that's really good. Knowing your point of difference is critical in grants and fundraising and I think in not for Profits across the board, there's often talk around, we don't need more organizations. Cause there's already people doing it. I personally don't agree with that. I think there's different ways we can tackle problems, but I think that knowing your point of difference is really important. How did you define that at St Kilda Mums?

Well, I mean, we were fortunate in that we were the first people to do what we do. Carolyn Chisholm, which is a pregnancy counselling service that's been around forever, they were actually handing out secondhand goods to their clients, but they were only giving things to their clients. They weren't giving things to other social workers to pass on. You know, it was just very much part of their service. So we were very much the first people to provide a free, valuable, quality service to any social worker, any maternal, child health nurse, in fact, any kind of health professional supporting family. So I guess we had to begin with, we had the unique selling point was the fact that we were the only one there. And then as we've grown and inspired other groups around Victoria and around Australia, it was part of our vision statement to share more. So when another kind of Me Too organization started up and just, you know, copied everything that we do, gave themselves a new name, you know, like. And I could tell because I'd written all the, I'd written all the copy myself, right. So I'd been the one who'd interpreted all the product safety standards and then tried to get that down into a sentence of, you know, what your pram has to have in order for it to be safe to pass on. Right. So, so I could tell that people were just lifting our intellectual property and sticking. Yeah, cutting, pacing. But we had a vision statement which guided everything we do. And it was waste less, share more, care for every baby and child. It's since been revised to be Share more, waste less and care for every baby and child. So we did a revamp of the, of the brand last year and we, we moved the. We decided not to lead with a negative statement. But I always remember the first one we wrote which was all about saving stuff from landfill and sharing everything we know with others. So for me, when it came to these, these me too organizations that we're establishing around, around Australia, I just took the lead and contacted everyone and said, how else can I help you? I can see we've given you, you know, we can see we've given you the. That you've got started. I'm glad that you've been able to find our resources on our website useful. I'm glad you and running what else can I do? And we started a sister organization, Round Table about three years ago. We didn't meet last year because of COVID but we were meeting quarterly. We were sharing a lot of best practice. And now in my new business, I, you know, I hope that I'll be able to. To help these organizations take their, you know, their backend processes to the next level. Done an awful lot of volunteering for them as well and help them, you know, fundraise better and organize the inventory better. And you know, we built A at St Kilda Mums and built a mobile application called Baby Safe so that they would have the same information to product recalls that we have internally at St Kilda Mums. So the attitude with those organisations is, you know, St Kilda Mums can't be everywhere. We're only in three cities, we can't be anywhere else because we really believe that the, you know, locals, helping locals is the best solution to local problems and also engaging people locally. So we were more than happy to help Baby give back up in the Gold coast, for example, or little things with tiny tots over in Perth. And as things have turned out with COVID like, it would have been crazy to try and be a national organization because you'd never be able to travel and see anybody. So, yeah, let alone have to spend time on flights and money on hotels. Right. It's so much better to have. Yeah. And in fact, you know, a social worker shouldn't have to drive more than really half an hour to get the goods they need for the families they're supporting. So we really need something like St Kilda Mums and in every community. And in fact, that's what we have in Melbourne now. There's several organisations. Olivia's Place down in Warrigal, for example, does recycle secondhand goods and Zoe Support up in Mildura. And yeah, we've got Sunshine Bendigo as well. So they're all Victorian organisations that we've been really proactively supporting.

I didn't realise you'd use so much tech as you're a not for profit, but you've incorporated that tech so that then others can share it. Which probably helps me understand the link of where you're moving with Salesforce.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's really exciting to see you moving into that space. I think there's a real need for it and there's a lot of organizations that need to up the ante on the digital tech space. They're fundraising, their websites, all of that. It's so important. How did this transition happen for you? And tell us a little bit about what you're doing now on Blazer Trail.

Well, I'm in the second week of my new business venture.

All sorted, all done.

All very new. It's all very new. Yeah. So I want to. I just want to help as many charities get the most out of their tech stack and help as many newcomers to working in the digital space get the job that they want, you know, and the job that they deserve. You know, too many women particularly are locked out of decent jobs because they take too long. You know, they take too much time off work and then their career break means that their job might not even exist when they come back, or that if. Or that they've been left so far behind that they, you know, it's really easy to lose your confidence and, and the world is moving at such a. Such a pace, so it's very easy to be left behind. So that's, that's. And I haven't figured out how I'm going to do it, but that's what I want to do. I want to help charities really scale up. And I was talking to Carly from Baby Give Back this morning, who's doing an incredible job up there. They started out in the Gold coast and they've just rented a big warehouse in Brisbane and they're using all the same technology that we use at St Kilda Mums to be able to have warehouses in three cities. She's now got warehouses in two cities. She needs to be able to see her inventory in both locations. She, she needs to be able to, you know, have an order from a social worker in the system and the social worker to be able to choose whether they pick up from the Gold coast or from Brisbane. All of that kind of sweet stuff that, that I know because we've built it and I can share with her. So, you know, I'm very excited when I meet a charity CEO or fundraising manager or board member, because a lot of the charities I'm speaking to are tiny. But if I meet somebody who really realizes that technology can be the massive point of difference, the massive empowerer that it's designed to be, and just to keep their minds open to the possibility of what else they can build onto their technology solution. And I'm happy to do whatever. I'm happy to help people with, you know, writing appeal copy, you know, for their tax appeal. I'm happy to, I'm happy to advise around what mass email tools they should be using. I'm happy to do. To do whatever anybody wants, knowing that I've learned the hard way. Most lessons I've learned the hard way also knowing that there's no right or wrong way. Right? And this is the thing about technology as well as people will often sort of say, well, you know, it's not really best practice to xyz. And my argument will be actually, well, you know, there's best practice and then there's what we need to do to be successful. You know, what, what we want to be able to do in order to make life easier for ourselves. So that's it.

So unique to an organization or the audience that they're talking to. We can't, you know, the same blanket rules, you know, you can apply the same principles, but the actual end result is going to look different from one organization to the next.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But one thing that's unique to our. Oh, sorry, I was just going to say one thing that's unique to our sector is the amount of volunteerism, you know, and how much talent there is. I mean, when I think about the talent of the St Kilda Mums Board, you know, just the board alone, let alone the finance, risk and audit committee, who are also incredibly talented, you know, and the hours that they put in and just our volunteers in general. I mean, we have some volunteers who are at the warehouse five days a week, like it's just part of the day. Every day they get up and they go to work. You know, the fact that they're not getting paid is kind of irrelevant. They've got somewhere to go, they've got a meaningful job. You know, there's this gorgeous woman down in. There's a couple of gorgeous women down in Geelong, actually. There's Marge and there's, There's Linda and they're there every day. You know, it's what they do. And the difference that volunteering can make in the community is enormous. And also the positive mental health benefits of having an engaging volunteering role cannot be underestimated.

Absolutely. I think there's benefits to both the volunteer and obviously the end organization and the people who are receiving the goods that the organization's distributing, in your case, at least.

Yes, absolutely.

Throwing back to that tech for a little bit. Have you received any grant funding to help you with some of those tech upgrades or your systems and processes?

Let's see. I think the answer is going to be no. And I'm just casting my mind back across the years. Yeah, the answer is going to be no. For my experience at St Kilda Mums, but I have seen other organisations win some grant funding and a really good case in point again is Olivia's place down in Warragal, who had a small grant from the local Bendigo bank. And they, they came to me and, well, Kirsten, who's the founder, she came to me and she said, oh, look, we've got this small amount of money, you know, it's really important that we get this work done. But it's just such a tiny amount of money, I'm struggling to find someone willing to do it. And I put her in touch with One of our volunteers who she employed as a part time admin and was able to build out all of the requirements that they needed and this happened. The project was delivered just before lockdown and had it not been delivered they would have had to close down because they were reliant on clipboards, whiteboards and some Excel spreadsheets. But mostly it was physical forms written out. You know, they're a pregnancy counselling service and they were doing face to face pregnancy counselling and not only did they, not only could they pack up and do everything from home and online and continue because they'd, they'd finished their digital transformation, but they were, they recently had their accreditation from the Department of Health and Human Services and they got a 100% pass rate on their assessment because they had such incredible records of every conversation, every phone call, every bit of counseling, every bit of support that that provided in the community. And that is the power of great technology. And not just, you know, a tiny charity in a small community or albeit a community that has three times the birth rate of the rest of Australia. You know, that south east corridor is a really huge growth corridor in Melbourne and their services are very much required. So you know, having been involved in that and there's a case study on my blazeyourtrail.org website about what Olivia's Place were able to achieve and, and I'm really happy if any of your listeners are keen to know more about that. I'm happy for them to get in touch with me via LinkedIn is a good way. You can head to the website and fill in the contact form there as well. I'm really happy to answer any questions about that.

Link in. Yeah, I'll pop a link in the show notes too. Jessica, straight to your website. That would be great with Olivia's Place actually like a Warrigal local previously now I'm up in Queensland but yeah from Warrigal so definitely know Olivia's place and Kirsten and yeah personally my, my baby goods have gone there so can definitely connect with that. Yeah, fantastic. Well respected in the community and it's been great watching their growth and progress over the last, you know, five. I can't remember how long they've been around for now but yeah, they have.

But you know, Kirsten is an amazing leader and she is somebody who has embraced this technology. Like she's, you know, not. These are. People say they, they embrace it with both hands. You know, they, they embrace it but like she, she like runs at it. She's like technology, I love it. And she's, she's, you know, and, and that goes to. I think that's a quality. I think that a lot of founder, founders of startups have share is that they are not afraid to try new things. Being a trailblazer means not being afraid of failure. It means just test it, see how it goes. Test it again, see how it goes. Try it a third time.

Do the hard yards. Just try it. Give it a go.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's very true. Okay, grant's question here. Your biggest grant win. Your biggest grants win. And then we're going to throw to your biggest grants mistake. You can start with either one of those that you like.

Oh, okay. Biggest grants win is.

It doesn't even have to be the biggest dollar amount. Like it could just be the biggest win for you. You know what you felt was the biggest win. Personally, it's up to you.

Oh, okay. Well, that's quite good. I would like to talk about Bar Family foundation supporting the regional project for three years. And I'd like to talk about JP Williamson supporting Ballarat for three years. Those are two significant, like three years worth of funding for, for what is essentially operational costs. Pretty, pretty big deals for me. I was also very proud when we got our first funding from both Ian Potter and Gandhil philanthropy because I'd always admired their work from afar and the people there. But yeah, they're wonderful wins. And then the grant failure. Was that so.

Yeah. Or something that you got right. We had some funny stories coming.

So here's a tip for beginners. Never put a grant application in for an idea that you've just come up with that is not anything to do with the strategic plan and doesn't have board approval. Don't do that.

I like it.

Yeah, because chances are, chances are you'll succeed. And then when you've got to explain to the board why you're, why you need to hire random person.

Oops. You know, I got to say, because you didn't get it, but you actually want. No, no, no, no.

We actually, we actually got it. We actually got it. And then I'm like, okay, so we've got this money, we've got this money now for this thing. Look, it makes me sound like a complete plonker. I wasn't being a complete plonker. It's just I had seen what we needed next, but I hadn't put it through the stress test of, you know, strategic plan and blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I think it comes to entrepreneurial mindset that anyone started something we just do stuff. We just decide and we get frustrated with processes, so we just go and do it.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. It was a valuable lesson to learn, I have to say, and it was one I learned quite early on in the piece. And I think it's a. I think the reason why it's a valuable lesson to learn is that, you know, even as a startup, even as a sole entrepreneur, you kind of have got to stick to your knitting and your game plan because it's very easy to be distracted by the shiny new things. So, you know, it's okay to do the extras once you've done the basics, I guess would be my lesson from.

That's a really good tip. Yeah, that's great. And the operational funding for three years is incredibly impressive that you were able to win that. That's. That's a very big grant win.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And like, such important projects to me, because the regional project is getting goods to anybody, any local government area outside of the three cities that we're in. So we're in Ballarat, we're in Geelong and we're in St Kilda, and. And we have this incredible partnership with Victorian Freight specialists, and they will ship goods to any local government area in Victoria. So we're regularly, regularly shipping things to regional Victoria. So the fact that that project got three years of support was a big deal for me. I'm a country girl myself. And then the Ballarat, the support for the expansion of Ballarat, which we only found out about that last year, that gave us the confidence we needed to expand the warehouse there and kind of double down in that region. Because Ballarat is very much, you know, a feeder for the Western Highway. So social workers and Ararat and all the way up to Horsham or look out to, you know, out to Nil, they will actually drive down to Ballarat to. For a lot of their meetings and things. It's very convenient for them to pick up from there, too. So. Yeah, both important regional projects. It's. You know, people who live in regional Victoria are so disadvantaged, they have no choice. I mean, the Target Bensdale closed down. So if you live anywhere east of St Kilda. No, I'm exaggerating, but, like, you know, like, if you live in Gippsland, there's nowhere to buy baby stuff except for an incredibly nice boutique and sale where everything is out of most people's budget. So, yeah, that's. That's just the disadvantage of living in the country. You've just got to drive a long way to even shop. So even if you can afford to buy online. And of course, the families that we're supporting through our regional projects are often not in a position to buy even if they wanted to. So. Yeah.

And I mean, at the end of the day, that's who it's about, isn't it? You know, it's about the people and we win the grants and we do the support and we do the work because it's about the end, you know, the end people who, who are the ones in need. And this is making a difference to kids and families right across Victoria. In your case. Yeah, this is a statewide reach that you're achieving. It's very, very impressive and not surprising at all that you've won awards and have. I'm actually really wrapped that you've been recognized as much as you have for the work that you've done.

Well, thank you.

Full credit to you for doing it. But also being recognized for it is. Yeah, it's wonderful.

Yeah, I was supported by a tremendous board who had something to do with that.

It's good, it's very good. The recognition of people in this space is, you know, it can happen a lot more. There are some truly wonderful people making a difference right across Australia.

Absolutely, absolutely. So it's up to all of us to nominate somebody.

That's right. There we go. Awards program, Shout out there now, last question. Your fundraising and your consulting. Now, in the fundraising space, the cross between grants and fundraising, often we say fundraising funds, different things to what grants funds. You've had experience both of those. Do you have any final advice for listeners on grants versus fundraising and where they should be focusing on either one?

Look, I just think it's really important to have diversified revenue. Right. So it's good to have as much variety in that, you know, in your pie of where you're going to get your money from. I think it's very important. I think that it's critical to have a strong case for support. And so any of the listeners here, if they're not sure what a strong case to support is, go to all of your favorite top charities and go to their websites and there should be a site wide search function and type case for support and. And see exactly what that is. St Kilda Mums has an excellent case for support. I mean, you know, I didn't write it, but I'm enormously proud of it and I think it's, you know, I've used it as a talking point, not so much. I wasn't so much dealing with the grant managers myself directly, but I could Use exactly the same document for any conversation I had with any major giver. And so a case of support, the one that you use right across the organization, that everybody understands, that's informed by your strategic plan, that has very detailed budgets and goals for the next three years on all your top projects, is just the critical thing to have. So drop everything and do that. And if you don't have, if you're working for an organization that doesn't have a strategic plan, drop the case for support and write the strategic plan and then be informed by that. So I was just thinking.

And it's a reminder for organizations to get grant ready. Like, you can't just start with a grant. You need to be ready to apply for the grant. And that's fitting in with your strategic plan plan and your annual plans and your reporting and your audited financials. All of that work needs to happen.

And I'd imagine there are a lot of listeners here today, you know, listening to this podcast, who are probably in a state of flux when it comes to this strategic plan because of COVID Right. And I get that, and I understand that, but really important, the whole organization has a shared, you know, roadmap for where they're going. And if the old strategic plan is no longer relevant because it's been derailed by Covid, then that's where the energy needs to go. And it might not mean writing an entirely new plan. It might mean going through, you know, a strategic plan that's currently got six goals and admitting that two of the goals will never be achieved and just, and just agreeing at board level. Well, we're not going to do those things anymore. So let's focus on the other four. I think that's very, very important.

That's fantastic. You've got so much that you can share with listeners. Jessie and I think just go and jump on her website. So I'll put a link through in the show notes. I'm sure Jesse would love to hear from people who are wanting consulting or tech, you know, upping the ante in their tech space. Maybe grants and fundraising. I don't know if you're wanting to still stay in that space.

Look, I'm really happy to advise it sort of a top level, but I'm not, I'm not the doer. You know, I'm not a great. I mean, I'm an. Okay, look, I can, I can, I can do copywriting for fundraising. I think, you know, grant writing is such, such a specialist skill that I like to do. I like to defer to the experts on that. But you know, I've been, I've been supported over the years with some tremendous volunteers in that space. So if you, if you're running a small charity and you're struggling with your grants program, put an ad on LinkedIn. You know, there's plenty of people working, working in the for profit sector who would like to do more for purpose, who would like to have the opportunity to learn grants writing. Just ask the universe and the universe will provide.

It's very true. I think there are more people volunteering in there. Yeah, yeah. Any of your other consulting based work? Definitely. Jump onto Jess's website and find out. Go into the Show Notes, find out more, get in touch with her. She's an amazing person in the not for profit space. And thanks again for coming on and sharing all of this great information with everyone today. Who's listening.

No problem, no problem. Thank you.

Thanks for joining me on Grants Uncovered. If you'd like Show Notes, head over to grantsuncovered.com see you next time.