Grants

Gecko is a not-for-profit, non-party-political organisation which relies on volunteers to carry out its activities since its funds are very limited.

Gecko welcomes your interest in becoming a member of the Grants Team.

Gecko Funds

Gecko receives minimal funding from government to cover its expenses in providing a wide range of services to the community in protecting the environment, educating the community, lobbying for better environmental outcomes, engaging in bushcare projects and coordinating annual Gold Coast events such as World Environment Day (Green Day Out), Clean Up Australia Day and an environmental awards night. It is necessary to continuously seek a variety of sources of funds to ensure these activities can go on.

The Grants Team

One group of volunteers makes up the Grants Team and their task is to identify potential government and philanthropic funds to support Gecko activities.

Meetings

The Grants Team meets every second Friday. Their activities include:

• Identifying Gecko’s needs and projects by asking Gecko members for ideas. Examples of recent identified needs were funds for an environmental youth forum, a computer network upgrade, repairs to our building, and tools for our bushcare groups
• Identifying grants and other sources of funds, such as potential sponsors, to meet these needs
• Applying for the grants
• Coordinating the whole process and keeping track of grants applied for, the success rate, ensuring the process is accountable, and acknowledging donors

Volunteer benefits

Volunteers are always welcome to help the Grants Team and new members will have the opportunity to meet people, learn about grant writing, learn new skills and have the satisfaction of making a positive contribution to Gecko’s efforts to protect our environment.

Recent grants that Gecko has applied for and been successful have included:

Staff of Gecko Regen, the hirers of Gecko Hall and all members of Gecko can now use the upgraded bathroom facilities upstairs at Gecko House.

The tradespeople involved did a wonderful job of the plumbing, carpentry and floor covering. Hot water is provided from the new solar water heater.

The facilities had become degraded and needed improvement for health and safety reasons.

The installation of a shower facility will hopefully encourage the increased use of alternative transport (eg. bicycling, walking, jogging, swimming, kayaking) by people traveling to Gecko House.

We aim for Gecko House to be a showcase for environmental sustainability. The upgrade of the solar hot water system will allow the shower, and indeed the entire House hot water use, to be harnessed from renewable energy. This will complement our existing environmentally-friendly practices, including photovoltaic solar panels that provide the energy for the House, bike racks, and our office policies and practices of avoid, reduce, reuse and recycle.

Gecko appreciates the generous support of the Jupiters Casino Community Benefit Fund in making these improvements possible.

Late last year, Gecko applied for a grant to upgrade the network of 10 computers we currently have in the office. We have contributed the vast majority of the investment in our computer network thus far, and it was time to try to outsource some funds for this much-needed upgrade.

Fortunately, our application to the Queensland Government Community Benefit Fund was successful. Preparations are almost complete for implementing the upgrade, which will see work done on cabling, computer memory and operating capacity, as well as installation of anti-virus and anti-spam software, and a new server computer.

This will result in a marked increase in the speed, reliability, security and safety of the network.

In modern times, reliable IT facilities, in one way or another, are integral to the vast majority of our projects.

Many thanks to the Community Benefit Fund for this grant, which will benefit Gecko and the community in many ways.