SENSES Foundation’s $100,000 after costs return on its 2004 Corporate Golf Day is already being talked about as Perth’s most successful golf day ever.
That is partly because the amount of money raised from 32 teams belting a white ball around Royal Perth Golf Club is considered to be the largest return on such an event.
The funds will go to the foundation’s communication program, its flagship offering to deafblind people.
So how did the organisation, which is Perth’s oldest charity at 110 years and once known as the Royal Institute for the Blind, achieve it?
Foundation fundraising and marketing manager Pauline Green said the key to a big result was to secure a good committee.
In the golf day’s case that was a four-man team made up of AHG managing director Bob Branchi, Premium Corporation director Trevor Gosatti, Surespek general manager Stuart Baldock and Roberts Day partner Erwin Roberts.
Ms Green said it was important to keep the committee small while ensuring the members had strong corporate influence.
"We go out and hit as many corporates as we can and then go to the committee to get the rest," she said.
In the case of the golf day that meant getting as many companies as possible to sign up teams for the event, at $2,000 a team, and then getting the committee to encourage other companies to make up the shortfall.
While 32 teams was the target, the foundation secured funding for 35 with three companies opting to donate the $2,000 without fielding a team.
Ms Green said another key part of the event’s success was getting as much donated as possible or, failing that, for the best possible price.
"You have to set yourself a three-year plan with your supporters," she said.
Ms Green ranks "the cause" as an important part of maintaining the ongoing success of the golf day.
"The supporters have to believe in it," she said.
"They also want to know how much they’ve raised and where that money is going."
Indeed, the announcement towards the event’s close that it had raised $96,000 after costs sparked a frenzy of people trying to outdo each other in the donation stakes to push the total to the $100,000 mark. The committee had set itself the task of bettering the previous year’s total of $80,000 and with it being the 10th year the event had been run, they wanted a good result.
One thing that promotes that belief in the cause is that Senses Foundation is the only organisation in Western Australia offering a program to help deafblind people communicate.
It includes tailor-made videotapes that are renewed biannually to help parents of deafblind children and deafblind people learn to communicate and the work of specialists to assist them.
Ms Green said the foundation had a lifelong involvement with its clients and, in some cases, that involvement was 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The foundation helps 140 people through its communication program and statistics show that is just 10 per cent of deafblind people in WA.
Ms Green said saying thankyou should not be overlooked.
The day after the event she personally visited each gift sponsor.
Those sponsors included Radio 92.9 which donated a 30 by 30 advertising package; Warren Mead who donated a lunch and drinks for 12 people cruise on his boat Moonlight Lady; Channel 7 which donated a helicopter ride over Perth; and Argyle & Smales which donated a diamond ring and a diamond pendant.
Ms Green said master of ceremonies David Christison had been vital to the success of the post event dinner and had been responsible for the frenetic bidding during the auction process.