Aurizon

Partnering with Good2Give

Good2Give worked with Aurizon in 2011 to develop a comprehensive community investment strategy to bring the company’s values and its employees’ passions to life through the Aurizon Community Giving Fund. “It looks like a humble approach but our four focus areas of health and wellbeing, community safety, environment and education have come from a great deal of community and staff consultation,” says April Whittam, Manager, Brand and Sponsorship at Aurizon.

“Working with Good2Give gave us the framework and expertise we needed to navigate this strategic process. We now have community priorities that are deeply rooted in Aurizon’s culture, and with it, have harnessed great senior leadership and employee support.”

Aurizon’s Community Grants Program was launched in 2011. A perpetual program, it encourages charities to seek grants of up to $20,000 for community based projects.

Now in its seventh year the Aurizon Community Giving Fund, has provided grants to over 320 charitable projects across Australia. The automated banking and funds distribution component of the grants platform means distributions to approved and validated charities take place seamlessly from the Aurizon Community Giving Fund which is established as a Good2Give Foundation Account. This not only reduces Aurizon’s administrative expenses and time but also provides a level of objectivity with third party auditing, validation, approval and distribution process.

“Good2Give has been instrumental in the development and delivery of the Aurizon Community Giving Fund Grants Program. The tailored online platform works flawlessly. Good2Give’s expertise in due diligence, validation and grant making has proven invaluable. For us, Good2Give takes care of all the details enabling us to focus on building our community impact.”

Responding to disasters the Aurizon way

In early 2016, Aurizon was able to provide a fast and effective response to Cyclone Debbie’s devastating aftermath across Queensland. “The week that the cyclone hit all four of our rail network systems went down. We knew our business was feeling it but so was the wider community. We’d traditionally donated funds to charities providing relief but in this instance, there were no coordinated efforts at the time that we could get behind.”

Within a week, April and her team had taken the initiative to design and launch an emergency grant round to fund small and diverse grassroots recovery efforts to the value of $20,000 each.

“The Good2Give team worked incredibly fast to get this program up and running. We established assessment criteria and an entirely new online platform for applications within that short time period.”

As a result, Aurizon could provide communities with the unique support they needed. “From helping replace football posts that had blown away in one community to replanting river banks and fixing broken windows in other community centres, the support was identified and targeted.”

“Launching the program within a week was one thing, but working with Good2Give gave our company the confidence to know we could launch the program effectively. Their reliability and industry expertise meant we could efficiently validate and process funds to 15 grant recipients only a few months after the cyclone,” says April.

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