Urgent Appeal for Donations and Support!

Hi ECOSS Friends and Supporters,

I hope you are all doing well in the Guling Season. https://dibberandboots.com.au/guling-season/

I think we all know and understand the vision and value that ECOSS offers the community. We are addressing:

–Food Security– and food insecurity through Crops for Community Program and offering the Co-farming opportunities in Pollination Place and onsite.

–Reconciliation Action through our work with our local Indigenous Community, Education Program, Native Nursery and donations through Crops for Community.

-We are reducing loneliness in the region providing a Community Hub in all our activities, events and Market.

–Addressing climate and environmental issues through trials and testing of biochar, carbon and waste reduction through UpCycles, encouraging bike riding and organic and bio-dynamic farming, and revegetation with our Native Nursery.

– And supporting the Arts, Multiculturalism and all ages through our site activities, and events.

It comes with a heavy heart for us to let you know how dire the financial situation is with ECOSS at the moment. I’m writing this in radical honesty, as most people do not understand what occurs in the Cogs of ECOSS.

Many of you know that we have had to reduce staff hours in our essential and wonderful programs – Crops for Community and our Events and Market Coordination roles. This has been very difficult for the staff, and making managing all we try to continue to offer the community extremely challenging, which may result in the ending of some of our amazing work. We are working tirelessly to find ways forward here with the Disability Service organisations and funding bodies.

We have strong vision and focus on our sustainability and are always striving to make ends meet, however we find ourselves in a hiatus requiring 6 months additional financial support. This has come about due to a few reasons:

– We have endured significant delays whilst awaiting Planning permission to accept new tenants.

– We have had Planning consultant fees, and associated works costs to meet the planning requirements.

– We have received under half of the grants we have applied for in the last year – which is significantly less than we have ever received.

-Our daily running expenses have dramatically increased- for example workcover alone has risen to approx $8000 per year, utilities costs rising, maintenance costs, and mostly staffing costs are almost crippling.

Apart from our current tenancies we receive $18,000 per year from Yarra Ranges Council- whilst we appreciate this greatly, it is not enough. All other grants are for particular projects and usually don’t include much staffing, admin, or contribute to maintenance.

Our Committee of Management are all Volunteers. They work tirelessly to progress ECOSS, building on site assets, managing the finances- of which are extremely complex, and the day to day issues associated with all aspects of Management.

Our Staff all work above and beyond, they volunteer as much as they are paid to work or more, and are the consistency on the ground on an almost daily basis.

We have many solid future sustainability plans, but these will not be in effect until next year.

These include:

– Renting the blue site shed near the office – see me if you are interested.

– Renting the bottle room

– Renting the Studios next to UpCycles – once built

– Renting other spaces at ECOSS

– Tendering for Native Tubestock Supply on a large scale

– Growing our Corporate Volunteer Program

– Introducing User Pays systems for some programs

– Growing the Market and Shop

And many more opportunities are on the horizon.

We are appealing to you as you are all key parts of the solution to help us grow.