Community Chest Durban hosted their annual top donor awards and our new Chairperson, Dr Velo Govender, made her debut speech. Velo chairs our grant management, capacity building, and marketing committees, and is passionate about good due diligence and making a positive change in our communities.
In her speech, Velo highlighted that through the kindness and generosity of the donors in 2022/23 financial year, Community Chest Durban has been able to provide regular monthly financial support to 96 organisations (Community Impact Partners) with financial grants totalling R14 million. Donor Advised Gifts of another R1.8 million and donations-in-kind to the value of almost R1.2 million were also distributed. In the past year, cash and goods totalling R17 million were allocated to 114 organisations.
Shrinking incomes, coupled with rising costs, have placed many charitable organisations under increased financial stress, resulting in some charitable organisations being compelled to reduce staff and rationalise services. Whilst Community Chest’s funding is generally not the largest received by our beneficiary organisations, it is often the most regular, and for this, they are extremely grateful.
We, in turn, are grateful for the dependable funding of our top donors which, in many instances, has allowed us to keep the doors of some of our local welfare and development organisations open.
In light of the escalating financial pressure faced by our Community Impact Partners, the Board has decided to increase the value of total grants to R16.1 million for the coming year, an increase of 15% over last year, with 11% going to the existing organisations and the last 4% going to new applicants. This has been allocated to 105 compliant organisations, who passed our rigorous due diligence process. If we receive the anticipated Donor-Advised-Gifts we expect we should be contributing in the region of R17.5 million into our communities in the current year.
"We express our heartfelt appreciation to all of our donors; for sharing our vision, demonstrating your commitment to partnering with Community Chest, and making an investment in the future of underprivileged people living in needy communities," concludes Velo.