Help us

We gladly welcome any assistance that you may be able to offer to keep our operations and services viable and sustainable, including:

Regular or occasional volunteering for special events and/or regular services;
One-off or regular financial donations or in-kind assistance from businesses and individuals. (If you would like to help us with a donation, please visit our Donation page.)

Volunteering

With a tiny number of paid staff – mainly to manage and operate the reception area – we rely heavily on regular or occasional volunteers to help with things like keeping the food shelves stocked, occasional gardening and tidying, running errands or helping out around reception. And our larger regular events, such as the Christmas Get Together or the monthly Community Lunch, could never happen without a large number of volunteers building up to and on the day. Here are some examples of volunteer contributions.

* Paul has been a volunteer of 3 years now, and lately he’s been cooking his famous soup for our ‘drop in and chat’ service in reception, and man they love it! He’s a firecracker in the kitchen and produces all sorts of lovely concoctions. It really is so heartwarming for people to sip on a cup of soup on a freezing cold day.

We usually have it available hot in the slow cooker for a couple of days, and it is very appreciated by all, from the homeless guys to some of the lovely elderly folks who come in. Some of the Red Cross volunteers enjoy it too, which is brilliant.

* Jill has also been a regular volunteer and has also served on our committee in recent years. She does regular trips to and from New World to replenish our community pantry with food donated by shoppers and management there. She also helps in many ways with the day-to-day operations around reception.

* Jan works many hours as a Red Cross volunteer and committee member, and she’s happy to extend her time on into helping Jane at reception, in management tasks and generally supporting her on challenging days.

* All winter (in fact all summer as well) Polly knits and donates beautiful hats, slipper socks and gloves for anyone at Community House who needs them. They’re always super cute and fun and of course provide cosiness for many little feet, heads and hands in our community.

* As another example, this website was built and donated by a volunteer as a (challenging) post-retirement project.

Then there are the big events. The biggest is the annual Christmas Get Together held in the park beside our building. It’s invitation-only, for people nominated by the agencies in town who work with individuals and families who face difficult times. Last year we had over 300 people from 135 families, with food, gifts, entertainment, and a “give and take” area for donated goods, and of course Santa.

Dozens of volunteers helped out on the day, while several community groups and businesses donated food, gifts and all the other things that make the event a huge difference in the life of many.

If you think you have time to help out with any volunteering, regular or on particular projects, please contact us.

Donations

We’re proud of the services we can offer to the Motueka community and the support we’re able to give, through our tiny staff, to individuals at times of need. But as well as relying on the help of volunteers we need money to pay staff and the general overheads of operating the building.

We are able to use the small fees charged to our tenants to help, but much of our funding comes from a small number of major funding agencies such as Rata Foundation and Lotteries. But to do this requires detailed annual applications to be made which takes manager time – often days of work in between normal tasks – to apply for. And these funders are not always able to help or provide as much as we need, so we need other funding sources.

We have been blessed by contributions from several local businesses for certain specific purposes. For example, New World Motueka have regularly and frequently provided with food donated by their customers and themselves to top up our food shelves and fridge, and vouchers for people urgently needing a range of household products.

Several businesses, such as Talley’s, pitch in with food for our annual Christmas Get Together.

There are other local people who are well aware of the value of maintaining the work of Motueka Community House and who choose to make cash donations from time to time. These are always most welcome and appreciated. (It is worth noting that as we are a registered charity any donations made are eligible for a government tax rebate of 33%. Our Charities number is CC26303.)

If you would like to help us by making a regular or one-off donation, please visit our Donation page.

We encourage any assistance that can be offered, including regular or occasional volunteering as well as financial assistance from businesses and individuals to keep our operations viable.