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Volunteer of The Month - February 2019.

 Neil McDonald - Taradale/Napier.

Like many clubs or organisations, the focus is often upon the President and the committee to “run” the club.  However, behind the scenes you would often find the silent worker who contributes enormously to the continual function of the club.  The Taradale Bridge Club, with an endorsement from the Napier Bridge Club have pleasure in nominating Neil McDonald.

Neil has run the Fund Raising and Sponsorship role for the Taradale Club for some years.  Neil doesn’t wish to be on the committee but does a tremendous job from outside the formal club management team.  Neil’s professional approach has led to every tournament (seven) and bridge session (five per week) run by our club, throughout the year, being sponsored.  He also arranges the advertisers (ten sponsors) for the yearly Membership Booklet as well as sponsorship of any one-off projects.  Neil brings in many thousands of dollars into our club through his personal touch to all sponsors.  Apart from the yearly membership subscriptions, our club relies wholly upon the sponsorship money brought in by Neil.  Prior to every sponsored event, Neil personally contacts the sponsor and follows up after the event, with a photo of the recipients of the sponsorship and a thank you.

 When our dealing machine suddenly died last year, Neil was quickly on hand to arrange sponsorship to cover the majority of the replacement machine’s cost.  Neil belongs to the Napier Bridge Club as well and when they required funds for their air conditioning system, Neil stepped in and found sponsorship money that covered a significant portion of that cost.  Recently, the Napier Club had renovations completed and Neil’s application brought in $43,000 that covered over 90% of the total cost.  Neil keeps a comprehensive Word document of all the club’s sponsorship contacts, that includes how they liked to be contacted and how often.

Napier President, Annette Hagan, Neil and Jan Davis, Taradale co-President
at the presentation.

At Neil’s suggestion, we have introduced a “Sponsor’s Corner” in our monthly newsletter, whereby we promote a sponsor for the month.  Recently our club have looked at introducing the Junior Club Championship honours board.  Within a day of talking to Neil about the possibility of getting this sponsored, he sent a comprehensive email covering the options and ideas around the honours board.  Neil’s friendly dispossession, his innovative ideas for fundraising, and his attention to detail make him the ideal person to secure funds for our club.

The bridge community of Taradale and Napier fully support Neil’s nomination for the volunteer of the month award.

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