Loaned employees help make a difference for community

Carrying on a legacy over 50 years old, the Give Where You Live Foundation thanked and celebrated 29 local employees for their involvement in the Foundation’s annual Loaned Executive Program in September.

 Through the efforts of the Give Where You Live Foundation’s 2017 team of Loaned Executives, just shy of $45,000 in new Workplace Giving donations was raised allowing the Foundation to continue its investment into the community.

 Introduced in 1966, the Loaned Executive Program relies on community-minded businesses to ‘loan’ a valued employee to represent the Give Where You Live Foundation to ensure that:

  • 200 participating Give Where You Live Foundation Workplace Giving businesses and close to 4,000 current donors are thanked
  • Geelong employees are encouraged to sign up to the Give Where You Live Foundation’s Workplace Giving Program or increase current donations as this in turn supports the most vulnerable people in our community
  • Organisations in our region are updated on the work of the Foundation

The Gordon Murray Award is awarded annually to a Loaned Executive who demonstrates exemplary commitment to the role. It is named in honour of the late Gordon Murray, an Apexian who first brought the concept of a Community Chest to Geelong – now known as Give Where You Live.

This year, the award was presented to Melissa Tournier of Ford Australia for showing exemplary commitment to the role and reinvigorating an original Give Where You Live Foundation Workplace Giving organisation.

26 supporting organisations volunteered their employees, including Ford Australia and VIVA Energy who have participated every year since the program’s inception and other mainstays Fagg’s Mitre 10, Barwon Water and GMHBA.

Many thanks to the Loaned Executive Program’s supporters McHarry’s Buslines, Lightbulb Training Solutions and Waurn Ponds Estate.

See all the photos from the evening here