A NEW community fund aimed at backing grassroots ideas and plugging funding gaps in Fremantle was launched last week, with organisers urging locals to chip in and “step up for Walyalup/ Fremantle”.
Good Fund Freo committee member Sarah Booth has spearheaded the initiative, which she said grew out of a conversations about “the evolution of the hugely successful Impact 100” run by the Fremantle Foundation.
• The Good Fund Freo board. Photos byAdam Kenna
“It’s been almost a year since our first phone call and over that time we’ve assembled an incredible committee of passionate local individuals with aligned values and a simple desire to see Freo thrive – the result, Good Fund Freo,” she said.
Ms Booth described GFF as “a perpetual fund, grown by you and me, administered by the Fremantle Foundation, and literally only there to do good for the Fremantle community”.
She said it would support everything “from the smallest, local initiative through to larger initiatives where together we shoot for the moon”.
Possible target areas included housing and homelessness, food insecurity, safety, equitable healthcare and initiatives for “young people, older people, greening, cleaning”.
The aim, she said, was to create “a more horizontal idea of philanthropy, where lots of us chip in a little, alongside those who a better placed to chip in a lot.
“We aspire to ‘fund the gaps’ – which might be grassroots groups, volunteer organisations, innovative responses to some of our wicked problems, and community-led care – things that might not fit neatly in a box,” she said.
Ms Booth said the fund would also be able to respond quickly to smaller requests.
“If they applied to have their van rego paid for a year, that’s a call the Good Fund is well positioned to swiftly answer,” she said, referring to volunteer-run services like the Community Collective Food Pantry.
At the same time, she said, it could help deliver larger projects “where, as a community, we might decide we want to buy a building”.
Organisers are aiming to raise $300,000 by January 2027 to begin distributing grants and investing for the long term.
by ADAM KENNA