12/08/2024
We often ask you, the community of Mangawhai for donations to help us with running and maintenance of equipment/facilities in the park. For new projects and builds we are constantly applying for grants from various entities such as the KDCs reserve contribution fund, the lotteries commission, COGS and our very own Mangawhai opportunity factory.
At this stage in time we are primarily focussed on the upkeep of what has been built in MAZ over the past decade and a bit.
Maintenance and running costs are a big expense for MAZ and as we are a free to use facility, we cannot make our money through avenues like ticket sales and with us not being a commercial facility and our License to operate (through KDC) limiting commercial enterprises on MAZ land, our only stream of regular income is the rent we receive from Cafe MAZ on a monthly basis. We have never shared with you before what these costs add up to and we thought, in the name of transparency we should share a few of these numbers with you of recent and typical costs that MAZ faces on a regular basis.
A few of the costs your donations have gone towards in recent times are:
Accounting and audit fees: $13,570
Power $1800
General Repairs and Maintenance $19,305
Replacement of Lilypad swings $8095
Insurance $10,374
Barbecue remediation $9000
Independent Playground Audit $2068
Just these costs alone add up to $64,212, no small number and although some of these projects (the bbq's for instance) are a ''one off'' many of these bills are a regular part of running the park.
Of course, there are other costs not mentioned here and there are future projects we are looking at having done on our maintenance endeavour. One of the next ones we are looking toward is the grinding and re sealing of our big bowl and the replacement of a handful of the coping blocks. Moving on into next year there are other, older areas of the skatepark that will need attention too. The playground requires constant checking and maintenance and some changes/upgrades will be required in the near future as well as to our gym. Regular audits and maintenance on the flying fox, cleaning of the tennis courts turf, new basketball hoops, tennis net and a myriad of other things that just slowly wear out over time.
The message we would like to put across to the Mangawhai community is that MAZ is solely reliant on your donations and grant money. There are not a lot of grant opportunities out there that can be used for running costs and maintenance which makes your donations, however big or small incredibly important to us! We do not have any paid staff, we do not have commercial opportunities (ticket sales, gift shops etc) we can pursue. We are now, and always have been run and paid for by the community, for the community.
We have a new sponsorship program up and running which we will update you on very shortly and this will certainly help with our regular costs but until then, we hope this helps shine some light on what our committee manages from a financial perspective.
If you feel so inclined, donations can be made to:
Mangawhai Activity Zone Charitable Trust
12-3094 -0197695-00
A dollar a day goes a long way!
Thank you to our regular donors!