The Words for The Nerds

 We know that while some people like to see pretty pictures and read stories about people whose lives have been changed through their generous donations, others like numbers and graphs and all the details that make their minds smile and help them know they are making a good decision.

If you want to skip reading all the words and numbers, click here to go straight to our donate page.

And for all the nerds and geeks like us, these words and numbers are just for you.

Church 4 Life Charities includes our Clothing Collectors, our 4 Op Shops, our Pantry, which, like Mary Poppin’s carpet bag, has all sorts of useful items to help those doing it tough, including our famous Hampers With Heart program.

Here’s some details about the choices of where you can Give 5s to.

Where will you choose to Give 5s?

Chip In For Petrol

Our Clothing Collectors provides a free collection service to approximately 1 million people in the Hunter and Central Coast through our blue bag collections and Pick Ups. We aim to make it as easy as practicable for people to donate pre-loved clothes, shoes, bags and linens to our charity so they can be re-worn, re-used or recycled and help people in need locally and globally.

Each year we rescue well over 1.5 million kilos of clothing from landfill. That makes our earth very happy. 😊

Our annual petrol bill alone is about $92,000! That’s $252 per day! And it’s growing!

We also have the usual rego, maintenance and insurances that come with managing a fleet of vehicles. As you know our vehicles aren’t smart or new and they work hard for our community.

With every $10 donated towards petrol, we collect approximately 23kg of clothes.

Mental Health research has shown that cluttered homes create cluttered minds and add to mental health struggles. According to the research paper Stuff Happens published by The Australian Institute in 2020

“Four in ten Australians say they feel anxious, guilty or depressed about the clutter in their homes. Women are much more concerned about clutter than men: almost half of the women surveyed said they were anxious, depressed or worried about the clutter in their home, while a third said they were embarrassed by it.”

Many people have told us that our blue bags are a very helpful prompt for them to have a declutter and clear out things from their homes and minds that they no longer need.

We know that many people in our community have mobility issues or rely on public transport, so a home collection helps them too.

By The Numbers

To Give 5s To Chip In For Petrol click here

Hampers With Heart

Christmas is our big Hampers With Heart season as we all like to make sure no one misses out at Christmas. Did you know we also give out Hampers every week, sometimes almost every day, of the year?

Hampers can be the short-term help that someone needs when multiple things go wrong at once. For people like Chloe to whom a little bit of help gets her from crisis to pay day and back on her feet again.

We provide Hampers that are tailored to the size of the household.

By The Numbers

To Give 5s towards Hampers With Heart click here

Emergency Assistance

Emergency Assistance takes on many forms. It could be a food or toiletries hamper. It could be furniture for someone who’s on the way back from homelessness into a home. It could be clothes for someone escaping Domestic Violence. It could be help after a natural disaster. Emergencies come in many forms, and we provide practical assistance where we can.

By The Numbers

To Give 5s to Emergency Assistance click here

1,000 Local Lives Changed

We are on our way to reaching our Mission “To see 1,000 local lives changed by 4 April 2027 through who we are and what we do at Church 4 Life Charities”. You can read stories of over 230 lives that have already been changed on our 1,000 Lives Changed page.

Many of our stories are from people whose lives have been changed through the Power of Work, both paid and volunteered. We can’t do what we do without our volunteers and without our paid employees. Like most charities, we do have some employees that we pay. Many of our employees were long term unemployed before they joined our team and part of our mandate is to help people get back into the workforce who struggle to find jobs. Most of our employees love their job so much they do volunteer extra hours on top of their paid hours.

 Volunteering can truly be a life changer to lonely and vulnerable people. Statistics prove what we see every day. Volunteering is a very healthy thing to do. It improves mental, social and physical health. It lengthens one’s life and brings happiness to the volunteer and their families.

 Employment changed Jye’s live as he has been given the hand up he needed to support his family. Sometimes all you need to truly change your life and your family is for someone to give you a go, to give you a trial day on the job and let you prove yourself. Then you can be a wonderful employee for the company and show your kids how to contribute and earn your way in life.

 Work & Development Orders, Work For The Dole & Community Service are three programs we offer our community to see lives changed.

Work For The Dole programs help people find jobs, hope and joy. Some of our best employees we have met through Work For The Dole and have offered them positions with us when they became available.

When the Courts order you to do Community Service it can be scary going to a new place, feeling like you are wearing a Naughty Hat for everyone to judge you. When people do Community Service with us, they are shown that they are valued as individuals, and encouraged to change their lives by the honesty our team show in telling their own stories in their journey from trouble to triumph.

WDO (Work & Development Orders) are where you can do volunteer work instead of paying fines when you are on a low income. For example, if someone on a disability pension runs a red light and doesn’t have $350 to pay their fine, they can come and volunteer with us for 10 hours in lieu of payment. This can be a huge relief financially and can change their lives as they make new friends. A number of our volunteers met us through a WDO and stayed on as permanent volunteers as they saw the changes it made in their lives. As a registered WDO host we have to provide qualified supervisors who do training and report hours worked to the authorities.

 By The Numbers

To Give 5s To Change Lives click here

Where Most Needed

Where Most Needed funds go towards Emergency Assistance, Hampers or other needs and can also go towards the boring things like rent, electricity and insurance. We try to cover all our running expenses through our sales but sometimes there is a short fall, so your donation to this fund may also help with an unexpectedly high electricity bill or repairs for a truck break down. Our Board is very diligent in monitoring all our expenses as we endeavour to honour every donation by being good stewards of all that we receive.

The slogan of our 4 Op Shops is “Find Good Things Here”. Our goal is to provide a place where our customers know they are valued by us not just for what they buy or donate but as people in our community. The Good Things to be Found in our Op Shops go beyond quality second hand and new items, to a listening ear, a community, friendship, a helping hand, maybe a hamper or even a job as a volunteer.

We were excited to open our fourth op shop in Wooodrising in 2023 and have plans to open more in the future as we see the demand growing for op shops both for those who are feeling the financial pinch and also by those who are blessed financially and who wish to reuse, upcycle and buy second hand (which some brand new items are) for sustainability.

Some people think that because many of the items at our op shops are donated, that they don’t cost us anything to sell. Every item we sell does cost us something. But, in order to keep prices down for customers, some of our goods are sold below cost.

Most of the food we sell we pay for. For example, the fresh fruit and vegetables at our Warners Bay shop. These are purchased fresh every Monday from Newcastle Fruit & Veg Market as we want to provide the freshest produce to our customers that we can.

For the items that are donated there are costs involved in picking them up, sorting them, sometimes cleaning them, and putting them in place for sale. We also have the usual commercial costs of rent, insurance, electricity etc. Whether our shops are open or closed there is always a cost.

Proceeds from sales at our op shops go directly to help people in need in our local community.

 By The Numbers

Spin / swipe the Appeal Wheel and have some fun coming up with a number you would like to give to help Change Lives. Just for fun, be sure to include a number 5 in your donation. 😊

To Give 5s to Where Most Needed click here

Did you know we are a Registered Charity? – It’s important that you know we have been a registered charity with ACNC (Australian Charity and Not for Profit Commission) since 2012 and have been a registered PBI (Public Benevolent Institution) with the ATO since 2012. This means that we comply with all the government’s standards for charities and we are authorised to provide Tax Deductible Donations Receipts (DGR).

We do not receive charity Government Funding. Like other businesses, we received JobKeeper and we may receive wage subsides from time to time, but we don’t receive Government Funding for our programs that help our community.

We are a registered Public Benevolent Institution and certified for Tax Deductibility Donations (DGR – Deductible Gift Recipient).

Tax Deductible Receipts are emailed out within the first days of July. If you don’t receive your receipt for your donation by 7 July please contact us at [email protected]

 We hope all this extra information has helped you decide where best to donate your 5’s and how much to give. If you would like any further information, please contact us via email at [email protected]

Now you’ve decided where and how much you’d like to donate, click HERE to go directly to the giving page – Give 5’s To Change Lives.

To Give 5s to wherever You Choose, click here