Tennis club on a mission
Letter boxes are being filled with phone books by the Silverdale Tennis Club.
The club’s members are doing their annual fundraising by delivering around 12,000 phone books around the Rodney area.
Group members deliver around 150-200 books each at a set rate decided between them and Yellow Pages.
The group has been doing this as their only fundraiser for over 10 years and plan to continue to do so in the future.
In previous years the money raised from delivering allowed them to keep membership prices down, pay for childrens coaching and do upgrades and repairs on the club and to their tennis courts.
Fundraising coordinator, Karen Smith has been with the club for eight years and says the fundraising ‘‘makes a significant difference for us as a club.’’
‘‘With each book that we deliver we get to discuss a set rate with Yellow Pages which is great, although there is a lot more work involved then just delivering.’’
The members must have all the streets mapped out and ensure the job is being done correct and in a timely manner.
‘‘It is hard to get things done quick sometimes when the traffic in the rural areas doesn’t slow down.
It would be great if people were made aware that people are delivering the phone books around this time and for drivers to slow down and be considerate or us,’’ she says.
The group hope to have all books delivered within the next week.
‘‘It is a great thing for us to do and for the whole family to get involved in, it really brings the club together.’’
As a club they usually deliver the Rodney Directory around this time of the year and then they deliver the residential and business pages in March.
‘‘It is quite a complex job and can take a long time, but we enjoy doing it and we hope to do it again next year.
It gets the group active and pulls us together. Also it is quite amazing how many streets and houses you discover.’’
The money gained in the end will help the club function effectively in both social and competitive aspects of their training.