How to Support DWA

Every year we help our members, people with disability, find their freedom on snow. It could be in a sit-ski on Thredbo’s Supertrail or making those first turns on Bourke Street at Mount Buller.

There is a lot of joy in both participating and facilitating, and we have been living this since 1978.

But we couldn’t do this without the support of our donors. As a volunteer-based organisation we rely heavily on the generosity of others, be it helping our members on snow or providing the financial support that allows us to buy adaptive equipment and train our guides.

For example, a good quality sit-ski cost upwards of $14,000 and a specialised headset system, for guiding vision impaired skiers, costs about $500. Guides are the key to getting our members on snow, and training one adaptive snowsport guide is an investment of at least $1,000. We have approximately 300 guides, and this number needs to grow so that we can have more members on snow each winter.

Without the generosity of donors like you, our members would not be able to experience the thrill of Australia’s alpine region in winter. Just being in the mountains is breathtaking, as is experiencing your first snowfall.

DWA makes this happen for hundreds of our members each winter and we would like to do more.

Workplace Giving

A workplace giving scheme is an arrangement between a not-for-profit organisation, like DWA, and a business to enable employees of the business to donate to the organisation.   

It is also known as payroll giving, or pre-tax giving, and involves employees agreeing to make regular donations out of their pre-tax income. Workplace giving can be even more effective if the business agrees to match employee donations dollar for dollar, thus maximising donations and building workplace giving into the workplace culture.

Individual donors benefit from workplace giving by receiving an immediate tax benefit in their wage. Which means donors don’t have to wait until their tax return to receive the tax deduction for their donation and will not have to keep receipts for tax purposes. 

Donations are automatically made from pre-tax income. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has developed a guide that is an easy, practical guide for employers wanting to set up workplace giving.

You can find it at this LINK.