By Casey Neill
A Dandenong charity is asking businesses to go MAD.
Thane Commercial managing director Neil Tunstall is working with Avocare director Trish Keilty to run Make a Difference (MAD) with Avocare.
“Avocare is Dandenong-based and charity begins at home,” Ms Keilty said.
So MAD will reach out to the local business community.
“All charities run on the smell of an oily rag,” Ms Keilty said.
“We’re always chasing money.
“To have a local businessman take an interest and work in their community is nothing but a bonus for all of us.”
Ms Keilty said the charity needed another van, to update its website, and continue to feed the needy.
“Our computer system is archaic and we keep patching,” she said.
“We’re putting patches on patches on patches.
“Any money that we do get at the moment just goes to cover the wages and the running.
“We don’t have any money to look at our infrastructure.
“I want to do so much more.”
Mr Tunstall attended Doveton Tech before receiving a scholarship to Haileybury.
“The area’s a part of what makes me,” he said.
He joined a bank after finishing school.
“I started my working career at ANZ just down the road at 155 Lonsdale Street,” he said during a chat at The Public’s Corner in Dandenong.
He stayed in banking for about 30 years.
“Then decided I’d had enough of pure corporate life, so to speak,” he said.
“It became more important to work with small and medium businesses that are emerging, which is why I started Thane.
“It’s a specialist brokerage.”
Mr Tunstall said Dandenong was “SME central” referring to small and medium-sized businesses.
“What I try to do is match the right provider for the client at the stage of life they are,” he said.
“That led me to Trish Keilty and Avocare a few years ago.
“I look at what she’s done and what she’s achieved with minimal support.
“The number of people that she helps, the number of people that roll through there every week, the charities it supports and the lives that that touches….
“We developed a friendship. From that we’re trying to put together a project called MAD, which is about making a difference.
“That’s about the support of people involved in business and also in the financial area in the Dandenong region to actually stand up and assist in whatever way they can and whatever form that takes.”
Mr Tunstall is teeing up functions for the coming months to spread the word.
“It’s one thing to hear about Avocare, it’s another thing to see it,” he said.
“You look at the faces of the people that are working on the floor and they’ve got purpose.”
