Sunshine Coast charity: Groups forced to react after bitter Covid restriction blow to fundraisers

Several Sunshine Coast charities have had to react quickly to salvage major fundraisers after a bitter blow to their plans due to Covid restrictions.

Changes to restrictions have thrown planning for some of the region’s richest charity earners into disarray.

Give Me 5 For Kids’ Diamond Lunch had been planned for mid July at the Novotel Twin Waters Resort’s Sunshine Coast Convention Centre before it was forced to relocate to Flaxton Gardens.

It meant organisers had to arrange an event with 380 guests in a week after they were advised of a Queensland Health directive.

NRL teams at the Novotel Twin Waters Resort had been in a Covid-19 bubble for two weeks after they arrived in mid-July.

The Board Meeting Surf Charity’s major fundraiser Long Lunch event had been scheduled for August 20 but had been postponed to November 26.

Other events were understood to have also been rescheduled with one pushed back from early-September to November while another had relocated to Venue 114 at Bokarina.

Board Meeting Surf Charity chairman Mark Skinner said they were forced to push the event back when Covid restrictions changed from the 1 person per 4sq m rule to 1 per 2sq m.

He said the NRL teams’ presence at the resort had not been a factor.

Mr Skinner said they had sold 540 tickets to the August 20 event but when the restrictions changed it meant they could only fit 300 people at the venue.

He said they’d decided to postpone until November 26 to best suit guest speaker and former surfing world champion Joel ‘Parko’ Parkinson.

Mr Skinner said anything could happen between now and November but they hoped to go ahead at the Convention Centre.

“They really look after us,” he said.

He said they hoped to match the $80,000 raised at last year’s Long Lunch event.

An Accor spokeswoman said the postponements had been due to the changed restrictions and were unrelated to the visiting NRL teams.

The spokeswoman said the resort would work with all affected groups to reschedule events wherever possible dependent on the restrictions.