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Frank
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I got this from them today
We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the way we’re using donations to help bushfire-affected communities. These questions are important. They’ve come about because of misleading information in the media and we’re getting in touch to clarify exactly how these donations are being spent. • Every cent donated to our Disaster Relief and Recovery Fund goes to our humanitarian response to disasters in Australia. More than 95% of donations to this fund came in for the summer bushfires specifically, and that’s exactly where they're going. • We've committed $30 million right now to help people whose homes were destroyed to meet immediate needs. Our emergency grants program opened two weeks ago - when we first knew we had the funds to make it happen - and as of today we've paid almost 700 grants. • For the last few days, we've been paying an average of $1 million per day in grants. That's because of the superhuman efforts of our team, who've been processing applications, weeding out fakes and bots, calling people to collect information, and notifying people that money is on the way. • How we spend the rest of the funds is being informed by the communities themselves, and their leaders, and guided by four independent experts – who, between them, have years of professional expertise and lived experience in disaster recovery. More financial assistance is coming, together with all of the other things people need to recover well. • We're using less than 10 cents in the dollar to make this work happen. To ensure we have systems that process grants securely, office space for our teams to work in, fuel for the cars we take to affected communities, equipment and training for our volunteers. • Any interest earned on money in the Disaster Relief and Recovery Fund will go right back to our relief and recovery effort. We're not using it for anything else. The recovery effort will take time. It will take years. And it will be unique to each community. Thanks to you, we will be there to help people process their grief, take stock of their losses, start to rebuild, feel safe and thrive.
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