The Good Friday Appeal telethon has been a fixture of the Royal Children’s Hospital fundraising calendar, and the Easter long weekend in Australia since 1942.
The Telethon has come a long way. NAB Colleague Mel Howard, who’s volunteered in the telethon for more than two-decades, remembers when donations were taken with pen and paper.
“People would ring up and the operators would jot down all the details by hand; this would include your credit card details, name and address,” Mel said.
“Then, all those slips of paper with the details would be taken into a room behind the scenes and separated into piles.
“From there it was a two-week process. Customers would receive a letter in the mail with a slip they could take into the branch to make a cash donation, and volunteers entered credit card payments manually into an EFTPOS machine,” Mel said.
These days, with the help of NAB’s 350 EFTPOS terminals, everything is done over the phone during the call, saving weeks of time and lots of paper.
Reflecting on why she got involved with the Telethon all those years ago, Mel says she’s been ‘pretty lucky’ in her life and it’s nice to do something and give back a little.
“My first interaction with the Good Friday Appeal was back when I was in the Merchant Sales team.
“I received a call from the banker who was putting the contract together for the terminals that year and I ended up joining the volunteer team,” Mel said.
This was 21 years ago, and Mel still gives up her Good Friday every year to volunteer, and more recently co-supervise, the Good Friday Appeal Telethon.
The Royal Children’s Hospital has been a long-time NAB customer and we have a proud history of supporting the Good Friday Appeal.
In addition to providing coin counting machines and 350 EFTPOS terminals, the NAB Foundation has donated $10,000 to this year’s appeal.
Without the Good Friday Appeal, there’s less research, life-saving equipment can’t be purchased and there’s less funding for education and training for hospital staff.
Wondering what happens on the day? For Mel, it starts bright and early with a 7am kick-off and goes right through until 1am the following day.
As a co-supervisor, she works with the different vendors to make sure the Telethon runs as smoothly as possible.
“We coordinate with Channel 7 on the day to make sure there’s always a buzzing room of volunteers when they do a live cross over,” Mel said.
“If there’s any technical issues with the computers, we’re the ones that contact Herald Sun and Weekly Times tech people to come and fix the issues.
“We also coordinate with Telstra about the phone connections and internet, and work with Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC),” she said.
“It’s a huge operation, but every year the team from the Good Friday Appeal come back to us and ask, ‘are we ready to do it again?’
