The Australian International Education Foundation (AIEF) grant of A$100,000 per year over the next three years was a substantial and timely recognition of the Centre's past and present achievements. It's worth repeating that we were extremely grateful for this crucial assistance and delighted that the Hon Mr Simon Crean, Minister for Employment, Education and Training, took the trouble to visit the Centre and to announce the grant personally. It was even more dramatic and satisfying that, in doing so, he threw away his prepared speech in order to document his decision to revise the original recommendation upwards.
This being an imperfect world full of anti-climaxes, we were not allowed to celebrate for long and it is important to make clear to our many constituents, supporters, potential funders and well wishers just how the financial land lies for us in the welcome wake of the AIEF.
The warm and glowing memories of Mr Crean's visit were snap-frozen within a week or two by a decision of Mr J.Morgan, the University of London accountant, not to let us accept the AIEF grant. Though this seemed harsh, even bizarre on the face of it, his reasons were understandable and important. Despite the AIEF grant, the Centre no longer has a core funder now that the Menzies Foundation of Australia has cut its funding by 60%. These two sources - the reduced Menzies Foundation grant and the AIEF contribution - produce between them a sum that falls far short of the original Menzies core grant. Though we have very substantial reserves and other one-off sources of potential support, and though the Centre can be run for the next two years at roughly the usual highly productive and exciting pace despite some sharp economies, we need to secure either one or two major core funders or a wide array of smaller but significant sponsors if we are to guarantee continued survival and useful activity beyond 1997. Because we could not at the moment give that guarantee, the University of London accountant felt duty bound to protect the university against the possibility of the Centre's winding up and leaving debts.
I am in the process of reassuring him on this score and of detailing various possible measures to which we will resort if and when the knot tightens; and I expect the AIEF contract to be signed by the appropriate University of London functionaries and the funds to become available long before this Newsletter reaches its readers. And because we now have many new fund raising approaches, schemes and ventures under way and others under discussion, I am very confident that we will see the Centre through these somewhat lean times and that last ditch economies will not be required.
But it's not easy, as the man said. The Centre in its entire existence has never had a substantial and consistent corporate funder. There is no reason why this nexus should not be broken, but there's a lesson in that record because it certainly has not been for want of trying over the past decade. It will take persistence, support, advice and a certain amount of luck for us to convince a potential corporate funder of our worthiness in today's intensely hard-headed commercial environment where clear and visible outcomes tend to be valued over less graspable (though usually more durable) cultural and intellectual achievements. The recognition that Europeans place great store by a nation's cultural ambience and attainment is subverted in Australia not only by the apparent momentum of the pro-Asia policy but also by the simple refusal on the part of many in the corporate world to believe it.
So, great achievement though it was for us to win back significant and continuing Australian Government support to the Centre, we're putting the champagne on hold while we make sure we can afford the fridge . . . To be continued.
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