Variety, The Children'S Charity
School in Leichhardt

Variety, the children's charity is dedicated to transforming the lives of children with special needs. The variety club was founded in australia in 1975 with paul hogan as the first chief barker (chairman) and is now represented now in all states and territories of australia, helping tens of thousands of children every year. Variety keeps administration costs at below 10 per cent and our gross to net margin continues to lead every other major children's charity in the country. Variety employs 42 full time staff around the country who are supported by over 2, outings with children, functions, 500 volunteers and committees running various events, investigation of appeals applications and more. Variety raises funds from a number of sources, to donations - and to date we have delivered over $124 million net to help australia's sick, to events, from corporate partnership, disadvantaged and disabled children. We give grants to hospitals, we provide sunshine coaches to special schools and organisations so that kids can get out and about in the sunshine and experience life and we also provide children special experiences such as parties and adventure camps to give them opportunities that able bodied kids may take for granted. Variety provides grants to individuals and organisations for a great number of items such as special wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, vocal output speech devices, special play equipment and liberty swings. Although our work is serious, variety never forgets the importance of having fun. Our supporters, our sponsors, our volunteers and of course the special children that we help, would all testify that variety succeeds in the mission to bringing smiles to faces of a great number of special kids and those that are helping them.