The town that shames Sydney and Melbourne: Tight-knit rural community suffering through the worst drought ever has donated more money to charity than either of Australia’s wealthiest cities
- Wagga Wagga in rural NSW was named the most giving Australian town
- Residents donated the most money per capita in the whole country
- GoFundMe revealed the most generous givers of 2019 on their website
Wagga Wagga in rural NSW is the ‘most generous’ town in Australia and has donated more than Sydney and Melbourne despite being ravaged by drought.
Residents of Wagga Wagga donated the most money to GoFundMe crowdfunding causes on a per capita basis in 2019.
Wagga has been hit by devastating drought and struggled its way through this year’s farming, yielding a disappointingly low amount of crops.
Sydney and Melbourne failed to make the generous list, while the regional NSW town was followed by Mackay in Queensland, Launceston, in northern Tasmania and Bundaberg, also in Queensland.
Wagga Wagga was named Australia’s most generous town by fundraising platform GoFundMe, despite struggling through a devastating drought this year
Rural towns were at the top of the generosity list according to Nicola Britton, the regional manager of GoFundMe.
‘Nine of the towns that made it into the GoFundMe top 10 most generous towns list are located in regional Australia, which is a testament to the power of close knit communities,’ she said.
She added that the company had seen a rapid growth in both the emergency and community categories this year,
‘With issues such as bushfires, drought and flooding impacting residents in rural Australia, they’re taking it into their own hands to help fund and re-build their communities and help neighbours in their time of need,’ she said.
Neither Sydney or Melbourne featured on the generous givers list, as a GoFundMe spokesperson said that rural towns had the power of close knit communities
More than $3.4 million was raised across Australia on the platform between November 10 and November 30 as bushfires raged across NSW and Queensland.
Australia’s most popular fundraiser on the website in 2019 has been for the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, with more than $1.9m raised to help koalas affected by bushfires.
‘To witness the scale of this generosity tip into the millions this year in Australia has been inspiring,’ Ms Britton said.
‘It proves that now, more than ever, Aussies are standing side by side to back one another in their time of need. It’s another level of mateship.’