Volunteers for the Salvation Army spent Thursday through to Sunday at the three major shopping centres in Bathurst collecting money for the fundraiser. 

Barbecues were also held at Bunnings Warehouse and Bernardi’s.

For the first time, the Bathurst branch of the Salvation Army did not door-knock, due to poor fundraising totals in recent years. 

As this was the first year of using static collection points exclusively, the volunteers were realistic about how much they were likely to raise, however the total has exceeded expectations.

Volunteer Kevin Howard said around $5000 was raised from Thursday to Saturday at the shopping centres. 

The efforts on Sunday boosted that figure. 

“At this stage, the total we’ve collected so far is just over $7000, but I’ve still got a couple [donations] to come in yet,” Mr Howard said. 

“I would say we will get close to $9500.

“I won’t have a final total until around the end of the week.” 

The two barbecues went well, Mr Howard added, saying they contributed around $1400 to the overall total.

Looking ahead to next year, Mr Howard said the Salvation Army will build on the new methods to make the appeal more successful. 

“It looks like door-to-door collections will be out,” he said. 

“We’ll do the same thing and hopefully we can get a few of the sporting venues involved next year.”

Mr Howard has thanked the community for its generosity and the volunteers who helped collect donations in the shopping centres. 

Across Australia, the Red Shield Appeal raised $4.5 million over the weekend.

NSW was the best performing state, with $2,077,759 contributed to the overall total. 

Salvation Army’s National Secretary for Communications, Lieutenant-Colonel Neil Venables, thanked everyone for the support. 

“Our volunteers are still out collecting and our teams are still processing donations,” he said. “We will continue to update our tally at salvos.org.au as we climb to our national Doorknock target of $7.5 million.”