For the past seven years, the NSW town of Griffith has turned pink as part of Pink Up Your Town. Spurred on by a friendly rivalry with the township of Mudgee, almost 500km away, the community has raised an incredible $246,720 since getting involved.  

Tony Santolin is part of the committee that organises the annual event. It was Tony and Brian Bortolin who started the first Pink Up Griffith, after Mudgee’s organiser Hugh Bateman from Mudgee real estate agency The Property Shop rolled into town in his pink tractor to raise money for the McGrath Foundation. Tony, who runs local real estate agency Griffith Real Estate responded by setting up a street party with a band, food stalls and jumping castles outside his office. Since then, Pink Up Griffith has grown with 70 businesses taking part last year, and more than $48,000 raised. Their largest fundraising effort to date was an incredible $85,000!  

“Pink Up Your Town Griffith is a big beast. It’s at the stage where we need to work smarter, not harder,” says Tony, who handed over the reins to Chloe Bavaresco and Jorja Langman last year. “Having a group of people to share the workload makes it easier for everyone. People who are passionate about the cause will come up with their fun events.” 

“It was a bit of pressure” admits Chloe. Jorja and I had a goal of how much we wanted to raise. We are competitive people, and we’d seen how much they’d raised previously so we pushed ourselves. It was some healthy competition.” 

“We did a Middy’s Electrical barbecue, a Ladies and Tradies night,  an auction and a ‘Bras for McGrath’ event, where woman put their bras out the front of the real estate office to raise awareness, and then the bras were donated to a third world country,” she says, adding that approaching local businesses to get involved was the key to their success.