After successful campaigns in the past two years, Melbourne needed to raise $767,000 this year to eliminate the last of its debt. The final amount was wiped off at a club function on Wednesday night when supporters raised more than $500,000.
Schwab said it was vital that the club built on its new financial position.
“We know this is just the start for us. The real challenge is creating the business model that ensures long-term success but I think the important symbol is that we’ve come out of that stage where the first phase of our strategic plan was just to be back in the game,” Schwab said on Thursday.
“The quarter-time siren might’ve just rung and we’re in the game and it’s now up to us to make sure that when it comes to the really important stuff we’re there and competitive and we’re not going to get ahead of ourselves.”
Demons president Jim Stynes said wiping off the debt was a major goal that his board had set out to achieve when it was elected two year ago.
“When we came in as a board we were like ‘We’ve got to be really careful here’ because we’d just come in, we didn’t really understand where we were at as a football club and the financial situation. We were still trying to uncover it,” Stynes said.
“Yet we needed to make commitments to our members and say ‘This is what we’re going to do’. We started and the first thing was the debt and we went at it. To be able to today say ‘This was the commitment we made to you, this was the promise and we’ve stuck to that’ is a bit like when we were saying two years ago that we were not going to recruit older players, we are going to recruit kids.”
The third annual Foundation Heroes dinner was attended by hundreds of supporters who had donated at least $5000 to the club's Debt Demolition campaign.
Combined with fundraising efforts in recent weeks, Wednesday night's total of $524,000 means the club has now raised $1.15 million and boasts a $350,000 surplus after paying off its remaining debt.
Those attending Wednesday night's function were addressed by Stynes, captain James McDonald and club great Garry Lyon. Former Demons Ron Barassi, Stan Alves and Todd Viney were also among those in attendance.
The inaugural fundraising night reaped more than $2 million in 2008 and subsequent functions have wiped out the remainding debt.
The Demons also unveiled a new club logo that incorporates the Southern Cross, a pitchfork and the inaugural rules of Australian football.
