While tennis season is in full swing, Tass Roufos and his team are working on the sidelines raising funds for the Bone Growth Foundation.

As Victorian general manager of commercial property services group ISIS, Roufos has been involved in organising fundraising events, aligned with the tennis, for the past six years.

At the beginning of this year ISIS raised its millionth dollar for the charity. The Bone Growth Foundation, an Adelaide based “quality of life” charity, is headed by Dr Bruce Foster who this week won an order of Australia (AM) citation for service to medicine as a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon and to medical research through contributions to the Bone Growth Foundation.

Foster had been running tennis related fundraising events in Adelaide for many years, with John Fitzgerald and Alicia Molik as charity patrons, until Roufos got onboard and took the event to Melbourne, about six years ago.

When ISIS decided to become more active on the corporate citizenship front, Roufos, along with the other general managers, was told to come up with ideas. “Some people had a chook raffle in a pub, I decided to hire out Vodafone Arena and throw a 700 person, fine dining celebrity tennis event,” Roufos says.

This led to the creation of a sponsorship deal, where companies pay $15,000 to take a sponsorship out, which includes attending the tennis event, the Australian Open, the races, and cocktail parties. There have also been golf events in Sydney and Melbourne.

“We started raising some good money,” Roufos says, adding “the first event raised $130,000 and really put us on the map.”

After four years of fundraising, and building up a relationship with the charity chairman Bruce Foster, Roufos suggested sharing funds raised across the states.

“I sold the idea of turning it into a virtual research institute, which is helping other medicos in similar fields to yours in other states, which was a bit of an unusual thing at the time because doctors don’t generally give money away to other doctors,” Roufos says.

Now a national venture, Roufos says the key to keeping people engaged is keeping concepts fresh. “We’ve had patients to events and done hospital tours, we moved the event to Docklands last year; we’re conscious you have to keep it fresh, and do something a bit different so you can engage the sponsors year round,” he says.

“It’s good for business relationships and good for charity.” Through the foundation PhD students are also sponsored.

“One PhD student we sponsored was then able to apply for a government grant for medical research which got him a further $400,000 to advance his research in the area of chemotherapy induced bone growth defects and development of preventative treatments,” Roufos says.

“It’s a bit of a tree; it’s an organism. You don’t realise sometimes that old adage that every little bit helps, is true. Even small amounts of money can lead to so much more.” While ISIS is involved in other charities, this is the one closest to their heart, Roufos says.

The Bone Growth Foundation was the preferred charity of Tennis Australia for three consecutive years, during which an auction for Roger Federer’s US open winning tennis racquet raised a staggering $26,000, the second highest amount ever collected for one of his racquets.

Working for a building company and organising these events is actually more similar than people might think, Roufos adds. “I took on these events from a project management approach, whether we’re putting people together to build a building and fit out a premises or we’re going to put an event on, the process is the same,” he says.

“The biggest challenge is that celebrities and tennis players can’t commit. It’s always a bit of a lottery, sometimes you pay sometimes you don’t.

The profile of the celebrity is really interesting; all the tennis people always come for nothing and give up their time and others will come if they’ve been personally affected by the particular cause, but then others will expect to be paid because that’s their profession and it’s how they make their living.” Roufos says it’s simply about getting onboard and doing something for the community.

“People have told me what a wonderful achievement it is but it just started off as an idea with a reasonable amount of effort in the beginning and then gathered a bit of momentum and self propelled,” he says.

“These things get intoxicating and people want to get involved, and then it’s no longer work, it becomes fun.”

Roufos, Dr Bruce Foster, former Australian Davis Cup captain John Fitzgerald, and charity ambassador, and former world top ten player Alicia Molik, were at the Rod Laver Arena yesterday (Friday) presenting a cheque for $180,000 to the Bone Growth Foundation.