Bring Your Bills — guide for interested parties

For funders, councils, researchers, journalists, community organisations and anyone else who wants to understand what Bring Your Bills is and see it in action.

What Bring Your Bills is

Bring Your Bills (BYB) is a program of South East Community Links (SECL), funded by the Victorian Government. Community members walk into a free local event with their bills — energy, water, phone, internet — and get one-on-one help on the spot: understanding the bill, accessing concessions and utility relief grants, negotiating payment plans, and connecting with other support services. Free, walk-in, no appointment, interpreters available.

Seeing it for yourself — the website

Type this into your browser:

bringyourbills.org.au

(bringyourbills.com.au and bringyourbills.au reach the same site.)

Page	Address	What you'll see
Home	`bringyourbills.org.au`	The next event, what people should bring, what happens on the day
Calendar	`bringyourbills.org.au/calendar.html`	Every upcoming event as a list, with a "find an event near you" postcode search
Map	`bringyourbills.org.au/map.html`	Every upcoming event as a pin across Victoria
Event pages	linked from the calendar and map	One page per event: full details plus the services attending, with their logos

Events are colour-coded by Victorian region (following the DFFH-style catchment groupings) and flagged by status (open / full / call to discuss).

How events get onto the calendar

SECL adds and manages its own events directly.
Partner organisations (services, councils) submit events using their own unique service code; SECL staff review and approve every partner submission before it goes live. Registering to attend an event needs no code at all — the staff review step is the check, and it's also how a new service is issued its code. Partners can also list their organisation's logo, which is how each event page builds its "services at this event" list.

Privacy, in brief

The site is deliberately light-touch: no accounts, no cookie-based analytics, and no advertising or tracking cookies. (The map page loads its map images from OpenStreetMap, which receives the IP address of anyone viewing the map — that's the only third party a visitor's browser contacts.) Community members can *optionally* say they're coming to an event — every personal field is optional, the data is never public, it's only used to plan staffing and interpreters, and it's automatically deleted after 5 years. The site is built to align with the Victorian Information Privacy Principles. There's a plain-English summary at bringyourbills.org.au/privacy.html, and SECL's full privacy policy is at secl.org.au/policies.

Want to get involved?

Run or host an event with SECL, or have your service attend one — email byb@secl.org.au and ask about becoming a partner (you'll be sent the providers & partners guide, and your service gets its own unique code when its first event registration is approved).
Refer community members — just point them at bringyourbills.org.au, or the community members guide. No referral process needed; everything is free and walk-in.
Media, research, funding enquiries — byb@secl.org.au, or SECL generally at secl.org.au.

About SECL

South East Community Links — *Every person counts.* A community organisation working across Melbourne's south east, providing financial counselling, settlement services, youth programs and community support. More at secl.org.au.