‘Plunket Society Rag Collection: Save Your Old Rags Help Your Own Funds’ poster

c. 1950

Kindly supplied by Catherine Caley, Otago Community Services Leader, Plunket

Christchurch, New Zealand: The Caxton Press

The online edition of the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand states that local branches of Plunket always had a ‘large degree of autonomy and responsibility’ despite being ultimately controlled by a central body and ‘it is this distribution of authority and responsibility that has proved to be the foundation of the Society’s strength’. It was not just cookbooks that furnished the Plunket Society branches with funds, the recycling of rags was a nationwide form of fundraising.