Raising the bar

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The most important thing in life is to believe in yourself. That’s something Vicki Condon tells herself, her staff, her team of mentors and all the young people she helps everyday through the Raise Foundation.

The not-for-profit organisation has achieved inspirational results over the last six years mentoring more than 1,000 young people who’ve faced profound and sometimes life-threatening challenges.

“When you’re starting up a small organisation, it’s really important to make sure you believe in yourself and trust in what you’re doing. Ultimately, we started to believe and that’s when we started being successful,” said Vicki.

“When you’re starting up a small organisation, it’s really important to make sure you believe in yourself and trust in what you’re doing. Ultimately, we started to believe and that’s when we started being successful”

As the founder and CEO of Raise Foundation, Vicki believes the not-for-profit’s strong workplace culture and focus on innovation has allowed it to expand rapidly and witness many amazing positive stories through its good work.

Vicki tells the story of one girl who fell pregnant at 14. Her school asked her to leave, the doctors gave her pamphlets to terminate her pregnancy, yet she decided to be brave and proceed. With little education and little support, the girl turned to Raise Foundation for help shortly before she gave birth.

“Now, three years on at the age of 17, she has finished a TAFE Certificate 2 and she’s got a huge ambition to go to university. She rang me a couple of weeks ago saying that she’d worked out her plan. She knew what she’s going to do and I know she will achieve it.”

Raise changes young people’s lives through its three main mentoring programs and a series of workshops. The programs cover mentoring opportunities in school for students in Years 7 to 10, career support for students in Year 11 going into Year 12 and mentoring and training support for young mums under 23.

Vicki said innovation and the smart use of technology is important, especially for a non-profit organisation which has to compete for funding and for volunteers. Raise has flexible working arrangements for its 24 employees who primarily work part-time from home to deliver the programs doing all preparation by phone and computer remotely. The staff, who are typically mums with professional backgrounds, come together a couple of times a month for planning sessions.

“Innovation and the smart use of technology is important, especially for a non-profit organisation which has to compete for funding and for volunteers”

“We use innovation so that we can collaborate with our volunteers, corporate partners and our staff. We use technology in a very positive way so that rather than employing full-time staff, we contract Consultants who work from home on a flexible basis. We have a very small office space, so no-one really comes in except for brainstorming sessions and meetings. We are using OneDrive to access all of our documents and the variable workforce model works very well for Raise.”

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“We are saving overhead costs by not having a huge office and rather than putting people on full-time we all just work the hours that we choose which suits our lifestyle and other commitments. It actually makes sense from a business perspective but also for the people who work for us who want to work in that capacity.”

Collaboration has been integral to Raise’s success and ability to expand its services.

“Our staff team meetings are about getting together and creatively nutting out our ideas to improve processes and programs. We also collaborate with other youth mentoring organisations to share resources and we have grown through professional collaboration with corporate partners.”

“We also collaborate with other youth mentoring organisations to share resources and we have grown through professional collaboration with corporate partners”

There’s a strong passion at Raise Foundation for what they do and communicating effectively with each other on every level is important for them to ensure they are achieving the outcomes they want to achieve as an organisation.

“We started with a movie fundraiser to raise our first $4,000 six years ago. Last year, our income was just under $500,000 and this year we’re on track to double that. We’re aiming to raise income of over $1,000,000 and double our impact to provide more than 500 mentoring matches across three States in 2015 alone. We wouldn’t have been able to do that if we hadn’t been creative, innovative, responsive, professional and an enjoyable place to work. The culture and personality of Raise is all about that.”

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