1. Profile: Ulrike Schuermann

2. Your organisation: Children’s Promise

3. What you do/who you help:

Children's Promise is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to addressing persistent disadvantage of children and young people by creating a social change movement of individual givers that together will add up to make a huge difference to the lives of children and young people.

We believe in the power of the collective. Small individual donations add up to large amounts and can shape and influence the social landscape of Australia.

Many organisations know what to do to address disadvantage but lack the resources to put their plans into action and to scale up their operations. We want to create a movement to fill that gap.

The funds generated through the Children's Promise™(CP) initiative will be distributed nationally to non-government children's and youth charities to strengthen their work and for projects of proven effectiveness. The shared vision of the partners is to give every child the basic right to enjoy a happy, healthy, safe and fulfilling future. Providing day-to-day support and guidance. Building self-esteem and self-reliance.

Through CP, each and every one of us can do something of immediate and significant value for Australia's children and young people. With the widespread support of the community, the return on this investment will last a lifetime.

Funds raised by CP through public appeals will each year be distributed within 12 months of being collected. Beneficiaries will be selected by a committee on the basis of set criteria

4. What inspired you to get involved in your organisation?

Having worked with a grant making foundation (the Australian Youth Foundation) for years, I experienced first-hand the great need for funding for organizations dedicated to assist groups or individuals who are disadvantaged at no fault of their own. This is why I founded Children’s Promise when the opportunity arose so we could raise funds at a very large scale from the general public to create an independent income stream for disadvantaged children and young people.

5. Your responsibilities:

To coordinate a group of committed volunteers together (board and advisory committee) to assist in the establishment and running of Children’s Promise and to provide the leadership required in establishing a new organization.

6. Your greatest challenges:

Like for all charities one of the biggest challenges is the time and resources required to run an organization efficiently. Compliance tasks required before the real action can begin, particularly in regard to fundraising legislation, is onerous. It took us a long time to put the basic conditions into place.

The next big challenge will be to get the word out about us, to create a good social marketing strategy and to communicate what we are about well so we can tap into the generosity of the Australian community and therefore assist all these great children’s charities which don’t have the capacity to tell their own stories to the entire country.

7. How have you utilized goodcompany (please provide examples of one or more recent volunteer project outcomes)?

• We needed an IT expert to provide advice about what to do with our database and the volunteer project was picked in a very short time by a competent and skilled IT professional and all around talent. The volunteer has done a fantastic job in assisting us to figure out what direction to take, and since then has been ready to give advice readily in regard to other related issues. The volunteer ended up joining our advisory committee.
• Our website needed revamping and again, this was a volunteer project that was picked up really quickly by a business owner in Melbourne. I was skeptical at first how we could work together as we are based in Sydney. But it has been great and as a result we have our website up and running and learned about open source content management for websites. We also received training us on the use of the content management system.
• We posted a volunteer project about our need to get social media savvy and when a volunteer responded I was overseas for a while and we connected via skype despite the time differences. The volunteer understood our mission immediately and took the time to wrap her mind our social media needs. She gave us her advice readily and got us onto the right path. She was incredibly energetic and generous and has used her networks to connect us with even more incredible people. Again, a very good experience.

8. Tips for Community Groups and skilled volunteers working together:

I have found working with skilled volunteers very rewarding. The success of the relationship depends on good communication, the clearer and more defined the need, the better the response. Also, timing and responsiveness are important. Professionals are often time poor, so it is important not to waste their time in the process.

9. Would you recommend goodcompany to other not-for-profit organizations?

Definitely. It has been very rewarding in many respects. It has made it possible to move forward with activities which we would not have been able to achieve at all otherwise.

The professional volunteers I met through goodcompany have been wonderful people and some will hopefully remain connected with our cause for a long time to come.