Raise Foundation | Annual Report 2024
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Raise turned 16 this year and, like any typical teenager, we are experiencing thrilling and confusing things in equal measure. With one foot in childhood and one foot in adulthood, adolescence isn’t easy. Luckily, we’re in the business of building resilience and hope for the future. Thanks to our strong formative years at Raise, we know who we are and where we’re going. We’re just working out how to get there. When we started in 2008, we supported 58 young people across 3 school programs. In 2024 alone, we supported 2,546 young people in 189 programs across 173 schools and communities in 7 states and territories. It’s important to pause and reflect on just how far our reach and impact have grown. Within those programs, we achieved statistically significant impact in all four key outcome areas this year: asking for help, resilience, school engagement, and hope for the future. We’re thrilled to walk alongside so many young people to support them during this tumultuous stage of life. One of our most thrilling milestones was achieving our long-term ambition of conducting an independent evaluation study, made possible through the support of the Australian Government Department of Health, University of Melbourne, and the Social Outcomes Lab. Thirteen schools participated in the study: one cohort received a Raise mentor, while a comparable control group did not. Studies like this are rare in our industry, but it scientifically proved what we’ve always known – Raise mentoring works. Having a Raise mentor makes a positive difference in a young person’s life. As part of this evaluation, the Social Outcomes Lab also conducted a social return on investment (SROI) study. The results showed that for every $1 invested in Raise, there is $4.37 of avoided costs to the health, welfare and tax systems. Another thrilling achievement. Letter from the Chair and CEO
Now, like many teenagers, we’re grappling with how to grow up or, in our case, scale our service to support more young people. Some evolving parts of the organisation are easy to scale, such as school partnerships, evidence-based curriculum, and evaluation processes. Even finding enough degree- qualified counsellors and psychologists has been relatively easy, despite the sector shortages, because Raise is officially a Great Place to Work (outlined later in the report). Sourcing the funding we need to meet our scale vision, however, hasn’t been easy. Each year, we consistently generate more income than the last, but it falls short of what’s needed to achieve the growth detailed in our Strategic Impact Plan. This year, our extraordinary team raised more than ever before from corporate, government, philanthropy, community, schools, and social enterprise initiatives. We also kept our costs under control, an excellent result by our Executive Leadership Team. However, we are still identifying ways to generate more funding to fuel the scale of our impact. Our challenge lies in how to grow from a medium charity that makes a big impact into a sustainable, large charity making a huge impact. To be able to say yes to every young person in Australia who needs a Raise mentor right now, we need to almost double our income and volunteer mentors. Raise’s vision is to support over 5,000 young people in 2027. To do this, we’ve been hitting the ‘corporate gym’ to build our ‘execution muscle’. With help from our Patron, Advisors and Board Directors we have developed a detailed plan to achieve our ambition. Pivotal to the strategy is our exciting new initiative, called Raise Digital, an online youth mentoring option for young people to access their own trained and trusted Raise mentor. The strategy also includes appointing a Chief Operations Officer in 2025 to help us execute our plans and confidently grow into the organisation we know we can become. As always, we’re learning from our mentees. This year, that meant learning to ask for help from those around us – including our talented and highly skilled partners, Directors, and Advisory Councils. After all, learning new skills by connecting with mentors is the Raise way.
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