Organisation: Germany

steps for children is an initiative by Dr. Michael Hoppe. In order to realise the vision and principles he had developed in 2005 already he founded the steps for children Foundation in Hamburg and in January 2006 the steps for children Support Organisation.

In the running of the foundation as well as the support organisation he is assisted by Simone Damak (Fundraising and Administration) and Kerstin Jueterbock (donor/member support and PR). Hans-Joachim Hoffmann supports Mr. Hoppe as coordinator. Additionally there are many volunteers who help with the administration and the website, as well as there is support by advertising and PR agencies, creative people, translators, tax consultants and other organisations.

Michael Hoppe as well as a lot of the helpers and collaborators is working without pay. The direct administrative expenses were only 4% of the overall costs in 2010. The reason the administrative cost is so low is because we are getting our offices and the accountant services completely free. The photographers and advertising agencies are partly free. Apart from these there are no major costs to incur. Another 12% administrative costs were spent on fundraising and advertisement. But one third of the administrative and publicity expenses are covered by money explicitly donated for this purpose.

Almost 90% of donations received for the projects are allocated to the work carried on site. These are mainly payments made directly to the trust steps for children to support the project in Okakarara and recently for the new project in Gobabis on a smaller scale. In addition, there are travelling expenses for the board of trustees who are also the general manager for the projects in Namibia. They are responsible for monitoring the proper use of donations; talking to workers on site and discussing future plans for the project.

These measures ensure that donated money reaching the children and youths in our projects is above average.

Moving forward, the costs for publicity and fundraising will increase because we can only accomplish our vision “to open at least 100 projects worldwide by 2040” if we receive more donors and contributions. The only way we can increase donors is through appropriate advertisement and PR and this can only be achieved with proper funding. But we will scrutinise these costs and the necessary increase of personnel for further development meticulously; in order that the vast majority of donations will still reach the needy in the future.

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