FAQ

The Waterline Challenge^® is not a single event but many separate events all over Australia during the same week. Because our various organizers and helpers cannot be everywhere during the Challenge we want to make sure there will always other people around to provide help in the event someone participating should experience any type of difficulty. That is why we have chosen a minimum team size of 3 people. Also we think sharing your Challenge with others with a similar goal will be a lot more fun!

Anyone can be a member of a Waterline team. Friends, family, workmates or just a group of people with a common interest. However, you should consider everyone on your team when you are planning your team challenge.  Are they fit and able enough, do they have the right level of skill and do they have any special equipment necessary? If you are not sure to contact your local/Charity Waterline Challenge organizer or if there is not one then you can Contact Us. The only requirement is that the team leader should be 16 or older and any person under the age of 18 should discuss their participation with their parents or legal guardian.

A Waterline Team Leader is the person responsible for registering the team details in our donation site GIVAR. They will do this as part of their individual registration. When this is complete they will invite the other team members to join as team participants. The Team Leader’s contact details are held in GIVAR and may be forwarded to a Waterline Challenge organizer for their particular charity if there is one. In the case of more extreme Challenge routes in remote areas or involving special skills, they may be contacted as part of risk assessment to confirm they are capable of attempting such a Challenge. On the day of the Challenge, they will confirm how many of the team members are starting and the team start time and then the team finish time (most probably by SMS or email) to the Waterline Challenge organizers according to an instruction they will receive prior to the Event starting.

The Waterline partner charities were selected mainly on their ability to promote the Challenge amongst their various members, volunteers and existing donors. In some a particular charity may join us in one year but they may be unable to join us in another year due to other commitments around the time of the Waterline Challenge. Also each charity has to be registered as a Deductable Gift Recipient (DGR) to fit in with the Waterline Challenge Foundation business operations model and must be registered with the GIVAR donation site. Finally as a volunteer, not-for-profit, social enterprise the Waterline Challenge Foundation is only able to co-ordinate with about-20-25 other organisations. This may change in future Waterline Challenges. (If you represent a Charity and are interested in being a partner please let us know through Contact Us page on this website.

There is nothing particularly special about the individual participant target of $200. The Waterline Challenge Foundation members discussed this amongst with our various partner charities and it was agreed this would be a reasonable target for most people. However, if you feel you can do better please feel free to challenge yourselves, your teams and any supports you may have. If you cannot reach the $200 target do not feel discouraged. Every person’s circumstances are different and every amount raised is useful and all donations equally gratefully received by our partner charities.

You are free to raise the money to reach your target donation amount in any way that you wish. When you join the Waterline Challenge as a participant we will send you some more information about the different ways you might go about it. Typically these will either be a direct gift or donation paid by yourself or as money paid in by your sponsors either as individuals or possible by an organisation such as your employer. In all cases, donations should be paid into the GIVAR site to ensure they go directly to your nominated charity.

A small amount (1.4%) of  all donations is lost due to Credit Card fees the rest goes to our partner charities and the Waterline Challenge Foundation water quality and environmental research projects. 80% of your team donation immediately goes to your team nominated charity. A further 10% is divided equally among our four Major Supporting Waterline charity partners. (If you nominated one of the major supporter partners as your team charity they will get both your team donation and this bonus amount.) A further 5% is divided equally among the charities nominated by our Waterline Challenge Ambassadors. (If your team chose one of the Ambassador nominated charities they will get both your team donation and this bonus amount.) The final 5% will be donated to organisations working on the research and development of water conservation and environmental projects around Australia.

You are free to choose any of our Major Supporter, Ambassador or Regular charity partners as your team’s charity. Look at the Charities page of the website where all of the Major Partner and the Ambassador Nominated charities are listed along with the rest. The Major  Supporter partners were selected after discussion with our Waterline Challenge founder Julian Day. We also allow each of our Waterline Challenge Ambassadors to nominate one particular charity, if they so desire, for some extra support as reward for the work they do promote the Waterline Challenge^®.  A percentage of all the money raised will be allocated to these two groups based on the total pool of donations on top of any direct amounts donated to them. (See also FAQ’s:  How much of my donation goes to my team’s charity.)

Each team name should be unique for each particular Waterline Challenge year. The name is entered by the Team Leader when they first register the team. It can be changed later on if necessary but as these may lead to confusion it is better to get something original and descriptive the first time. As we are expecting quite a lot of teams using something simple like ‘Jims Team’ may is not a very good choice. You should try be a bit more specific and descriptive such as ‘Jims Botany Bay Paddlers’. If you are part of a large charity or organisation that is putting in several teams then it would be useful to discuss team names with them as they will probably have a standard model so they can keep track of you.

Collecting money online with all the issues of privacy and security can be quite complicated and involves some specialist knowledge. The Waterline Challenge Foundation does not have easy access to this kind of expertise so we have decided to partner with GIVAR which is an organisation that already has a website set up and specialises in this kind of work. There were a number of possible organisation we could have approached but we believe GIVA is the best business ‘fit’ for what we are specifically doing with the Waterline Challenge^® and its collection charges are zero. All the GIVAR team ask is that you leave add a small voluntary tip when you donate to help cover their costs.  All the donation money collected by GIVAR is sent directly to the nominated charities. No donation money is directly handled by any Waterline Challenge Foundation staff. The whole process is monitored by our auditors Grant Thorton Australia Ltd?.(NB: 1.4% of each donation is taken by the Credit Card fee.)

The Waterline Challenge Foundation was specifically created by Julian Day to counter “adversity in life” through the Waterline Challenge™. It was initially based on Julian’s personal Challenge of walking the entire coastline of NSW to raise funds for Cancer research in response to his own case of three bouts of childhood cancer. Along those walks, he discovered that not only did people suffer from adversity but also the native wildlife and even the environment as a whole. It was during these walks that he came up with the concept of challenging the rest of Australia to come together “to circumnavigate the whole of Australia (in total distance covered) in a single event” while raising money to tackle all the different kinds of adversity in the world.