Volition - Empowering Everyday Decision-Makers

By Erika Butters

PledgeMe.Project

Technology,

NZ $43,774 pledged

207 people pledged

Closed

NZ $40,000 minimum target

This campaign was successful and closed on 30/06/2024 at 11:00 PM.

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About

Volition - Empowering Everyday Decision-Makers

Project 2024-04-11 09:59:27 +1200

What’s the problem? Why is this important?

Making your own decisions - sometimes called self-determination - is a universal human right. This means it’s a power or privilege that is equally held by all people.

But not all Kiwis get to enjoy this right. 5% of our population have cognitive impairments, neurodiversity, or affected decision making capacity. Many more have physical disabilities. Every day they may have decisions made for them instead of by them. They're often put in the passenger seat of their own lives.

When they do get to make their own decisions, disabled people often need to repeat themselves to their supporters over and over again.

It isn’t easy being a supporter either. One in ten Kiwis is an unpaid carer, and they collectively provide millions of hours of care each week. They have a lifetime of knowledge and insight about their loved one stuck in their heads. Many supporters are exhausted and can become locked into a caring dependency, because no one else knows how to support their loved one.

Our support workforce that is paid has a 36% turnover rate - that’s more than double the general average. This means that support workers often step into sensitive and critical support arrangements they are uninformed about and unprepared for.

If you're part of our community - you'll know these frustrations first hand.

If you're new to this conversation - consider this is a quick introduction into just how disabling societal attitudes and systems can be.

Our solution - Volition

We've built an accessible app that's a digital preference bank and a personal database in your pocket. Volition gives Decision Makers and their Supporters a smart and simple tool to collaborate in decision making and care, with confidence.

Users can take notes, pictures, videos, or record audio of what they like and how they want to receive support. Then they can choose what information they share and who they share it with. One parent we talked to said “I couldn’t count the number of times I said or thought ‘I should be recording this.’" Using Volition, now they can.

Now, Decision Makers can have self-determination and dignity, and they don’t need to repeat themselves over and over again.

Agencies, and the support staff they employ, can learn about the people they support before they meet them and receive valuable feedback directly. One COO of a NZ disability service provider told us “any Provider would be crazy to say no to a succinct way of tracking…the user’s voice.” We agree.

Parents and unpaid carers can get peace of mind and have a rest, because now others can step in and care.

Do you need to pay to use Volition?

It's important to us that every Decision Maker can use Volition. That's why our starter plan is 100% free to use. On the starter plan Decision Makers can choose one Supporter to collaborate with, and get started recording what's important to them. To unlock unlimited Supporters and a lot more storage for your preferences, you can upgrade to premium for just $10 a month. The income we get from premium subscriptions is what will power our Social Enterprise, and help us keep our starter plan free to use. Check out the discounted premium subscriptions on offer in our rewards.

How we’ll use the PledgeMe money

We need $40,000 to help us launch Volition across Aotearoa.

We’ve been prototyping, testing and building this app for the last eighteen months. So far we’ve used our own money and time, and we’ve gratefully received a $30,000 grant from the JR McKenzie Trust because they think what we are doing is pretty cool. But we’re not quite finished yet, and we need more funding.

We'll use the money from this PledgeMe campaign to pay for smart software developers to finish building the app. Your pledges will help to make sure that the app is accessible, secure, and easy to use.

Stretch goals (because we like to think big!)

We have some stretch goals too. If we pass our PledgeMe target, we’ll be able to build even more features into the app.

If we pass $55,000:

We’ll build an additional module for non-verbal expressions of preference. This module will capture, catalogue and analyse behaviours. Supporters can use this feature to build a body of evidence about what the Decision Maker they support is communicating.

If we pass $70,000:

We will partner with Understandable to build a module for digital Advanced Care Planning.

If we pass $90,000:

We’ll build a smart record comparable to a digital Health Passport. No more crumpled pieces of paper in wallets or, worse, left at home instead of in your pocket when they are actually needed.

The rewards on offer

We’ve got lots of ways to thank and reward you for your pledge, no matter what your budget is. Here are some details about them:

Premium App Access

Early Bird - 50% off a 1 year Premium Volition subscription
Discount- 30% off a 1 year Premium Volition subscription
A lifetime subscription to Volition Premium for the price of 5 years

Merchandise and cool stuff - cost includes postage where relevant

Decision Maker badges
A voucher for $25 towards your next purchase from our friends at Change Maker
Decision Maker T-shirts, as featured in our campaign video
A custom ‘Volition style’ illustration of you by our artist Emily Reiri. You upload a photo and we’ll turn it into art!
Tickets to our launch party in Wellington (make your own way there)

Kudos and Partnerships

Your name featured on Volition.org.nz as a backer
Community Partnerships - placement of your logo on our website and in our social media, quarterly impact reporting, and a badge for your website too. Ask us for our Partnerships Prospectus.
Champion Partnerships - everything that a Community Partner has, but more. Ask us for our Partnerships Prospectus.

Education

A two hour virtual workshop facilitated by Volition Founder Erika on the what and how of Supported Decision Making and Volition for your team (up to 50 participants)
A half-day workshop facilitated by Volition Founder Erika at your place on the what and how of Supported Decision Making and Volition for your team (up to 40 participants)

How we will get you your rewards?

When you make a pledge, PledgeMe will collect the information about how to contact you and what type of reward you want.

When our campaign finishes and we reach our target, we’ll be in touch to confirm the final details for your reward. This may be details about what size or colour T-shirt you want, or which photo you want turned into art, or something else. After we have all the details, we'll send you the goods! This is our fulfillment timeline:

Premium App Access - you’ll be the first to know when we launch later this year. We're aiming to launch in the spring (by the end of September).
Merchandise - received by you no later than Monday 12th August (but we think it will be a lot sooner).
Kudos and Partnerships - we’ll get started on this straight away, with backers and Partner agreements in place within July 2024.
Education - we’ll schedule these workshops over the next 12 months. We can host up to four virtual workshops and one on-site workshop per month. This will be on a first come, first served basis through a booking link distributed after the campaign closes.
Experiences - our launch party will happen when the app is ready. We're aiming to launch by the end of September.

Who are we?

We’re a lean but growing team.

Volition was founded by Erika Butters. Before this Erika worked as the Director of The Personal Advocacy and Safeguarding Adults Trust - a disability rights and advocacy NGO. Erika’s a subject matter expert and educator on Supported Decision Making.

Neville Pugh is the Chief Advisor of Volition. Neville is a serial Entrepreneur (you may have even seen him and Change Maker here on PledgeMe before!). He’s a member of the New Zealand Down Syndrome Association and People First.

Fun fact: Erika and Neville went to Kapiti College together.

On the left Erika and Neville smile at a school dance in 2002. On the right Erika and Neville smile for the camera in 2023.

The shoutout list for our team continues to grow. A massive thank you to Better Day Productions for our awesome video, I.Lead for some of our video talent, and to the team of passionate volunteers that have come together to make this project happen - check them all out on our website.

Thanks for reading this far! We are energised by the wonderful feedback we have already received from the disability community in Aotearoa. But our networks alone are not enough to reach our goals.

PledgeMe is an all-or-nothing platform. If we don’t reach our target, we won’t receive any funds. So, after you donate, please share the campaign far and wide with your friends and colleagues. Also, be sure to follow and like our social media pages. Together, we can create a new and empowering future for all disabled Kiwis.

Comments

Updates 9

Things are getting real:

The first funds from our PledgeMe campaign have arrived in our Volition bank account! We are overwhelmed and humbled all over again. Thank you for your support and faith in us, and in our app. Now it is time for for us to get to work finishing our app development. Our plan is to launch by the end of this year. It is going to take a lot of work, but we are ready and we have a great team behind us.

What we are working on:

We plan to keep you updated on our progress. You have made our dream possible, and we want to bring you on the journey with us.

Here are the things we are currently working on:

1. Finalizing partnerships!

We are thrilled to have a few more organsations interested in partnering with us. These will be annouced as they become official.

2. Preparing PledgeMe rewards.

You delivered for us, now it is time we delivered for you. In coming weeks we will be contacting you about fulfilling your reward requests.

3. Accessibility development.

We've already done several rounds of initial testing of our app with Decision Makers and Supporters, and we've learned lots of valuable information about what is working and what needs to be adjusted. We have also been working with Access Advisors to understand how to make sure our app is as accessible as it can be. Accessibility underscores everything, from design to coding, and we are taking this aspect of our app creation very seriously. It is worth it to get right.

4. Building community.

Our community of support continues to grow - our project has grown legs of its own! Even though our crowdfunding campaign has now ended, we're still getting new subscribers and followers every day. We LOVE this - it is great validation of the project and the product, and gives us a lot of motivation.

Thank you again for supporting us this far. If you haven't already, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Also, don't forget to register your interest on our website for more in-depth updates.

Talk soon!

Hey team, WE MADE IT!

Fully funded with a couple hours spare - we’re all about the dramatic finish 😅.

We had heard it was possible, and you made it a reality! This success is a reflection of the importance of our mission, and the wonderful crowd that we have behind us. Thank you so much for your support.

We will continue to post updates here periodically as we head toward launching the app. Watch this space! You can head over to www.Volition.org.nz if you’d like to sign up for our mailing list too.

Over the next few days we will be contacting you about getting your rewards. Watch for our emails so that we can get you all your great stuff!

Thank you again.

Seeing all of the support has meant the world to us.

-- Erika, Neville and the Volition team

PS: If you are reading this and still want to pledge, go for it! Any funds excess of our goal will go toward our stretch goals, which you can read about on our campaign page.

This is it, the final day! We need to be fully funded by 11pm tonight. It is gonna take all of us sharing and encouraging others to pledge, but we believe it is possible.

Share, share, share! You never know who might be interested.

We have less than 48 hours left to reach our funding goal! The campaign closes at 11pm (NZST) on Sunday, June 30. As of this writing, that's Tomorrow Night!

Not much time...but then, we don't have much more to raise. We need just over $10,000 to reach our goal and fund the final development of our app. We truly believe this is possible because we have such an amazing crowd behind us. Please share with as many people as you can. Remind your friends of our fun rewards on offer to help motivate them to pledge.

And a big thank you for your support. We couldn't have gotten this far without you.

Let's finish strong!

We have soooooooo many great things to celebrate tonight! Let's break it down by the numbers:

106 - The number of Pledgers we have backing us. Thank you times a million to each of you!

70% - This is how close we are to our funding target! (well, technically we're at 69%). This is a HUGE jump since our last update! Go team!

10 min - How long we got to talk about Volition on RNZ for today! You can listen here:

3 - This is the number of new Champion Partners we've confirmed today. These are awesome organisations we are thrilled to collaborate with, including:

CCS Disability Action
Accessible Properties
A Supported Life

If your organisation was also hoping to be a Champion Partner - please get in touch for a chat!

1 - This is the number of new Community Partnerships in place today. Welcome on board to:

The Personal Advocacy and Safeguarding Adults Trust (PASAT)

??? - And who knows how far we'll be able to take this campaign in the next three days. We have amazing supporters and a lot of momentum. We have you!

We have 4 days left in our campaign. It feels like a big hill to climb to reach our goal. It may seem impossible. But here are some things that give us optimism and hope, and they should encourage you too:

1. We have some great surprises in the works. Several organizations are in talks with us about becoming official partners of Volition. Your interest in Volition is catching their attention and they want to know more. Watch this space!

2. The buzz is building! We have seen a big increase in the attention we are getting from the media and from other disability oriented groups. Check out this example from Caffeine Daily, a daily newsletter about start-ups in NZ. https://www.caffeinedaily.co/stories/raising-for-good

3. Deadline magic. We have learned of several other successful crowdfunding campaigns who were able to reach their goals in the last few days, even making up much larger gaps than we face. This is so encouraging!

The key is the crowd...and that is you!! Thank you for pledging, it means the world to us. Please go and find friends who are inspired by our mission and who want to see solutions to social problems. Ask them to contribute to our solution. Let's make some magic!

We are so enthusiastic about the support we have already recieved for this campaign. Recently the number of pledges each day has been increasing! That is really encouraging. We are optimistic that we can make this happen.

Recently we have had some conversations with a few larger organisations that are interested in possibly partnering with us, and that is really exciting! Hopefully the support we are recieving in person will continue to translate into pledges.

This Volition Demo Video is a demonstration of our plans for the Volition app. This is just a prototype, but it gives you an idea of how the profiles and preference selection will likely work. Although this project is about an app, ultimately it is about people. It is about preserving dignity and self determination. It is about accessible communication and seemless coordination. Thank you for your part in helping to break down barriers.

A side note about overseas pledges: If you would like one of our rewards, such as a t-shirt, and the required address format doesn't work for your country, just do the best you can. We will be sure to contact you and confirm any shipping information before sending anything, so don't stress. We have to be fully funded to send out rewards though, so be sure to share with your friends. We want to get you that shirt!

Thanks to you, we've made it past 10%!!!

We're looking forward to doing a whole lot more happy dancing as we reach our next targets.

If you have any questions - just flick us an email or call us. We always love conecting with people who share our vision.

And of course, please continue to share the campaign far and wide.

We launched on a Saturday of a long weekend...

...and we still managed to get 5% of our target pledged within the first 12 hours!

Thanks so much to everyone for helping us start strong - you put the crowd in crowdfunding :)

But we still have a long way ahead of us. Please continue to share far and wide with your networks, and let's smash out the next couple of weeks.

Pledgers 207

Iris Reuvecamp

30/06/2024 at 10:36pm

"Looking forward to seeing the wonderful things Volition will achieve in the future. "

Keren Bolger

30/06/2024 at 10:06pm

Paul Roberts

30/06/2024 at 9:32pm

Lisette Charlton

30/06/2024 at 9:21pm

"All the best Nev and Erica! "

Christa Gabriels

30/06/2024 at 9:15pm

Isabelle & David Churchill

30/06/2024 at 9:09pm

"Well done Erika such a great cause!!! From The Churchills"

Erika Butters

30/06/2024 at 8:15pm

"On behalf of Laura Fergusson Trust Inc. "This is a really important and worthwhile APP to improve the quality of life for our disabled community.""

Erika Butters

30/06/2024 at 8:12pm

"On behalf of Friends of Laura Fergusson. "Our disabled community deserve something easy, like an app, to share their choices and needs, Excited to support this mahi.""

Nicola Sutton

30/06/2024 at 7:59pm

"An innovative and empowering solution. All the best."

Rob

30/06/2024 at 7:46pm

"From Rob Holmes (on behalf of PaperKite). I've been keeping an eye on your progress since I first saw your super impressive pitch at Creative HQ. Couldn't let you fall short of the $40k. Time to focus on your next milestone ;-)"

Anonymous pledger

30/06/2024 at 7:45pm

Nina Lepou

30/06/2024 at 7:43pm

"Good luck cuz ... luv the Lepous"

Anonymous pledger

30/06/2024 at 7:35pm

Claudia Ainscow

30/06/2024 at 7:16pm

"Thank you to everyone involved in this mahi! "

Nicola McKenzie

30/06/2024 at 7:13pm

Tasi

30/06/2024 at 7:05pm

Kilbirnie Osteopaths

30/06/2024 at 7:01pm

"Good luck!"

Anonymous pledger

30/06/2024 at 6:59pm

Anonymous pledger

30/06/2024 at 6:59pm

Anonymous pledger

30/06/2024 at 6:57pm

Alana

30/06/2024 at 6:54pm

Grace G Stratton

30/06/2024 at 6:12pm

Barney Cooper

30/06/2024 at 6:08pm

"Good luck"

Anonymous pledger

30/06/2024 at 6:04pm

Lee-ann Wightman

30/06/2024 at 6:00pm

"Pledging again because I really want this to happen."

Jenny Rudd

30/06/2024 at 5:54pm

Janelle Fisher

30/06/2024 at 5:43pm

"Go Team Volition - enabling good lives one preference at a time! "

Anonymous pledger

30/06/2024 at 5:29pm

Juliette

30/06/2024 at 5:23pm

Terry Shubkin

30/06/2024 at 4:54pm

"Love your kaupapa. Good luck with the final hours of the campaign."

Followers

Followers of Volition - Empowering Everyday Decision-Makers

Volition - Empowering Everyday Decision-Makers

Project 2024-04-11 09:59:27 +1200

What’s the problem? Why is this important?

Making your own decisions - sometimes called self-determination - is a universal human right. This means it’s a power or privilege that is equally held by all people.

When they do get to make their own decisions, disabled people often need to repeat themselves to their supporters over and over again.

If you're part of our community - you'll know these frustrations first hand.

If you're new to this conversation - consider this is a quick introduction into just how disabling societal attitudes and systems can be.

Our solution - Volition

Now, Decision Makers can have self-determination and dignity, and they don’t need to repeat themselves over and over again.

Parents and unpaid carers can get peace of mind and have a rest, because now others can step in and care.

Do you need to pay to use Volition?

How we’ll use the PledgeMe money

We need $40,000 to help us launch Volition across Aotearoa.

Stretch goals (because we like to think big!)

We have some stretch goals too. If we pass our PledgeMe target, we’ll be able to build even more features into the app.

If we pass $55,000:

If we pass $70,000:

We will partner with Understandable to build a module for digital Advanced Care Planning.

If we pass $90,000:

We’ll build a smart record comparable to a digital Health Passport. No more crumpled pieces of paper in wallets or, worse, left at home instead of in your pocket when they are actually needed.