Jonah's Story

Jonah had just moved to Australia from Hong Kong on a student visa when he applied to Ignite. He'd finished high school, and turned 18 on the exact day he sent in his application. He had never worked a job in his life.

He found the listing on SEEK and applied without expecting much to come of it. Four interviews in the same industry had already gone nowhere, and he was close to writing off fundraising altogether. Then, the day before his Ignite interview, Coles offered him a job. He nearly cancelled to take it.

He went to the interview anyway. When Ignite made him an offer, he turned Coles down for it, betting the experience would be worth more.

The first fortnight was hard. By his second week, after two straight days without a sale, he was ready to quit. What kept him there was trusting the training and leaning on his leaders. The results came, just not straight away.

The moment it clicked had already happened, on day one. Before he started, he assumed getting someone to donate was next to impossible. Ten minutes into his first shift, he had his first sign-up. He still didn't fully know what he was doing, but that win told him it could be done.

He moved from Trainee Fundraiser to Professional Fundraiser inside a month, then to Advanced Professional Fundraiser two months after that. The week it happened, he'd also made a bet with another leader over who could land more sales. He closed it out with 17 sales, won the $50, picked up a $450 bonus, and posted his best sales week yet, the one that hit his APF criteria and opened the door to building his own team.

Save the Children is the campaign that has stayed with him most. It's the range of ways he can talk about their work, funny, serious, hopeful, depending on who he's speaking to, that keeps every conversation different.

He's now working towards a bigger leadership role: growing his own team into a competitive, fun group of top performers.

"I applied on a whim, and it turned out to be the best first job I could have asked for," Jonah says. "There will be highs and lows, but there's a worse feeling in wondering what would have happened if you'd never clicked apply. Try it anyway. Worst case, you get a good story out of it."