Submissions for the 2010 Student Challenge have now closed. The winners will be announced on Monday, 13 September 2010. To view the submissions, click here.

Student Challenge Question

Now in its third year, the Chartered Accountants Student Challenge invites second, third, fourth and final year undergraduate accounting students to solve a real-life business problem facing a not-for-profit organisation.

We would like you to examine a real-life business challenge facing The Smith Family. Entries will be judged on how effectively students solve the Challenge on three main criteria - technical knowledge, innovation and presentation.

You can tackle the task solo or form a team. Either way simply participating in these Challenges adds practical experience to your CV - and it's all up from there.

Please note, you must be an Australian citizen or permanent resident to enter this competition.

About the Smith Family

The Smith Family is an independent Australian children's charity committed to unlocking opportunities for disadvantaged children and their families to participate more fully in society, using education as the key.

In 2009 The Smith Family supported over 65,000 children and young people, in 95 communities across Australia through its "Learning for Life" suite of education and learning programs. These programs provide financially disadvantaged children with scholarships to assist with school expenses such as uniforms, books and excursions. In addition they provide students with access to mentoring, tutoring and personal development support to assist with the development of essential life skills, such as reading, numeracy, financial and digital literacy. This education support is designed to give children and young people the step up they need to achieve their goals as adults, and ultimately to break the cycle of disadvantage.

The Smith Family receives contributions in the form of time, talent and resources from a wide range of sources, including sponsors and corporate partners. In 2008/09 more than 265 corporate partners were working with The Smith Family to achieve the goals of its community programs, however with this support there is also an expectation that the contributions made are being used effectively and to the maximum benefit of the community. Termed 'Corporate Social Responsibility', this is a growing area of reporting and disclosure for businesses which want to demonstrate to stakeholders how they are having a positive impact in the communities in which they operate.

To this end, The Smith Family is looking to implement a series of corporate social reporting indicators in future annual reports to demonstrate to corporate partners the impacts of The Smith Family's funded programs. Therefore they have engaged you, as a prospective Chartered Accountant, to complete the following challenge:

The Challenge

Part 1: Develop four (4) corporate social responsibility measures which would be used by external stakeholders, i.e. corporate partners and other individual donors, to evaluate the success of The Smith Family's community programs. In formulating these measures you should consider a range of aspects such as value for money, educational outcomes, participation and community engagement. In your submission you should also consider issues such as the ability of The Smith Family to capture information to evaluate success against measures and the ease in which readers can interpret results.

Part 2: Develop a presentation explaining your choice of the 4 corporate social reporting measures and why they would meet the requirements of corporate partners.

Download a copy of the Student Challenge Question (PDF)

Key Dates (Sydney - Eastern Standard Time GMT +10:00)

Submissions open	9am, Sat 1 May 2010
Submissions close	12pm, Tues 31 Aug 2010
Judging period	12pm, Tues 31 Aug - 5pm, Sun 12 Sept 2010
Winners announced	9am, Mon 13 Sept 2010

Judging

The 2010 Student Challenge will be judged by our team of Chartered Accountant consultants at Walter Turnbull.

Teams

Students can take the Challenge as individuals or with a partner. There is a maximum of two members per team. Teams will have approximately four months to submit their solutions. When making a submission, students can choose from a range of formats including video, PowerPoint presentation, Word or Excel documents.