Authors: Peta Dampney, Ken Loftus
Year: 2019
Event: 2019 TheMHS Conference
Subject: Not for Profit but Fit for Purpose - A guide to helping donors make informed decisions when donating to Mental Health Not for Profits and to ensure Not for Profits are using donations ethically, sensibly and productively.
Type of resource: Conference Presentations and Papers
Abstract:
Biography:
Peta Dampney is a Mental Health First Aid Australia instructor and a lived experience spokesperson for The Gidget Foundation, Suicide Prevention Australia and Roses in the Ocean. She has shared her experience of living with anxiety and depression, as well as having been bereaved by suicide and surviving her own suicide attempt via national media and at conferences. Peta has a keen interest in code of conduct and duty of care for lived experience workers as well as community based mental health and suicide prevention education programs and services. She has contributed to the rollout of national suicide prevention and mental health projects and programs.
Ken Loftus is the Clinical Director and Founder of The Sunlight Centre in Brisbane. The Sunlight Centre provides free face to face counselling for young people and adults experiencing suicidal crisis with no referral from a health professional required. Ken is an accredited counsellor, CBT therapist, psychotherapist and workshop facilitator. He has a keen interest in promoting ethical charity practice and management. He is a proud dad to a young son and incorporates his Canadian and Irish heritage to enrich his work philosophies.
How can Australians determine whether the money they have donated is actually being used effectively? This brief paper will will outline some of the issues concerned with mental health and suicide prevention charity practices:
- Where does donated money go?
- How do we stop multiple NFPs doing the same thing?
- How do we keep ego out of the equation?
The case study of the establishment of The Sunlight Centre in Brisbane as a NFP and registered charity will be used to illustrate how NFP founders should be thinking ethically, creatively and productively to cater to gaps in the system. The challenges of competing with other loud voices in the sector will be discussed.
Attendees will learn how to better evaluate their donation choices by learning via first hand examples and experience. NFPs will also learn how to better meet their donors' expectations by becoming aware of the need to be more transparent, make informed marketing and branding choices as well as re-identify their NFPs core values, assets and resources.
Learning Objectives
Learning Objective 1: Audience members will gain a set of skills to reflect upon their own values and opinions in regards to what not for profit organisations provide to the Australian community and how they can ensure that these organisations are accountable, effective and productive.
Learning Objective 2: Audience members will learn ways to make their involvement in not for profits more transparent by learning from a case study of how a charity communicates with their donors and service consumers.
References
Laidler-Kylander, N., & Shepard-Stenzel, J. (2013). The Brand IDEA: Managing Nonprofit Brands with Integrity, Democracy, and Affinity (1st Edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Grobman, M. G. (2017) Ethics in Nonprofit Organizations: Theory and Practice.
Harrisburg: White Hat Communications.
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