Funding measurable systems change in Australian palliative care.
A charity that solves the debt problem left behind at end of life — with a licensed credit-mediation service already in place, six documented composite cases, and a growth model built to reach $100M in annual funded relief by year ten.
The problem
Every year, thousands of Australians die with unresolved consumer debt. Their partners, adult children, and estates inherit weeks or months of creditor phone calls at the worst moment of their lives.
Existing services stop short. Financial counsellors give advice. Bankruptcy trustees administer collapse. Palliative-care social workers listen. None of them pick up the phone and negotiate the debt down.
The result is measurable: clinical time absorbed by paperwork, families entering probate in distress, and creditors chasing an estate that has nothing left to give.
What LWD does about it
Life Without Debt Ltd is a proposed public benevolent institution that funds professional debt-mediation for households in the terminal-illness window and for surviving spouses in the twelve months following bereavement.
The regulated mediation itself is performed by our related-party service provider, Credit Mediation Services Pty Ltd, which holds Australian Credit Licence No. 387398. LWD funds the work; CMS's licensed practitioners carry it out under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act framework.
This structure is deliberate. It places the credit-licensed activity where the credit licence sits, and lets the charity focus on eligibility, funding, and the systems-change work that no one else is doing.
A case in one paragraph
Composite case “Margaret”: 71, breast-cancer recurrence, $47,000 across four credit cards. Her husband was fielding four collection calls a day. Our licensed practitioners took the conversations off him. Three creditors accepted hardship. Margaret spent her last eight weeks reading in the sun, not on hold to a bank. Composite illustration · labelled · full case book at /stories
Why this is a Foundations program, not a general appeal
- You want measurable, defensible impact. LWD's growth model publishes exact case counts, mediation-hour spend, and creditor-response ratios for every quarter.
- You want a defined problem with a defined solution. This is not a general poverty program — it is a narrow, high-leverage intervention at a specific window in the life course.
- You want a governance structure a foundation officer can sign off on. Constitution, board charter, conflicts policy, related-party policy, and reserves policy are all published and audited against 41 compliance rules covering ACNC, DGR, ACL, ASIC, ATO, Privacy, and AASB.
A three-year foundational grant.
We are seeking foundational partners for the first three years of operation — the window in which the model proves at scale. Grant sizes are structured in tiers from $50,000 through $500,000 per year, each tied to a specific number of funded mediation hours and published quarterly.
Request the Foundations kit