Summary
Twelve items raised by Laurence. Ten applied directly to the proposal documents; one noted but no document action required (LWD domain ownership); one open decision that materially affects the budget (Lisa Liaison FTE and Year-1 fundraising target uplift). Read these alongside the updated Structure and Theory of Change pages.
"Life Without Debt" name & domain confirmed Noted
Raised by Laurence — confirms naming.
Laurence owns the lifewithoutdebt domain personally. "Life After Debt" was the preferred alternative but is held by a (dormant) commercial competitor. Decision: proceed with "Life Without Debt" as the registered name of the CLG and the public brand. Laurence may approach the holder of "Life After Debt" as a courtesy enquiry; no dependency on the answer.
CEO → Laurence Hugo · Lisa → Community & Medical Liaison Applied
Raised by Laurence — leadership realignment.
Org chart, JDs and OPEX budget have been rewritten:
- Laurence Hugo — CEO (Operations & Strategy Lead), $165,000 base (range $150K–$180K). Brings ACL operating experience under CMS Pty Ltd.
- Lisa Hugo — Community & Medical Liaison, $95,000 base (range $85K–$110K). Plays to Lisa's medical-sector networks; targets hospitals, oncology & palliative-care teams, and disease-specific peak bodies.
- Laurence continues to negotiate (Year 1) under CMS until LWD trains and registers its own Credit Reps with AFCA (Year 2).
Intake Coordinator + Case Manager merged into one Client Case Officer Applied
Raised by Laurence — cradle-to-grave client relationship.
The two separate roles in the original draft (Year 1 Intake Coordinator + Year 2 Case Manager) have been merged into a single Client Case Officer hired in Year 1 from Q2 at $72,000 base. The first person a client speaks to stays with them all the way through to creditor resolution and post-close follow-up. Where the role-holder is suitably qualified and AFCA-registered, they also conduct first-line negotiation; otherwise they pair tightly with the Negotiator while owning the client relationship.
Room E "Endowment seeding (excess capital)" — clarified Applied
Question from Laurence — meaning of "excess capital".
"Excess capital" now defined as: undirected surplus remaining after (i) the 3-month reserve is fully topped up, (ii) all open client matters are fully funded through to resolution, and (iii) the new Direct Client Support Fund is at its policy ceiling. From Year 3, 5–10% of any remaining surplus is swept into the Room E endowment corpus. The Board sets the sweep percentage each year so endowment growth never starves frontline case capacity.
Part-time Compliance Officer added in Year 2 Applied
Raised by Laurence — top-heavy on compliance.
New JD added: Compliance Officer, 0.6 FTE in Year 2 ($48,000), stepping up to 0.8 FTE in Year 3 ($65,920) once LWD's own ACL is granted. Owns the NCCP training schedule, Credit-Representative register, AFCA notifications, IDR/EDR process, ACNC AIS inputs, and the LWD-ACL application workpapers. Dotted line to a Board Risk & Audit sub-committee.
Year 2 plan: LWD applies for its own ASIC Credit Licence Applied
Raised by Laurence — operating discipline.
New Section 09 — Year 2 Licensing & Compliance Roadmap — added to Structure. Maps out quarterly milestones from Y1 Q1 (induct the Client Case Officer as a Credit Representative under CMS ACL 387398) through to Y2 Q3 (anticipated ACL grant to LWD, transition Credit Reps to LWD register). CMS ACL 387398 remains in place as a fall-back so any application issue does not disrupt client work.
Stress Score — published data sources methodology Applied
Raised by Laurence — how to back-test the score.
Theory of Change now publishes the methodology: client-reported 1-to-10 score at intake vs case closure (headline outcome), back-tested against three public datasets — ABS (Causes of Death, Cancer Data in Australia), Equifax Quarterly Consumer Credit Demand & Stress Index / Dun & Bradstreet Consumer Credit Stress reports, and ABA mortgage arrears and credit-card NPLs (plus APRA Quarterly Banking Statistics). A composite Stress Score is published quarterly as an approximation at launch, recalibrated each year against our growing case register.
New Stage 2 added — "Document collection" Applied
Raised by Laurence — case officer collects documents.
Theory of Change journey moved from Five-Stage to Six-Stage Case Intervention. New Stage 2 inserted: Case officer collects supporting documents directly from the client and their family — bank statements, payslips, Centrelink statements, medical reports, creditor letters, mortgage/rental/utility documentation, evidence of hardship. Documents loaded into the CMS before any creditor approach. Old stages 2–5 renumbered to 3–6.
Government Grants — sector position acknowledged Applied
Raised by Laurence — no current government grants in this sector.
Room D description now notes Laurence's prior desktop research finding no current government grants specifically funding debt-mediation-for-terminal-illness. Room D therefore plans on commissioning rather than open grant rounds — PHN palliative-care contracts, state hospital social-work budget reallocation, and DSS Community Services pilots. Liaison + CEO will continue scanning grant rounds quarterly; any open round is upside.
Direct Client Support Fund — rent, utilities, food, medical out-of-pockets Applied
Raised by Laurence — surplus deployment for renters and short-term holds.
New ring-fenced fund added to the Surplus Reinvestment Policy and to the new Programmatic Expansion section. Covers short-term rent (up to 3 months bridging), utilities (pay-direct to retailers), food & essentials (Foodbank / OzHarvest partnerships), medical out-of-pockets and prescriptions for the index illness, and supports mortgage / car payment holds negotiated by the Credit Rep. Per-client cap, per-category cap, Board-approved hardship rubric, annual external audit.
"Sponsor a Family" major-donor program — short private video testimonials Applied
Raised by Laurence — borrowed from the child-sponsorship model.
New program added to §10 Programmatic Expansion. With explicit written client consent, a 1–2 minute private reflection clip is captured at Stage 6, paired with an LWD-prepared narrative cover (debt resolved, creditors negotiated, anonymised where the client prefers). Shared only with major sponsors / donors who have signed a confidentiality undertaking. Strict consent guardrails: opt-in only, written consent specifying sponsor tiers, time-limited (5 years default), withdrawable at any time, full pseudonymisation option, never released until the case is closed. Hosted on a secure portal with single-link expiry and per-donor watermarking. A new Client Storytelling Policy will be drafted before the first clip is produced.
Broader medical-condition referral networks (Cancer Council, Heart Foundation, Dementia Australia, etc.) Applied
Raised by Laurence — top Australian killers, plus long-term medical hardship.
§10 Programmatic Expansion now lists the disease-specific peak bodies the Community & Medical Liaison will work with — covering Australia's top causes of death and major long-term-illness cohorts: dementia, heart disease, lung / colorectal / pancreatic / prostate / breast / blood & lymphatic / liver / ovarian cancers, diabetes, kidney disease, MS, Parkinson's, MND, chronic respiratory disease. Co-funding hypothesis documented: "The Cancer Council could cut its financial support budget in half by supporting LWD." Each peak body relationship is treated as a Room F (Health Sector Partnership) opportunity.
Full lodgement-ready document set delivered — 15 new documents across five waves Applied
Raised by Carla — approval of the 20-item next-task list. Delivered end-to-end via five deploy waves.
The Registrations Hub (/registrations-index) now indexes six hub-packages of Board-ready documents. Print CSS block (~410 lines) added to css/registrations.css so every document is one-click printable. Deploys and pushes: Wave 1 1131f44, Wave 2 923d9ea, Wave 3 40170fc, Wave 4 515bde3, Wave 5 to follow.
Wave 1 — Solicitor & First Board Meeting: Solicitor Review Pack (7-phase phased review index with engagement-letter template); First Board Meeting Pack (Parts A–F: agenda · Chair's script under ss.180–184 · 12 resolutions · minutes template · attendance register · post-meeting checklist).
Wave 2 — Lodgement companions & Board formation: ACNC Portal-Ready Answers (field-by-field paste-in for 11 portal steps); ASIC Form 201 Worksheet (40+ pre-fill fields plus pre/post-lodgement checklists); Register of Interests (ss.191–192 template with 3 pre-filled standing declarations); Director Recruitment Brief (8-domain skills matrix, independence test, evaluation rubric); Board Charter v2 — expanded §5 into a 9-part Delegated Authorities Schedule with dollar-band thresholds (direct relief: $1.5k CEO · $1.5–5k dual-sign · >$5k Board; direct payoff: $5k dual-sign · $5–15k Board · >$15k Board+advice).
Wave 3 — Fundraising: Donor One-Pager (three-tier ask + 75/15/5/≤5 allocation); 10-slide Founding-Donor Deck (A4-landscape print rules); Case Studies Bank (three heavily-disclaimed composites: Margaret pancreatic / David MND / Kwame prostate + estate).
Wave 4 — Operating compliance & case management: Compliance Calendar Y1–Y3 (quarter-by-quarter timeline + all 8 state fundraising authorities); Privacy & Beneficiary Data Handling Policy (APP-compliant, SIS Reg 6.01A + deceased-estate hardening); Beneficiary Intake Pack (six-step operational form with 5 explicit consent blocks); Risk Register Y1 (27 risks × 7 categories on a 5×5 matrix, with R-SFG-01 Board-accepted-above-appetite).
Wave 5 — Public-facing & deployment infrastructure: How LWD Can Help (four beneficiary-facing draft pages: diagnosis / family / executor / referrer); Media Kit & Boilerplate (25/50/100/200-word boilerplates · factsheet · quote library · terminology guide · media-request handling); _redirects file with apex-to-www canonicalisation and 50+ friendly short URLs (e.g. /help, /donate, /interests, /calendar, /media); cross-reference audit ran clean — 234 internal links across 17 documents, zero broken.
css/registrations.css (now 1,285 lines with print block) · public/_redirects (new).Open decisions for the next Carla × Laurence working session
- Year 1 funding gap (~$86K): the revised structure adds Lisa's $95K Liaison salary in Year 1. Pick one (or a blend) before lodging the funding applications: (a) lift Year-1 Room A + Room B target by ~$115K; (b) start Lisa at 0.6 FTE in Year 1 and step to 1.0 FTE in Year 2; (c) defer Client Case Officer hire from Q2 to Q3 (saves ~$18K); (d) Year-1-only CMS in-kind contribution toward the Liaison cost (disclosed related-party).
- Board director designations: Laurence as executive director; confirm whether Lisa joins as community director (with standing recusal on Liaison-budget items) or remains executive-only.
- Client Storytelling Policy: needs to be drafted before the first sponsor clip is captured. CoSai to prepare a v1 draft for the next meeting.
- Day-1 ACL operating model: formalise the Authorised Credit Representative appointment of the Client Case Officer under CMS ACL 387398 (paperwork to be issued by CMS at incorporation).
- "Life After Debt" courtesy enquiry: Laurence to advise whether he wants CoSai to draft a soft approach letter to the holder, or leave it.