Impact model · Theory of change · Measurement framework
A donation is not a payment. It is an investment in a system.
A $50 donation does not buy $50 of debt relief. It funds an hour of licensed practitioner time — and that hour, on average across our founder's twenty-year practice, may result in reduced or waived debt in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for one Australian household facing a terminal illness.
The unit economics of an hour of advocacy
Below is the aggregate shape of the model based on our founder's practitioner history across two decades under Australian Credit Licence 387398. Individual outcomes vary; these are the working numbers we use for grant applications, board reports, and donor conversations. Every figure is representative of practitioner experience, not a guarantee.
$50Funds one hour of licensed advocacy
$40k–$200kTypical debt-resolution range per case
87cOf every $1 to direct household services
$1,000Funds one household for one year
$19.25Per week — regular giving unit
How 87 cents on the dollar reaches households
Life Without Debt Ltd is the charity. Credit Mediation Services Pty Ltd is the licensed practitioner entity that carries Australian Credit Licence No. 387398. From Year 4 onwards, CMS absorbs the infrastructure costs (licence, professional indemnity, technology stack, subscription fees, back-office administration) that would otherwise dilute donation efficiency. This structure — a two-entity model with a formal service agreement between them — is what lets 87 cents of every donated dollar flow directly to the household service.
The two-entity design is documented in full in our business structure and reviewed by the ACNC as part of our charity registration.
The payment model vs. the investment model
The wrong mental model — the one many charities implicitly ask you to accept — is that a donation buys an outcome. That is a payment model. It scales linearly and it ends the moment the money is spent. What we are building is different.
The payment model (wrong)
- Donor gives $50 to pay off $50 of debt
- One transaction, one outcome, finished
- No evidence of what changed or why
- Cannot attract renewal grant funding
- Organisation dependent on constant new donors
- Can never demonstrate systemic change
The investment model (right)
- Donor gives $50 to fund one hour of expert negotiation
- That hour may unlock $40k–$200k of resolution
- Every case adds to a published evidence base
- Evidence base secures grant renewal and scaling
- ACNC audit shows documented outcomes per dollar
- Sector adopts the model; policy changes over time
The Uber analogy — and why we reject it
A donation that simply pays off one debt is like funding a single Uber ride: when the ride is over, nothing has changed systemically. The next person still faces the same road, the same creditors, the same power asymmetry. Life Without Debt funds the road network: the licensed practitioners, the referral relationships, the legal frameworks, and the data infrastructure that make thousands of journeys possible. The evaluation framework on this page is the map that proves the road exists and is being used.
The virtuous cycle of a proven organisation
This is the causal chain from a single donation to sector-wide change. It is deliberately slow. It is deliberately measurable. It is the difference between a charity that survives and one that scales.
1
Theory of change articulated
Stated assumptions, testable indicators, causal chain from outputs to systemic change.
2
Measurement framework built
Aspen-Institute-derived framework. Every case captures the same data points.
3
Every case, data collected
Debt type, creditor, framework used, outcome, time-to-resolution, household demographics.
4
Annual impact report published
Aggregated, de-identified. Peer-reviewable. ACNC-audit-aligned.
5
Grant renewals and scaling
Foundation partners renew and increase. New foundations join on the strength of the evidence.
6
More cases, stronger evidence
Scale reinforces the data. The evidence base compounds year on year.
7
Sector adoption & policy change
Health services adopt referral pathways. Government reforms hardship frameworks. Banks improve vulnerable-customer processes.
What we measure, and why
Every case that Life Without Debt handles captures the same core dataset. This is what makes the evidence base cumulative rather than anecdotal.
| Metric | Why we capture it |
|---|---|
| Debt type (secured / unsecured / statutory) | Different frameworks apply to different debt classes; we need to show which frameworks work where. |
| Creditor category (bank / non-bank / ATO / BNPL / utility) | Reveals which creditors have workable vulnerable-customer processes and which do not. |
| Legal framework invoked (NCCP s72 / TAA s340-5 / ABA Code Part 4 / AFCA) | Builds a doctrine of what works when. Foundational for future practitioner training. |
| Time to first creditor pause | The single most important comfort metric for a household in crisis. |
| Time to case closure | Enables us to forecast practitioner capacity requirements at scale. |
| Outcome shape (full waiver / partial waiver / variation / arrangement) | Prevents overclaiming. Some cases resolve without any debt reduction; that is still an outcome. |
| Debt-value resolved (hedged range, not point estimate) | Aggregates to a defensible cumulative-impact figure. RG 96 hedged language throughout. |
| Referral source (self-referred / palliative-care team / GP / social worker / financial counsellor) | Tells us which health-sector partnerships (Room F) are producing the highest household-benefit flow. |
| Household demographic (age, state, dependants, income source, remoteness) | Ensures we are reaching the households the model is designed for, not the easiest to reach. |
| Practitioner hours per case | Direct input to unit economics; validates the $50-per-hour donor proposition. |
| Client-reported experience score (post-closure, opt-in) | Distinct from outcome data. Captures dignity and comfort as first-class metrics. |
What we do not measure — and why
We deliberately do not attempt to attribute individual-level counterfactuals (“without our intervention this household would have lost their home”) except in retrospective peer-reviewed studies. Charities that overclaim causation on individual cases have historically been the ones that later face ACNC compliance reviews. Our discipline is: report what happened, aggregate carefully, publish annually, submit to external review.
The measurement partnership
Our theory-of-change and measurement framework was designed around the Aspen Institute’s Theory of Change methodology and is being progressively aligned with the sector-standard evaluation practices used by Palliative Care Australia and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in their financial-distress research.
In Year 2 we will begin a formal external evaluation partnership with an Australian university's public-health or applied-economics research group. The partnership will produce peer-reviewed publications from the aggregated case data on a rolling basis, subject to full ethics review and client consent frameworks.
The evaluation framework is the reason a grantmaker — a foundation, a corporate partner, a government department — can renew and increase their support. It is what turns the renewal conversation from “please fund us again” into “here is the evidence you funded something that worked.”
Fund an hour of advocacy.
$50 funds one hour of licensed practitioner time. $1,000 funds one household for one year. $19.25 a week funds one household indefinitely. Every dollar traces to a case; every case adds to the evidence base.