A practical guide for Australians with lived experience who want to start a charity
If you're thinking about starting a charity based on your lived experience—whether that's mental health, disability, homelessness, addiction recovery, or any other challenge you've faced—understanding what the law means by "charitable purpose" is absolutely crucial. It's not just legal jargon; it's the foundation that determines whether your organisation can become a registered charity and access the benefits that come with it.
Let's break down what Australian law actually says, and more importantly, what it means for you.
In Australia, charitable purposes are defined by the Charities Act 2013. This legislation sets out 12 specific categories of charitable purpose, and your organisation must fit into at least one of them to be recognised as a charity.
Here's where it gets important for lived experience charities: your organisation must provide a public benefit. This means your activities must benefit the community or a significant section of it—not just you, your family, or a closed group of members.
Key Point: Your lived experience is valuable and can inform your charity's work, but the charity itself must exist to help others, not primarily to support yourself or a private group.
You've experienced homelessness and want to start a charity that provides support services, advocacy, and education to people experiencing homelessness in your community. The charity is open to anyone who needs help, and your lived experience informs how you design and deliver services.
You want to start an organisation that provides financial support exclusively to you and a small group of friends who have experienced homelessness. The benefit is private rather than public.
Understanding and correctly defining your charitable purpose isn't just about ticking boxes—it has real, practical implications:
Registered charities can access significant tax benefits, including income tax exemption and potentially Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status, which allows donors to claim tax deductions for their donations. This can make a huge difference to your fundraising capacity.
Many government grants, philanthropic trusts, and corporate giving programs are only available to registered charities. Without proper charitable status, you'll be locked out of significant funding opportunities.
Being a registered charity signals to the public, donors, and partners that your organisation is legitimate, accountable, and operating for genuine public benefit. This trust is invaluable, especially when you're starting out.
Charitable status provides certain legal protections and governance frameworks that can protect both your organisation and you personally as a founder.
Blurred Lines Between Personal and Public Benefit: It's natural to want to help yourself and others in similar situations, but the ACNC (Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission) will look closely at whether the primary purpose is public benefit or private benefit.
Solution: Clearly separate your personal recovery or support needs from the charity's work. Consider accessing support as a service user separately from your role as a founder or board member.
While charities can engage in advocacy related to their charitable purpose, they cannot have a primary purpose of promoting a political party or candidate. This can be a grey area for social justice-focused lived experience charities.
Solution: Frame your advocacy work as advancing your charitable purpose (e.g., advancing health, promoting human rights) rather than as political campaigning. You can advocate for policy change, but it must be connected to your charitable purpose.
Peer support groups where members support each other are valuable, but they may not meet the public benefit test if they're primarily for mutual benefit of members.
Solution: If you want to run peer support as part of a charity, ensure it's open to the public (not just members), and consider offering additional services that clearly benefit the broader community, such as education, advocacy, or outreach programs.
When you're drafting your organisation's governing documents (constitution or trust deed), you need to clearly articulate your charitable purpose. Here's how to do it effectively:
Look at the 12 categories above and identify which one(s) best describe what you want to achieve. Most lived experience charities will fit into:
Your purpose statement should be specific enough to guide your work but broad enough to allow flexibility. Here's a template:
"The purpose of [Organisation Name] is to advance the health and social welfare of people affected by [specific issue] by:
All activities will be for the public benefit and open to anyone who needs support, regardless of their background."
In your governing documents and ACNC application, clearly explain:
Here's the good news: your lived experience is not a barrier to starting a charity—it's actually your greatest asset. The ACNC and the law recognise that people with lived experience often create the most effective, responsive, and innovative charities.
What matters is that you:
Remember: Thousands of successful Australian charities were founded by people with lived experience. Your story, your insights, and your passion are exactly what the sector needs—you just need to channel them through the right legal structure.
If you're serious about starting a lived experience charity, here's what to do next:
Starting a charity is challenging, but it's also one of the most rewarding ways to turn your lived experience into lasting change. Understanding charitable purpose is your first step toward building something that will help countless others.
You've got this.
Queensland’s disability advocacy landscape is evolving. As funding models shift and systemic barriers persist, the question isn’t whether advocacy should change — it’s how it can stay strong, strategic, and people-centred in the years ahead.
Strategic Advocacy Australia operates on one conviction: that reform is not random. When evidence, technology, and lived experience work together, systems can be redesigned to serve people — not paperwork.
Trust is the currency of advocacy. In an era of scrutiny and misinformation, the ACNC Charity Register stands as Australia’s public record of integrity — a tool for accountability, credibility, and community confidence.
Setting up a charity in Australia isn’t just about registering an organisation — it’s about building a structure that can deliver measurable, ethical impact. The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) provides the regulatory backbone, ensuring charities serve genuine public benefit.
ACNC registration follows a structured process that transforms your organisation into a trusted charity. Each step builds credibility and compliance:
If you're thinking about starting a charity based on your lived experience—whether that's mental health, disability, homelessness, addiction recovery, or any other challenge you've faced—understanding what the law means by "charitable purpose" is absolutely crucial. It's not just legal jargon; it's the foundation that determines whether your organisation can become a registered charity and access the benefits that come with it.
A step-by-step guide to registering your charity, from choosing the right structure to meeting ACNC requirements and setting up governance.
In the ecosystem of Australian not-for-profits, the label Public Benevolent Institution (PBI) carries both meaning and opportunity. For advocates, service providers, funders and policy-makers alike, understanding what a PBI is—and why the classification matters—can clarify a range of issues: purpose, compliance, tax status, public trust, and strategy.
Turn public concern into change with this strategic advocacy guide. Avoid 5 common campaign mistakes using proven frameworks for power mapping, SMART objectives, policy timing, team alignment, and impact measurement. Includes free tools and resources
Crafting key messages that stick: strategic messaging for advocacy using clarity, framing, and visual storytelling to influence change.
A practical guide for autistic individuals navigating workplace challenges, including bullying, discrimination, and sensory issues. Learn how to document incidents, communicate effectively, advocate for accommodations, and protect your rights at work.
Sustainable advocacy: prevent burnout with evidence-based strategies on setting boundaries, building support, focusing on impact, self-care, and managing expectations.
Discover how grassroots advocacy transformed community frustration into health policy reform. Learn how data, storytelling, and local champions secured $12M for mobile clinics and increased public awareness by 45%.
Use this 30-minute checklist to identify the most common accessibility issues on your website and ensure compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
A gentle guide to discovering your voice and reclaiming your power as a person with disability. Learn practical strategies for self-advocacy even when you think it's impossible.
The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing wants your feedback on a new program to support individual disability advocacy. Your voice matters in shaping the future of disability support in Australia.
In public affairs, persuasion isn't about shouting louder; it's about speaking to the right people. Knowing who matters—and who moves them—is the difference between a campaign that sparks headlines and one that shapes policy. Audience mapping is the architecture behind influence. When done strategically, it reveals where to focus effort, how to tailor messages, and who can carry them further than you ever could alone.
Strategic advocacy goes far beyond traditional lobbying. It’s a deliberate, evidence-driven process that aligns knowledge, networks and narrative to create durable systemic change. By understanding power dynamics, engaging stakeholders, and telling compelling human stories, organisations can influence policy in ways that last.
Test your knowledge with the EduLinked Advocacy Quiz – a quick, engaging way to learn about educational advocacy, policy, and student empowerment.
A lot of exclusion happens quietly, inside documents — school policies that sound neutral but block access, service agreements that shift responsibility onto you, and codes of conduct that punish disability or trauma responses. Inclusion Radar helps you scan for red flags, highlight barriers, and ask sharper questions — supporting your own judgment instead of replacing it.
A comprehensive framework for measuring advocacy impact using a blend of data analytics, storytelling, narrative analysis, and community insights.", "keywords": "advocacy impact measurement, strategic advocacy, influence metrics, storytelling, community evidence
Learn how to map power and influence in Australian policy. This guide reveals the hidden architecture of decision-making and provides strategic advocacy levers for high-impact results.
Understanding Royal Commissions in Australia
Royal Commissions are Australia’s most powerful public investigations. They expose patterns, failures and possibilities for repair — and
they help us understand how systems can better support the people within them.
Discover the top 5 common mistakes organisations make when running advocacy campaigns and learn practical fixes to avoid them. Improve your advocacy strategy with evidence-based approaches, stakeholder mapping, message testing, and impact measurement
A comprehensive guidance on recognizing, tracking, and advocating around their invisible labour. The examples help people identify work they might not have considered "trackable," and the usage tips help them turn their data into actionable workplace conversations!
A plain-language guide for self-advocates on using AI tools to lighten the workload, clarify your message, and support your voice without replacing human connection or choice.
One-on-one coaching sessions that build self-advocacy skills through strength-based mentoring and personalised check-ins. Learn to communicate needs clearly and participate in planning processes with confidence.
Strategic advocacy drives lasting policy change through evidence, networks, and narrative. Discover the framework for impactful, systemic reform.
Is your organisation eligible—and ready—to be recognised as a PBI? The checklist below reflects the key interpretive tests used by the ACNC and ATO for assessing whether a charity qualifies as a Public Benevolent Institution.