Pre-launch document. Life Without Debt Ltd is in formation: ASIC, ACNC and DGR registrations have not yet been issued and no gift is tax deductible until DGR is granted. Any outcome figures on this page (households, dollars resolved, distress scores) are planning placeholders from the launch-readiness build, not audited results, and will be replaced with audited figures after the first operating year. Verified founder facts: creditmediation.com.au/media.
Room A · Foundation Program Officers

A 30-minute briefing for your grant-round decision

Life Without Debt Ltd (in formation) is Australia's first evaluation-first service model that removes consumer debt from households facing terminal illness — and prevents inter-generational transfer of that debt to surviving family. This page is prepared for foundation program officers assessing systems-change investments.

Room: A (Philanthropic foundations) Typical ask: $200,000–$500,000 over 1–3 years Reporting cadence: Quarterly + annual audited impact report Fit: Systems-change · palliative care · consumer advocacy · evaluation

Key facts (60 seconds)

What LWD does
Licensed consumer-credit advocacy for households in the last months of life, referred through palliative-care and oncology services. Every case is measured on debt extinguished, inter-generational liability prevented, cycle time, and household-reported stress reduction.
Why foundations fund this and not government (yet)
No Australian dataset exists on debt-mediation outcomes for terminally-ill households. Foundations fund the evidence base that unlocks Room D (government) funding by Year 3. This is measurement-led philanthropy, not service replacement.
Governance
Company limited by guarantee. ACNC registration application in progress. DGR endorsement application scheduled after ACNC. Independent skills-based board. Related-party arrangement with Credit Mediation Services Pty Ltd (ACL 387398) publicly declared.
Reach of donated dollar
87 cents of every donated dollar reaches direct household service. Infrastructure overhead absorbed by the related for-profit entity under governance-declared arrangement.

Why "evaluation-first" is the honest description

Australia's National Consumer Credit Protection Act contains statutory hardship remedies that a terminally-ill household is legally entitled to invoke — but almost never does, because there is no licensed advocate at the referral point. The window for accessing those remedies closes rapidly with a terminal diagnosis, and the debt that survives the household transfers to spouses and adult children as guarantors, co-borrowers, or estate liabilities. We call this Sexually Transmitted Debt, and it is the specific harm LWD exists to prevent.

The intervention (licensed advocacy referred through palliative care) is defensible on its face. The gap in the sector is not the intervention — it is the absence of measured evidence: no dataset shows what a well-run debt-mediation service achieves for terminally-ill households, at what per-case cost, with what inter-generational effect. Without that evidence, no government commissioning agency will fund the model at scale.

Room A foundation grants fund the measurement system. Every dollar you invest returns: (a) direct household relief in your grant year, (b) a data point in the published evidence base that supports Year 3 Room D applications, (c) methodology contributions the sector can adopt. This is systems-change philanthropy at its most legible.

The four measured outputs on every case

What a Room A grant funds specifically

Capacity grant ($200,000–$300,000 · 1 year)

Engages an evaluation partner before Year 1 case intake begins. Builds the measurement dataset, publishes methodology, produces the first cohort report. Enables the Year 3 government business case.

Program grant ($300,000–$500,000 · 2–3 years)

Funds case throughput at published per-case unit cost, tied to measured outputs. Quarterly outcome reporting to the funder. Grant is milestone-structured against caseload rather than time-elapsed.

What LWD does not accept

Restricted funding tied to specific beneficiary demographics or debt-type profiles. That would compromise the palliative-care referral pathway (which is medical-need-first, not funder-demographic-first). This is a governance red line; declared upfront so no time is wasted preparing an incompatible application.

Request a 30-minute discovery call

Carla Oliver (Board-Appointed CFO Advisor) and Laurence Hugo (Founding Director, ACL 387398) will walk your team through the theory of change and evaluation framework. No slide deck. Honest assessment of fit. If aligned, a written application tailored to your grant round follows. If not aligned, we say so and there is no further ask.

Request discovery call →

Frequently asked (FAQ)

Is this a service or an evidence project?
Both. LWD runs the debt-mediation service through referrals from palliative-care and oncology teams. Every case is measured. Foundations fund the measurement layer that turns the service into published evidence that unlocks government funding. Foundations that only want to fund service delivery still get service delivery; foundations that also want systems-change value get the evidence outputs.
What is your relationship with Credit Mediation Services Pty Ltd?
CMS Pty Ltd holds the Australian Credit Licence (ACL 387398) required to practise licensed debt mediation in Australia. LWD (the charity) contracts case-work to CMS under a governance-declared related-party arrangement. This is the structure that lets 87 cents of the donated dollar reach direct household service: infrastructure overhead is absorbed by CMS, not the charity. Full arrangement documented in the register of interests and conflicts-of-interest policy.
When is DGR endorsement expected?
DGR (Deductible Gift Recipient) endorsement application is scheduled after ACNC registration is granted. Timing depends on ATO assessment cycle. Pre-DGR, gifts to LWD are not tax-effective to the donor at income-tax level; philanthropic foundations typically fund pre-DGR charities against their program budgets rather than tax-effective giving windows.
Who is on the board?
See governance-public and board-recruitment. Independent skills-based composition (finance, palliative care, consumer advocacy, evaluation). Founder-independent by design so the institution is built to outlive its founders.
What if my Foundation only funds registered charities with DGR?
Understood. Register your interest and we will notify you when ACNC and DGR endorsements land. Estimated timing available on the registration roadmap. Some foundations are able to fund pre-endorsement under a "letter of intent" structure that converts on registration — happy to discuss.

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