About this organisation
Summary of activities
Lifeline Australia exists to ensure that no person in Australia has to face their darkest moments alone and are committed to empowering Australians to be suicide-safe through connection, compassion and hope, without judgement. For more than 60 years Lifeline Australia has provided vital and life-saving crisis support services nationally, today via telephone, text and online chat (7 days a week, 24 hours a day). Lifeline Australia additionally provides online self-help and support tools for those in crisis and a service finder for local health and community services all through our website www.lifeline.org.au. Lifeline Australia's 17 separately incorporated Member organisations operate 43 accredited Lifeline Centres across Australia. These centres deliver a range of valuable crisis support, community and suicide prevention services across Australia. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our Crisis Supporters and Volunteers, Lifeline answered almost 1.1million crisis support calls made to 13 11 14 in FY23. Lifeline additionally operates digital services 24 hours per day and 7 days per week, responding to 71,623 text requests for support and 71,327 online chat requests in FY23. Our Crisis Supporters also helped 139,614 people via Lifeline Australia s dedicated Natural Disaster Support Helpline, 13HELP. The first national 24/7 crisis support helpline for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health celebrated its first full year of operations in 2023. The vital service received 24,296 calls for the year to 30 June 2023. In addition, Lifeline Centres provide DV-alert - family and domestic violence frontline worker training. DV-alert conducted 368 workshops with 5,600 participants in FY23. Lifeline Australia actively engages in invaluable advocacy work, research and education in respect to mental health and suicide prevention.
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Group membership
This charity is part of a group: Lifeline Australia_ACNC group. Other members of the group include:
Outcomes
Outcomes are self-reported by charities
Programs and activities
Name: Suicide Prevention & Crisis Support Services (phone, text and online chat)
URL: https://www.lifeline.org.au/get-help/
Classification: Suicide crisis intervention (Health > Mental healthcare > Crisis intervention > Suicide crisis intervention)
Beneficiaries:- General community in Australia
- People in rural/regional/remote communities
Name: Community-based Services, Training & Programs
URL: https://www.lifeline.org.au/get-help/information-and-support/
Classification: Mental healthcare (Health > Mental healthcare)
Beneficiaries:- General community in Australia
Name: Partnering on Research Programs (relating to Mental Health & Suicide Prevention)
URL: https://www.lifeline.org.au/about/our-research/
Classification: Health and medical research (Health > Health and medical research)
Beneficiaries:- General community in Australia
Name: Advocacy (shaping public policy on mental health services & awareness)
Classification: Public policy (Public affairs > Public policy)
Beneficiaries:- General community in Australia
Name: Awareness Raising (mental health and wellbeing services)
Classification: Health promotion (Health > Public health > Health promotion)
Beneficiaries:- General community in Australia
Finances
What is this?
This graph shows how much revenue (money in) and expenses (money out) the charity has had each year over the last few years. Charities have many sources of revenue, such as donations, government grants, and services they sell to the public. Similarly, expenses are everything that allows the charity to run, from paying staff to rent.
What should I be looking for?
First off, this graph gives a general indication of how big the charity is - charities range in size from tiny (budgets of less than $100,000) to enormous (budgets more than $100 million). You're also looking for variability - if the charity's revenue and expenses are jumping up and down from year to year, make sure there's a good reason for it.
Unlike companies, charities and not-for-profits aren't on a mission to make money. However, if they spend more than they receive, eventually they will go into too much debt and run into trouble. As a very general rule, you want revenue to be slightly above expenses. If expenses is reliably above revenue, the charity is losing money. If revenue is much larger than expenses, it means the charity might not be using its resources effectively. It isn't always that simple, however, and there's a lot of reasons a charity might not follow this pattern. They might be saving up for a big purchase or campaign, or they might have made a big one-off payment. If you're worried, always look at the annual and financial reports to understand why the charity is making the decisions it is.
What is this?
If a charity receives more money than it spends, that's a surplus (in business, it would be called profit). If it spends more than it receives, that's a deficit. This chart shows surpluses and deficits for the charity over the last few years.
What should I be looking for?
Unlike companies, charities and not-for-profits aren't on a mission to make money. However, if they spend more than they receive, eventually they will go into too much debt and run into trouble. As a very general rule, you want a charity to make a small surplus on average. A deficit means that charity lost money that year, which may indicate poor financial management or just a series of bad circumstances. If the charity always has a huge surplus, it means the charity might not be using its resources effectively. It isn't always that simple, however, and there's a lot of reasons a charity might not follow this pattern. They might be saving up for a big purchase or campaign, or they might have made a big one-off payment. If you're worried, always look at the annual and financial reports to understand why the charity is making the decisions it is.
What is this?
This chart compares the amount the charity receives from various sources, including donations (i.e. money given by the general public or philanthropy), goods and services, government grants, and other sources.
What should I be looking for?
Donations are an important source of revenue for some charities. Others rely more heavily on government funding, or on revenue from other sources. This is an indication of how much they need donors to accomplish their mission. Note that there is no 'good' or 'bad' amount of donations for a charity to have. It might be interesting to look at values over time - are they going up or down? A charity that gets less donations every year may be in trouble.
What is this?
Assets are things that the charity owns that are worth something. This could be anything from a car to investments. Similarly, liabilities are debts or obligations that the charity owes to someone else, like a loan or an agreement to pay for something.
What should I be looking for?
Firstly, in general a charity should have more assets than liabilities. If it doesn't, it implies that the charity might not be able to pay its debts, and you should look very closely at the charity's annual and financial reports to make sure they are taking steps to remedy this. Current assets should generally be above current liabilities - that means the charity can easily pay off the debts that are coming due soon. Beyond that, look for a large stockpile of assets. While a charity should have enough assets to keep it afloat in hard times (a 'buffer') if that stockpile gets too large the charity could be using that money more effectively. As always, if you have concerns check the annual and financial reports.
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