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Benevolent Society
The Benevolent Society, founded by Edward Smith Hall in 1813, is Australia's first and oldest charity. The society is an independent, not-for-profit organization whose main goals include helping families, older Australians and people with disabilities. The Benevolent Society centers around the advancement of society and positive change. Many of today's essential services in Australia were pioneered by The Benevolent Society, and its legacy of advocacy for progressive, positive change continues to inform their work today. The organization currently delivers services from 60 locations across New South Wales, including four main Sydney hubs and a national office, and the ACT, and 16 sites in Queensland. It has 1600 staff, plus a volunteer force of about 700. More than 56,000 people were reached through The Benevolent Society's 90 services, community programs and events in 2016–17. The chief executive officer is Lin Hatfield Dodds, and the chair of the company is Ken Smith.
Foci
The Benevolent Society focuses its programs on providing services to older Australians, people with disability, keeping children safe and well, and assisting families, especially those at risk.
Aging
The Benevolent Society provides older Australians with services for house independence, and assisting carers' needs. These include:
Disability
The Benevolent Society is the largest provider of disability services in NSW. It has been an approved NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) provider since 2016, working to help people transition to the NDIS and providing many of the services under the scheme. The Benevolent Society offers these services:
Child and family
The Benevolent Society helps families with 64 services provided to more than 44,000 people, from playgroup to parenting education and coaching, household budgeting, to practical support and family counselling.
Leadership
Social Leadership Australia (SLA) was established by The Benevolent Society in 1999 to "design and deliver a suite of innovative leadership development programs to develop the capacity of individuals, organizations and communities to create lasting, positive change on entrenched issues". Programs included Sydney Leadership, Queensland Leadership and a four-day Introduction to Adaptive Leadership. They worked directly with organisations to develop and deliver customized programs to build internal leadership capacity. All programs were based on an Adaptive Leadership approach developed by Professor Ron Heifetz at Harvard University. The Benevolent Society closed SLA in 2017 due to the evolution of the market and the proliferation of leadership programs available.
History
On 8 May 1813, Edward Smith Hall and several other 'like-minded gentlemen' formed what was initially known as ‘The New South Wales Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Benevolence’. It is the first charitable organization dedicated to doing universal good in Australia, and was later known as The Benevolent Society.
19th century
20th century
21st century
In 2021, The Benevolent Society made Lin Hatfield Dodds the new CEO.
Sources
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