Published 12 Aug 2025
What does being a not-for-profit health fund mean? For the GMHBA community, it means we’re there to care for the life you live, and more broadly, it means we can support the health and wellbeing of our community. Learn more about how you, our members, helped us to support the community in FY24-25.
Positive community outcomes
As a regionally based not-for-profit health fund, our focus is on improving the health of our members and our community. One way we do this is through meaningful community partnerships that are aligned to our vision and that can show real impact.
In FY24-25, we invested over $400,000 into the community, through partnership programs, staff volunteering and other activities.
Importantly, we deepened our commitment to local communities, delivering meaningful and measurable outcomes for those supported by our partners and across all locations in our Health and Branch Network, where our members and people live and work.
Highlights for 2025
The Resilience Project
Through relatable storytelling and humour, The Resilience Project opens up conversations about wellbeing and teaches positive mental health strategies to help people become happier and more resilient.
Now in its second year, our financial support helped bring The Resilience Project’s School Wellbeing Program to five Geelong schools, equipping students with tools to build mental resilience. Delivered in partnership with the Geelong Cats, the program includes school visits from AFL and AFLW players who help engage and inspire students through their own stories and experiences.
Independent research conducted across The Resilience Project’s national footprint suggests benefits increase over time. In 2024 a Monash University analysis of seven years of data found that by the sixth year of participation students experienced a 34% drop in anxiety symptoms and a 47% drop in depressive symptoms compared to non-participants. Learn more about how The Resilience Project is having incredible impacts on children at over 1000 schools across Australia in The Imperfects podcast.
Read the Play
Read the Play leverages young people's passion for sports and their bond with local clubs to spread crucial mental health information and guide them on how to get help.
We continued our longstanding partnership with Read The Play, which in the past 12 months has increased the number of sporting codes participating in the program, and establishing Player Wellbeing Officers in football, netball, soccer, hockey, roller hockey, cricket and basketball clubs. They also launched new programs targeting youth issues like vaping, building resilience and mental health literacy, extending valuable support to more children and families across the Geelong region.
Community support
Support for local partners remained a key focus, with ongoing support for genU’s vital work in inclusion and accessibility, and participation in Give Where You Live’s Conversations That Matter event series, helping to drive meaningful dialogue and action on social equity in our community.
GMHBA was a proud supporter of the inaugural Serenity in the Stadium event, a yoga event held on World Mental Health Day at GMHBA stadium.
Our People
Geelong Foodshare our most popular volunteering initiative this financial year, helped support vital food relief efforts, contributing to the distribution of thousands of meals to individuals and families facing food insecurity in our region. We provided 573 volunteer hours to food-based community organisations across the state, including Ballarat Food is Free, Bendigo FoodShare, Portland Community Garden, alongside other organisations such as Our Village (formally Geelong Mums), Bellarine Catchment Network and GenU.
Charitable Gifts
The Charitable Gifts program launched across our regional locations, with each team choosing a local initiative to receive $5,000 to support local priorities.
Initiatives aim to boost the mental health and wellbeing of communities, including Women and Mentoring (WAM) Ballarat, Cycling Without Age (Bendigo), Friends of the Great South West Walk (Portland) and Standing Tall (Warrnambool).
We acknowledge and appreciate the ongoing contributions of our people across all locations to Lifeblood Australia. Their continued generosity reflects a strong commitment to community wellbeing and aligns with the organisation’s values of care and social responsibility.
Social procurement
Where we can, we source goods and services that have a positive social benefit. In the last year, we spent more than $50,000 with social enterprises, helping support and empower local opportunities, through GenU and Wathaurong Aboriginal Cooperative.
Environmental commitment
We volunteer with Bellarine Coastal Network to help regenerate indigenous landscapes. And through our partnership with Pony Up for Good we kept 462kg technology out of landfill, with 49.1% of technology being reused, and contributed 13,837 fresh meals to SecondBite.
Healthier Together
GMHBA is proud of the support we’re able to provide to the community with the help of our members and staff. Thank you to all our members for being part of a not-for-profit fund that helps to contribute in such meaningful ways.
The impact in numbers
|
The Resilience Project |
2,078 students, 211 teachers, 5 schools |
|
Read the Play Programs |
2,245 young people participated in Read The Play programs. 50 clubs supported by a Player Wellbeing Officer Sports with PWO now span football, netball, soccer, hockey, roller hockey, cricket and basketball clubs. |
|
Staff Volunteering Program |
573.5 hours contributed, 22% increase in volunteering groups on the previous year |
|
Donations to LifeBlood Australia |
62 donations by GMHBA staff, with the potential to save 186 lives, 30%+ on last year. |
|
Social Procurement |
$51,667 invested |
|
Workplace Giving |
86 employees contributed $20,310.96 |
|
Pony Up Donation |
462kg technology kept out of landfill 49.1% technology reused 13,837 fresh meals donated to SecondBite |
