Top 20 Nonprofit Organizations in Australia

Australia is home to a diverse and thriving nonprofit sector, where passionate individuals and organizations work tirelessly to address social issues and make a positive impact in the community. In this article, we shine a spotlight on twenty remarkable nonprofit organizations that are leading the charge for change in Australia.

From promoting environmental sustainability and wildlife conservation to providing support for vulnerable populations, these organizations exemplify the spirit of generosity, compassion, and innovation. They tackle a wide range of issues, from healthcare and education to poverty alleviation, gender equality, and more. What’s more? All these nonprofits have been vetted by Goodera. 

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List of Top Nonprofit Organizations in Australia

Invisible Illnesses

Focus Area(s): Health and Well-being
Primary Beneficiary: Community, Youth, Children

Invisible Illnesses Inc is in-person support and social group for those who suffer from invisible illnesses such as Fibromyalgia, Chronic Pain, Depression, Chronic fatigue, Diabetes, ADHD, Mental Health, etc., in WA. The organization aims to support and educate people with invisible illnesses, educate health professionals in managing symptoms of Fibromyalgia and other hidden conditions, and increase community awareness about the implications of a diagnosis of an invisible disease.

The Royal Botanical Garden Sydney

Focus Area(s): Environmental Sustainability
Primary Beneficiary: Environment 

The Royal Botanic Gardens is a government entity registered under Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust. It is Australia’s oldest living scientific institution, beginning its life in 1816. The Garden encompasses 30 hectares and is the oldest botanic garden in Australia, home to an outstanding collection of more than 27,000 plants worldwide. As Australia's oldest living scientific institution, they are a leader in plant science and conservation, horticulture, and education.

Tranby National Minority Groups (Indigenous)

Focus Area(s): Education
Primary Beneficiary: Indigenous Groups

Tranby National Minority Groups (Indigenous) Adult Education and Training (‘Tranby’) is in Glebe, Sydney. The organization is a function of the Co-operative for Aborigines Limited. It has been a pioneer in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adult education, training, and social action for decades. Courses at Tranby have changed over time from trade-based skills to governance and legal advocacy. Most importantly, Tranby offers these qualifications in a unique, culturally supportive environment.

Backpacks 4 VIC Kids

Focus Area(s): Education
Primary Beneficiary: Children

Backpacks for VIC Kids aim to ease the transition for kids entering foster care, kinship care, or emergency accommodation by providing a backpack full of essential materials such as clothing, toiletries, toys, and other gifts. Often children are placed quickly into foster or kinship care, for example, without much more than what they are wearing at the time. It provides displaced children with a few essential items to help equip them, restore dignity, self-worth, and show them someone cares.

Oak Tree

Focus Area(s): Employment and Skilling
Primary Beneficiary: Youth

With over 250,000 supporters, Oaktree is Australia's largest youth-run international development organization supporting employment and killing for the youth, education, and leadership projects across the Asia Pacific. They want to create a world where all people have the opportunity to thrive, regardless of their circumstances. They exist to ensure that young people can stamp their voices across the policies and decisions that affect them, and create innovative solutions that will impact our collective future.

SevGen

Focus Area(s): Education, Employment
Primary Beneficiary: Minority Groups

SevGen, short for Seven Generations, promotes a way of thinking that says one must consider that actions and deliberations of today will affect people seven generations into the future while drawing on the wisdom of seven generations past. SevGen has a dual mission, to honor the entirely true and creative self and celebrate, validate, and reinvigorate indigenous ways of being for the collective benefit of all. SevGen’s visionary 3E model is based on Enterprise, Education, and Entrepreneurship.

Bobby Gold Smith Foundation

Focus Area(s): Health and Well-being
Primary Beneficiary: HIV/AIDS Patients 

Bobby Goldsmith Foundation (BGF) is Australia’s oldest HIV organization, providing client services and health promotion programs in NSW and SA. Since 1984, they have provided practical, emotional, and financial support to all people living with HIV. They help people live independently through support in daily activities, such as shopping for groceries and attending medical appointments; they support people through their financial worries and provide programs that keep their clients socially connected.

Oz Harvest Limited

Focus Area(s): Health and Well-being, Hunger
Primary Beneficiary: Economically Backwards Communities 

From humble beginnings, OzHarvest has become a leading food rescue organization on a mission to ‘Nourish [the] Country’ by stopping good food from going to waste and delivering it to charities that help feed people in need. Their yellow vans are out and about in communities every day, collecting quality surplus food from a network of donors, including supermarkets, cafes, delis, restaurants, corporate kitchens, airlines, hotels, and other food businesses.

Barnardos Australia

Focus Area(s): Community Support, Health and Well-being
Primary Beneficiary: Children

Barnardos Australia has been helping children since 1921. During this time they've helped countless at-risk children and their families have a better life. Children have been, and always are at the centre of everything that they do. At Barnardos, they hope to end child abuse and neglect by supporting communities to keep children and young people safe at home. They help children and young people who have experienced trauma, to recover and thrive and where there is a risk of abuse they find safe homes for them through foster care and open adoption.

Expression Australia

Focus Area(s): Disability Acess
Primary Beneficiary: People with Disability 

Expression Australia is a not-for-profit organization that has been serving the Deaf community since 1884. Today, they work to ensure people who are Deaf, hard of hearing, or who experience other barriers to participation have equal access to opportunities. They champion Deaf culture and Australian Sign Language through:  

• Auslan interpreting, live captioning, and note taking
• Auslan classes
• Assistive Devices and equipment
• Audiology services
• Employment support
• Individual supports
• Group supports
• Community activities
• Video productions
• Supported accommodation

RMHC Australia (ACT& South East NSW)

Focus Area(s): Health and Well-being, Community Support
Primary Beneficiary: Critically ill Children and Families 

Ronald McDonald House Canberra gives seriously ill children the best gift of all – community support. Their warm and supportive home-away-from-home provides the whole family with a comfortable place to stay and peace of mind, knowing they can stay together in the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children.

RMHC Canberra is uniquely located inside the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children. Their aim is to take some of the stress out of being away from home during a long and difficult journey and provide a supportive environment in the company of other families going through similar experiences.

Refugee Migrant Children Centre (RMCC)

Focus Area(s): Education
Primary Beneficiary: Refugee/Migrant Children

RMCC supports school-aged kids from refugee and migrant backgrounds to overcome the barriers they face as they settle into life in Australia. These barriers can include learning a new language, adjusting to a new culture, overcoming significant gaps in education, and living with experiences of trauma, racism, and financial hardship. They help the kids through weekly after-school mentoring programs that are tailored to their evolving needs. They also work with the key figures in a child’s life – their school, teachers, family, and community – to create a network of support to help the kids achieve positive educational and social outcomes.

Good Return

Focus Area(s): Poverty Alleviation
Primary Beneficiary: Economically Backward Communities

Good Return works to empower people to grow their incomes and break the poverty cycle for good by making sure they can access responsible financial services and financial education, and business skills. It was established as the Australian branch of World Education by Humanitarian Guy Winship in 2003 to improve the lives of those living in poverty in the Asia Pacific region. Through livelihood development programs and improving access to financial services, Good Return works to improve the living standards of those living in the lowest poverty brackets by giving them access to the tools they need to work their way into opportunity.

AASHA

Focus Area(s): Eldercare
Primary Beneficiary: The Elderly

AASHA facilitates the well-being of senior citizens and supports them to live independently, where possible, in their own homes and communities while fulfilling their cultural and social needs. Their objective is to assist and work with senior citizens to lead physically and mentally healthy and happy lives. They also inform government and non-government agencies about senior citizens' cultural, social, and health needs, assist families in identifying their senior relatives’ health needs, and assist the family in finding appropriate services for senior family members suffering from serious physical or mental illness, disability, and/or dementia.

RSPCA Victoria

Focus Area(s): Animal Welfare
Primary Beneficiary: Animals 

RSPCA Victoria is a non-government, community-based charity that works to prevent cruelty to animals. A member of RSPCA Australia since 1871, RSPCA Victoria is an integral part of Australia’s leading animal welfare charity. More than 90% of their funding comes from the generous support of the Victorian community. Across the state, RSPCA Victoria’s community services are undertaken by specific teams; their Inspectorate, animal care centers, vet clinics, advocacy, community outreach, and education.

Action on Poverty

Focus Area(s): Poverty Alleviation
Primary Beneficiary: Women, Community 

AOP specializes in connecting underprivileged communities with philanthropists, businesses, civil society, and researchers to meet their development goals. AOP beneficiaries are ethnic minorities community in the mountains and rural villages in North-Western Vietnam. They support inclusive and sustainable, integrated socio-economic development. Gender mainstreaming is applied in their work, and many of the activities are women-led, and women's participation is prioritized. They are of working age, and most of them are participants of the Community-Based Tourism (CBT) model as homestay owners, service group members, local product sellers, and community coordinators.

Foodbank WA

Focus Area(s): Hunger Action
Primary Beneficiary: Economically Backwards Communities 

Foodbank WA is Western Australia's largest food relief organization providing over 6.7 million meals a year to people in need. They work with the food and grocery industry to source surplus and donated products They also collaborate with industry and government on innovative programs to produce key pantry staples. The NPO also provides a range of healthy eating and education programs to build the capacity of children and families to better take care of their health and wellbeing. 

Mahboba's Promise

Focus Area(s): Women Empowerment
Primary Beneficiary: Afgan Women and Children

Mahboba’s Promise was founded by Mahboba Rawi, an Afghan refugee and now an Australian citizen, who has experienced first-hand the effects of a country torn apart by years of war and civil unrest. With Mahboba’s intimate knowledge of Afghanistan, Mahboba’s Promise was able to respond effectively and flexibly, to directly meet the needs of the country’s orphans and widows. Since then, Mahboba's Promise has worked relentlessly to provide a sustainable future within a secure environment for disadvantaged Afghan women and children. Mahboba’s Promise enables the development of sustainable communities through being a visionary that empowers women and children to be self-sufficient leaders of tomorrow. They empower women and children to be given an opportunity by providing sustainable projects geared towards education, self-sufficiency, vocational training, health, and more.

Deaf Children Australia

Focus Area(s): Disability Access
Primary Beneficiary: People with Disabilities 

Deaf Children Australia employs over 60 staff and volunteers who, together with their Board of Directors, are united in their desire to remove barriers to the personal development and social inclusion faced by children and young people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

They aim to provide children and young people who are deaf or hard of hearing and their families with the opportunities and skills to face life’s challenges and celebrate their potential.

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre

Focus Area(s): Policy and Advocacy
Primary Beneficiary: Refugees 

Founded in 2001, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) is Australia’s largest human rights organization providing support to people seeking asylum. They are an independent not-for-profit organization whose programs support and empower people seeking asylum to maximize their own physical, mental, and social well-being. They champion the rights of people seeking asylum and mobilize a community of compassion to create lasting social and policy change. As an independent, community-led organisation the ASRC is in a unique position to advocate for the human rights of people seeking asylum, exempt from the pressures of government or the private sector.

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This list is not exhaustive, and we'd love to amplify nonprofit voices and connect them to corporate volunteers who want to create meaningful impact.

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