Do you work in Membership?

Social media can and should do more for membership than for any other association department. It provides additional ways to reach, understand, and engage members, helping to make your job easier and more fulfilling. There are responsibilities, for the vast majority of associations, it will be up to those in membership to map social media data to the membership database and make sense of how members are using social media. It’s something that everyone using social media in your organization needs, but if you don’t do it, no-one else will.

You need to own the data, but that’s a good thing! Being more plugged in to social data will not only help you in your daily work (streamlining renewals, retaining members, and more), it will also make you and inavluable resource to your colleagues because of all the ways your work will benefit others in your organization. You’ll be a Social CRM hero, and that could become very important to you career very quickly. So, given all of that what can the membership team actually DO with Social? What can YOU do to help your association get the most out of social? Everybody says you should be using social, but nobody tells you how. This is how.

These are short, checklist-style handy guides that take you step-by-step through the steps to rock your social media activities for your particular department.

Let’s start with Membership

1. Take charge of capturing your members’ social data. Are you recording your members’ social profiles in your AMS? Even if you don’t have an immediate use for the information, you will eventually. Are you updating your membership and renewal forms so that they ask for social information? What about conference registration forms? And how about your membership directory?

2. Track how members are using social tools to connect with your association. Besides knowing where your members are online, it’s also important to know which members are actively connecting with your association online. Understanding connectedness and online engagement can help you predict the likelihood of renewal and create more efficient renewal processes.

3. Track down member contacts. Once the groundwork is laid, social media can serve as a safety net and augmented customer relationship management system. Using LinkedIn as an example: Watch for members who change their current position on LinkedIn. If they are in transition, send them a message to help them land on their feet. If they land in a new position, send them a congratulations message with how to stay in touch.

4. Connect with new members so they’ll be more likely to renew. If the hypothesis that new members who are connected on social media renew at a higher rate is correct, then it makes sense to focus on getting new members connected right away. Update your welcome packet to invite new members to join the association’s LinkedIn group, like the Facebook page, and follow the Twitter account. Recruit members who are active in social networks into a new online membership committee. Provide them with a list of new members and ask them to connect with them online, either through public social networks or through the private online community.

It’s never too late to start applying social media to the work of retaining members. You may already be doing some of this. It’s not about flipping a switch so that everything is suddenly driven by social. Instead look for quick wins and small steps that can make everything you do more effective. Good luck, and have fun getting to know your members in all new ways.

This article was originally sourced from Social Fish and was written by Maddie Grant.

A few weeks ago, LinkedIn announced that they were going to be rolling out some pretty big changes to their Groups feature. I wrote about how the changes would likely impact associations on Mizz Information; in short, here’s an overview of the new Groups features and what associations need to know about each. 

Member Approval in Standard Groups: When a member requests to join a Standard Group, their connections in the group can approve the request. Group owners and managers can also approve any request to join.

• Association Takeaway: You no longer will be able to control who joins your Standard groups, as any member connected with the new member will be able to approve their request to join. Not the biggest deal in the world, but yet another reminder that LinkedIn owns Groups and makes the rules.
  

Better Content Filtering: Because no control over what’s posted in your own group is “better,” LinkedIn “has improved the filtering of spammy and low-quality content so that promotional conversations stay out of the conversation feed and conversations can happen around more relevant topics.” Also, Job listings and job conversations posted to the main conversation feed are automatically moved to the Jobs tab—that is no longer optional and even if you had previously disabled this tab, it’s back.

• Association takeaway: That group you thought you “owned”? LinkedIn will be deciding what content belongs and doesn’t. They’ve already been doing it for a while now, moving valid posts to the Promotions tab…but oh, wait, see #6 for more on that. Also, if your association has its own career board and doesn’t permit job postings in its LinkedIn group, now that it’s no longer optional, get ready to devote time daily to moderating job postings and discussions, and if your job board is a major source of revenue, it’s definitely time to evaluate whether the benefits of housing your org’s community on LinkedIn are worth the potential lost revenue due to people in the group being directed to post jobs to LinkedIn’s job board versus your org’s, as well as how you’ll handle moderating job discussions and posts.
  

All Groups Are Now Members-Only Groups: Bye open groups, joining a LinkedIn group will now require either an invitation from an existing member or the group owner/moderator, or approval of a users’ request to join a Standard group.

• Association takeaway: Operating a LinkedIn group just became a lot more labor intensive, as even Standard groups will require approval of new members…as well as additional moderation due to #s 4 and 5 below.
  

Standard and Unlisted Groups: All groups will be either Standard (for those that are now Open) or Unlisted (for those that are now Private). Standard Groups will show up in search results (both LinkedIn search and search engines) but the conversations inside the group won’t–only members of the group will be able to see them. Group members will be able to invite any of their 1st degree connections to join. If your group currently has public conversations or is free to join, it’ll become a Standard Group. Unlisted Groups won’t show up in search results and only the group’s owner and manager will be able to invite members to the group.

• Takeaway for associations: If your group is currently public, any member will be able to invite others to join and people will be able to see the group name listed in search results request to join. If your group is currently private, it will be Unlisted and will no longer appear in search results either on LinkedIn or search engines, and only group owner and/or managers can invite people to join. So if you currently rely on search to attract members to your group you’ll want to make your group public now (assuming you still can change it). LinkedIn says that the group owner has the option to make the group unlisted only when the group is created, so I’m not sure what that means for groups that already exist as private. For Unlisted groups, the group logo will only be visible on members’ profiles to other members of that group and the group will not be findable via any search engine—so if people have been finding your group, then your organization, via LinkedIn groups, that’s about to end if your group is Unlisted. Here’s more information on Standard vs. Unlisted groups.
  

All Groups Are Now Private Groups: LinkedIn’s “research” (that no group moderator was apparently ever involved in, based on LinkedIn’s group moderators group) has “shown that professional conversations are most effective in a private trusted space, so conversations in groups won’t be visible until you’ve joined the group.”

• Association takeaway: Again, visibility of your group will be drastically limited, if not eliminated entirely in the case of Unlisted groups, and you’ll now have to rely on existing members inviting their 1st degree connections. Group owners and moderators will be able to invite people to join Unlisted groups, but that will involve researching potential new members and reaching out to them rather than vice versa as LinkedIn groups have worked up until now.
  

Content Moderation: LinkedIn has decided that moderation is bad, so they have disabled the ability to have posts be moderated prior to being posted. All posts (except for those that LinkedIn’s mysterious algorithm deems spammy) will be posted instantly to a group without the need for manager approval. Group owners, managers, and moderators can still remove off-topic conversations and place members in moderation, and other group members can also flag inappropriate comments and conversations after they’ve been posted.

• Association takeaway: If you currently require posts to go through moderation before they are posted to discussions, that functionality will now disappear and you’ll have to be a lot more vigilant about moderating the discussions tab. Weirdly, though, while LinkedIn has taken away the ability for group owners and moderators to moderate the content in their own communities, they’ve at the same time decided that they are better judges of what’s appropriate for your group…see #5.
  

Removal of Promotions Tab: LinkedIn says “General member feedback indicates that promotional content in LinkedIn Groups isn’t a valuable experience, as it can quickly lead to spam”…so they’ve decided to remove the Promotions tab. To which they have been moving posts for a while now. Now, instead of the Promotions tab, any posts their algorithm decides are promotional will go to the moderation queue for the owners, managers, and moderators to approve, and job posts will be automatically moved to the no-longer-optional jobs tab.

• Association takeaway: More work for moderators but, in theory, less spam.
  

Removal of Subgroups: Per LinkedIn, “We recognize that subgroups were important to the organization of some of our larger groups. However, for the majority of our members, the experience was confusing. In order to surface these subgroups to members and to help these subgroups grow, they will now be treated as their own independent groups. As a result, group owners will no longer be able to create subgroups. If you’re the owner of a parent group with subgroups, you may wish to rename your subgroups.” Not sure what this means for subgroups of closed groups—I assume this means they’ll also default to being Unlisted groups, which means they’ll be virtually invisible.

• Association takeaway: if you have active subgroups, you’ll want to list them in the About page of your group, and/or figure out some other strategy of marketing them, and the only way people will be able to join is if the owner or manager of the group invites them.
  

Groups Highlights and Email Digests: Per LinkedIn, “We’ve created a digest of the most popular and recent conversations to cut down on emails from your groups and help you follow the most interesting conversations.”

• Association takeaway: members presumably will no longer be able to opt to receive daily digests; LinkedIn will decide what information is relevant to them and send those digests. They’ve already been doing this with announcements, apparently, as this is the message I see now in a group I manage when I send an announcement (the group has 17.5k members):
  

LinkedIn Groups iOS Mobile App: LinkedIn has released an iOs app for Groups (Android version “available soon.”)

• Association takeaway: While presumably members will no longer be able to opt to receive daily email updates from groups (see #9), they will be able to receive push notifications for group conversations. This could either be cool, for those members who want real-time updates, or could result in members complaining about the notifications, which I’m sure will be enabled by default, so you should probably be ready to start explaining how to disable notifications just in case.
  

Now that the changes have rolled out, group moderators are reporting–and I see the same in the groups I manage–a drop in engagement and posts, confusion (mine!) about how “jobs discussions” works (e.g. when you try to post a jobs discussion, you navigate to a blank screen) and an increase in promotional posts now that the promotions tab is gone. I know of at least one association that had decided to close its group because of these changes, and I can say that if my org were in a position to launch a private community right now, I’d definitely be recommending that.

How have the changes impacted your org’s LinkedIn group? Anyone experiencing any positives to counteract the negatives I and others have experienced? 

This article was originally sourced from Social Fish and was written by Maggie McGary.

Amy DeLouise is a video director-producer who specializes in telling real people stories that help nonprofits and companies tell their brand story. Her new book is The Producer’s Playbook: Real People on Camera (Focal Press).

1. Tell a Story

Even if you are telling a nonfiction or “real world” story, you still the essential story arc elements to keep your viewer engagement. Start with a hook that hints at the main climax or challenge, proceed to a brief introduction of the topic and characters. Then you need to build to the climax, some challenge or issue that needs to be overcome. Finally, you reveal the resolution, and perhaps add a call to action if you are selling a product or trying to engage people with a charity or issue.

2. Be Brief, With Exceptions

Wistia has done several useful studies on viewer drop-off, and it looks like a couple of trends are worth watching for social video makers. First, you need to grab your audience in the first few seconds with what we call a “hook.” If you’re planning to use Facebook’s new video tool, you’ll want a silent hook, meaning, a striking image, sequence of images or words that really grab people, since videos play in the Facebook feed without sound until someone clicks. See more on how to create a hook in item 6 below. If you can tell your story in under 2 minutes, great, because the first big viewer drop-off occurs right after 2 minutes of viewing time. But wait, f your audience is willing to hang in there for 5 mins, there’s a solid group you can keep engaged. Then it gets interesting. While viewers do leave, there is substantial engagement for much longer content. Viewers may be switching platforms, that is, they will start viewing on a mobile device, then switch over to a desktop or large screen to continue consumption. Longer viewing sessions tend to happen with content the viewer is already pre-disposed to care about: a documentary on a subject of interest, a training video they need in order to accomplish a task, a story from a charity they like to fund. So this leads to my next suggestion.

3. Know Your Audience

This goes without saying, and yet I’m often confronted with projects that want to be all things to all people. By definition, this means you are ignoring certain audience characteristics and needs, and risk diluting the story for everyone in the process. If you want to reach tech-saavy millennials, build your content for Snapchat and Twitter with links for extended viewing on other platforms. If you are reaching out to boomers and grandparents, go for Facebook. Youtube is still ubiquitous as a platform (more than 100 hours of video uploaded every minute!), and remains the #2 search engine, so including this platform in your audience outreach strategy is generally advised.

4. Know Your Platform

Speaking of platforms, always assess a variety of distribution tools before you go into production. Each one has different “isms” (tech term!) and compression codecs that may affect your design and your acquisition choices. For example, if you’re going to broadcast, you’ll need to acquire in a minimum 1080i, at 29.97fps. But if you know you’re compressing for YouTube or web distribution, you’ll want to acquire video in progressive, at a bare minimum of 720p, but these days I recommend 1080p. And shooting 24fps will save you a lot of compression frames for every second of footage. If you will ultimately be cutting up the video and using some or all of it projecting on large screens at a live event, consider shooting in 2K or 4K.

5. Think Mobile

75% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2020 (Cisco). That’s huge. So consider what your video will look like on a mobile device when planning your production. Gone are the wide shots. Medium shots don’t play much in my videos any more, either. The story must be compelling in a close-up medium. Avoid tiny type. Avoid flashy swish-pans and zooms which, when compressed, turn to mush. Do your audio mix for several possible platforms and listen to it on a mobile device before you release!

6. Care About Audio

If you have gorgeous images with bad sound, your video will be skipped over before you know it. Always hire a professional sound engineer for video shoots. Don’t expect a videographer to be able to acquire high quality sound with a camera microphone or inputs directly into the camera, as these cannot be monitored for over-modulation or other problems. A sound engineer will use a mixer, listen to every take, and own a variety of microphones for different circumstances. For my productions I also usually send our final edits to a sound mix studio for additional sound design work, plus mixing voices and music properly for our different distribution platforms. The mix for a 10,000-person audience at a conference isn’t the same as the mix for desktop computer speakers. If you are handling audio mixing yourself, aim to output at -6dbfs. And always create mono-compatible audio, ever noticed how people will share earbuds while watching a video? That means each person is only hearing one channel of your show! Avoid over-compressing voices. And ALWAYS listen on a mobile device before outputting.

7. Manage Your Assets

If you’re shooting one video, you should be planning for the next 20. Be sure to shoot some “evergreen” footage that can play in other projects. Metatag footage with keywords plus the date of the shoot and initials of the DOP (Director of Photography/Videographer). Take the time to add additional metadata such as locations and people’s full names, not “Shawna and Bob talk”, so you can track images down for re-use in the future. Get interviews transcribed. This is extremely inexpensive and saves hours of fishing for soundbites in the video editing room. Plus you now have quotes for easy use in social shares, blogs and newsletters. Hire a BTS (Behind the Scenes) photographer for a few hours to shoot the video shoot. You’ll get incredible mileage out of these photos for social shares, and you may even need some shots for coverage within your video.

8. Reward Engagement

Give viewers tools to engage with your video after they’ve viewed it. For example, Facebook has added a feature that allows you to post exclusive video content to your pages to “reward” viewers with added content. YouTube allows you to embed links to take viewers to other content, as do various hosting platforms such as Wistia, Sprout Video, and Vidyard, which also help companies by tracking user engagement with powerful analytics.

Social video is exploding. With a little planning ahead, you can harness its power to share your 

story.

This article was originally sourced from Social Fish and was written by Maddie Grant.

NSW Government announces eHealth strategy 

At last week’s CeBIT Australia conference NSW Minister for Health Jillian Skinner announced the state’s eHealth strategy for the next decade.

The strategy will see a digitally enabled and integrated health system, with a focus on delivering patient-centred health experiences with quality health outcomes, and builds on the government’s existing blueprint.

Ms Skinner said it was a 10-year program of innovation, investment and implementation, with identified goals in the short, medium and long-term.

“It’s a policy that outlines the direction that we will take using the latest advances in technology policy and also including integrated care and ongoing enhancements to performance, quality and safety in our health system,” she said.

“The strategy builds on the significant investment that the Government has made over the last five years, including funds in the current budget to further digitise our state wide health infrastructure and systems to deliver a suite of eHealth initiatives right across the state. We continue to build a high-speed broadband network, the NBN of Health we call it, which currently connects 150 hospitals and health centres across NSW including those in rural and remote locations. This enables our clinical and corporate systems to be used in hospitals across the state and in ambulatory care.”

South Australia’s Clevertar begins diabetes trials in the US

Health software company Clevertar, which specialises in virtual personal assistant programs, has begun trials of its new diabetes coach program in the United States.

The South Australian company will run the trials in Pennsylvania as it progresses its plan of reaching global markets with its “Anna Cares” software.

Anna Cares is a cloud-based solution that allows health care professionals to keep in contact with clients in their home, and to check that they are taking their medications and taking part in daily activities.

The company has also received a $600,000 investment from third-party partner Konica Minolta and $420,000 in funding from the Australian Government to help it expand.

Clevertar plans to use the diabetes prototype for other non-communicable chronic diseases in the future.

Australian startup CliniCloud partners with American telehealth provider

This week Australian health-tech startup CliniCloud announced it would be entering into a partnership with leading US telehealth provider Doctor On Demand.

CliniCloud, founded by two Australian physicians, Dr Andrew Lin and Dr Hon Weng Chong, is a home connected medical kit, with a digital stethoscope and non-contact themometer. It allows patients to record and their track temperature, heart and lung sounds at home, and share these via video consultations with doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists.

It is designed to allow for faster and cost-effectiveness diagnosis, and to prevent unnecessary in-person checkups or trips to hospital.

“CliniCloud is thrilled to be partnering with Doctor On Demand. The opportunities for smart technology to change how Americans access quality healthcare and improve the way we live are endless, and Doctor On Demand is at the forefront of innovation in this space,” said Dr Lin.

This article was originally sourced from the Australian Ageing online and was written by the Editorial Department, editorial@australianageingagenda.com.au

Consumer Affairs Victoria has requested more information from cancer charlatan Belle Gibson as its investigation into allegations of fundraising fraud at her wellness empire intensifies.

The consumer watchdog began investigating Ms Gibson in March after it was revealed she faked cancer to market her The Whole Pantry business.

It is also looking into claims that several charities had not received thousands of dollars in promised donations via the sale of her award-winning health and wellness app.

Six months on and CAV has reassured her abundance of followers seeking justice that investigations are “ongoing”.

Initial investigations were hindered when the self-proclaimed wellness blogger failed to comply with a statutory notice to answer 27 questions and provide documents and information, including copies of any charitable receipts.

The move forced CAV to take Ms Gibson to Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, where she was given until July 9 to comply.

CAV withdrew the notice after receiving the documents on that day.

0 a CAV spokesman told the Herald Sun.

“While the investigation is ongoing, Consumer Affairs Victoria is unable to comment further.”

Ms Gibson, 24, fooled her more than 200,000 online followers with claims she was beating a malignant brain tumour and other illnesses through nutrition and holistic medicine.

In sensational media interviews, she admitted she never had cancer and blamed a “troubled” childhood for her problems sorting fact from fiction.

CAV could not say how long its investigation would take — or pre-empt any charges.

Under consumer law and Victoria’s Fundraising Act, a person or business can face fines of more than $28,000 and 12 months’ jail if he or she makes “misleading or deceptive” statements in trade or commerce.

This article was originally sourced from the Herald Sun and was written by Rebekah Cavanah.

Deaf Society president Alastair McEwin will take up the role as Disability Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission in late July, filling the vacancy left by Graeme Innes in mid-2014.

He takes the reins from Susan Ryan, who has been juggling the role along with that of Age Discrimination Commissioner since the departure of Mr Innes nearly two years ago.

While disability advocates have respected her work, they have wanted someone with a disability in the role as a full-time commissioner.

As well as his role at the Deaf Society, Mr McEwin is the chairman of the Disability Council of NSW. He is profoundly deaf.

He said the appointment was "an incredible honour."

"I've been born with a disability and I've lived with a disability all my life. So this is a humbling thing to be able to be the national advocate for all people with a disability," Mr McEwin said.

The successful implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme will be one of his key priorities over the coming years.

"My mandate is to make sure that it fulfils its aims of making sure that people with disability, no matter where they are, can be active members of the community."

"We still have a long way to go in recognising the human rights of all people with disabilities, and I look forward to working with the government, the disability sector and the human rights

commission to realise equity for all people with disability."

Mr McEwin is also a former chief executive officer of People with Disability Australia and a former manager of the Australian Centre for Disability Law.

His predecessor as Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Mr Innes, is blind. He said he was excited by Mr McEwin's appointment.

"He is a very effective advocate, he is a strategic operator and has a real depth of understanding of the disability sector and he will do a great job in this role," Mr Innes said.

Attorney-General George Brandis announced two other new appointments to the Human Rights Commission on Thursday.

Former Victorian senator Dr Kaye Patterson is the new Age Discrimination Commissioner and Edward Santow has been appointed a Commissioner.

The new appointees will start their five-year terms in late July.

This article was originally sourced from ABC News and was written by Samantha Donovan.

June Oscar AO, has been presented with the Desmond Tutu reconciliation award by former Australian Governor General, Dame Quentin Bryce.

The award is hosted by the Australian-initiated organisation Global Reconciliation, which seeks to promote reconciliation around the world.

It was awarded to Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi in 2013.

"It was a very humbling experience," Ms Oscar told Fiona Poole on ABC Kimberley radio.

"Standing alongside the 2013 recipient Aung San Suu Kyi, a woman that I greatly admire."

Ms Oscar is a Bunuba woman who has worked with her community in the Kimberley town of Fitzroy Crossing to stem the damage caused by alcohol and disadvantage.

"This is definitely a community-reconstruction journey we're on and it feels good, it feels right," she said.

Ms Oscar, along with Emily Carter and other Fitzroy Crossing women, successfully lobbied for alcohol restrictions in their town in 2007 that have helped reduce rates of domestic violence and incidents of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

"We can, in this day and age, stand up and say we are no longer accepting of some of these things," Ms Oscar said.

"The way in which alcohol has devastated communities, and how that has been allowed to happen is absolutely unacceptable."

Ms Oscar is using the opportunity provided by receiving the reconciliation award to try and direct more attention to Indigenous issues in the 2016 federal election campaign.

"It's politicians' and everyone's business to become properly informed and make informed decisions," she said.

"And the way they do that is they engage across communities."

This article was originally sourced from ABC News and was written by Ben Collins.

The Turnbull Government’s first budget was delivered this week. We have studied the budget papers and other source materials to present the implications as we see them for the not-for-profit (“NFP”) sector. In summary, there are clearly some wins, but many losses.

We have commented on matters that will affect the whole NFP sector, and those specific to certain sub-sectors.

Impacts on the whole sector

Due to the Government placing such high importance on high income earners and small businesses, NFPs are unlikely to see this budget as the solution to their problems. While we note that there are some positive elements (i.e. in relation to youth employment and the funding of schools), NFPs may be disappointed. What’s more, some areas like foreign aid and aged care will have to deal with having their funding slashed.

According to Stephen Walters, Chief Economist for the Australian Institute of Company Directors, this shouldn’t be a surprise. He states that:

“I think we need to look at the context- this is an election manifesto and [the government] are really clearly targeting middle Australia. Let’s be honest, the NFP sector is not the sector that the government is focused on at this point. That is not to say that they are ignoring NFPs- but the priorities for the government clearly at this time is to get small business owners and high income earners on board.”

While we agree that this budget is not ground breaking for NFPs overall, there are facets of the budget that will impact certain NFP sectors quite significantly. We will now take you through these affected areas one by one.

Overseas aid and development

The Government has announced that it will maintain the foreign aid cuts made under the Abbott Government last year, which means a further $224 million fall in aid for the 2016/17 financial year. To put this cut in perspective, the remaining aid program ($3.8 billion) represents 0.22% of the national income.

The cuts were criticised by aid organisations, with World Vision CEO Tim Costello stating that “this latest round of aid cuts puts lives and futures at risk as well as regional and global security and prosperity; it’s both unwise and unworthy of our nation”.

Australian Christian Lobby managing director Lyle Shelton also followed suit, remarking that “given Australia is one of the world’s wealthiest nations, it is deeply disappointing that tonight’s budget sees Australia’s overseas aid cut to the lowest in our history”.

On the positive side, the aid budget is expected to increase by 1.1% over the next three years.

Health sector

Putting aside the $2.9 billion in funding for public hospitals agreed to at the Council of Australian Governments in April this year, the health sector will largely be disappointed by the budget.

The major area of concern will be the $182 million removed from 16 flexible funds that provide financing for programs, interest groups and NFPs. The funds cover a diversity of health priority areas, including: chronic disease prevention, substance misuse prevention, rural health outreach, health workforce, communicable disease prevention, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island chronic disease, and primary care incentives.

This cut is in line with previous years, where $600 million was slashed from the flexible funds in 2015/16 and $197 million in 2014/15.

The Government states that the cuts to the flexible funds will be achieved “through various methods, including by reducing uncommitted funds and continuing the current pause in the indexation of the funds for a further two years from 2018-19”.

The budget also includes a plan to continue the pause on indexation for Medicare rebates (until 2019-20), estimated to save the Government $925 million over the four year forward estimates.

According to Brian Owler, the President of the Australian Medical Association, this will in fact have a negative impact on people that need help. He states that “it means $925 million out of the pockets of everyday Australians. It means people are going to have to pay more out of their pockets when they receive medical treatment.”

It was not all doom and gloom for the health sector however, with the budget including:

• $1.7 billion for a new Child and Adult Public Dental Scheme to be delivered by the states and territories under a National Partnership Agreement (although the benefit of this funding has been disputed);
• $0.8 million to develop online support resources for women who are experiencing, or are at risk of developing, perinatal depression;
• $2.2 million to consider the future ownership of Australian Hearing Services to ensure it has a strong and viable future and continues to provide services to Australians with a hearing loss; and
• $37.9 million to extend access to certain mental health services to all current and former permanent Australian Defence Force members.

Education sector

The budget can be seen as mixed bag for the education sector.

On the one hand, the Government has announced that it will provide an additional $1.2 billion for schools between 2018 and 2020, and $118.2 million for students with a disability (with funding targeted to schools with the greatest need).

On the other hand, the $1.2 billion falls short of the Gonski funding that the Liberal Party promised it would match at the 2013 election, and well below the $4.5 billion that Labor promises to fund if it were to win the upcoming election.

According to the Australian Education Union President Correna Haythorpe, “this budget fails the fairness test. It confirms Malcolm Turnbull will walk away from needs-based Gonski funding and turn their backs on disadvantaged students.”

Furthermore, the Government has announced a series of large cuts to the universities.

Firstly, $152.2 million will be cut to the Higher Education Participation Program (which funds universities to bring in students from the lowest socio-economic levels) and $20.9 million to the Promotion of Excellence in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Program (which “supports teaching excellence”).

Secondly, in a funding cut that the government describes as a “sustainability measure”, university funding will be cut by $601 million in 2018-19 and $868 million in 2019-20.

Universities Australia CEO Belinda Robinson claims that “cuts worth a combined $180 million to university programs that support disadvantaged students and teaching excellence are fresh blows”.

Therefore, it appears both schools and universities may be frustrated with this budget.

Community welfare sector

The community welfare sector received both good and bad news in this year’s budget.

On the positive side, the Government has announced that it will provide $751.7 million to establish a Youth Jobs Path program for young job seekers aged under 25. The program is designed to provide real work experience to up to 30,000 young people each year, with the hope that this will translate into new employment opportunities.

This program has been heralded as something that could provide real benefits to those seeking employment, with ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie stating:

“We are very pleased to see the new approach to helping young people into paid work. This Budget recognises the failure of work for the dole, and has instead provided an opportunity for young people to get work experience in real jobs with a wage subsidy, something we have urged for some time and should be used more widely.”

The Government has also announced that it will crackdown on super tax concessions for higher income earners. Accompanying this crackdown will be a Low Income Superannuation Tax Offset, which will give people with incomes up to $37,000 a refund of up to $500 in their super account of the amount of tax paid on their super contributions.

While the above are certainly positive for the social welfare sector, NFPs may see it as a case of what funding is not included. For example, the budget has maintained the cuts from previous budgets, including cuts to family payments for low income families, reductions in Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme concessions, higher age pension eligibility age, one month waiting period for young people to access income support and lower payments for many young unemployed people.

An area where the cuts have not only been maintained but increased is the aged care services area. The Government has announced that in addition to the $1.9 billion in cuts to aged care services found in the 2014 budget, a further $1.2 billion will be cut over the next four years.

NFPs may also not see the funding that they think should be included. These include community services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, family violence against women and children (receiving $33 million next year compared to the $572 recently announced by the Victorian Government), under resourced legal aid centres, and the rising rate of homelessness.

The decision to not fund these issues have left certain NFPs feeling disenfranchised by the Government, with St Vincent de Paul Society CEO John Flazon claiming “tonight’s budget, like its predecessor, entrenches inequality rather than fighting it.”

Disability services sector

The disability services sector is likely going to be quite happy, with the Government reiterating its commitment to fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme (“NDIS”) (which is due to be implemented from 1 July 2016).

The Government has also revealed that it will meet the future costs of the NDIS through the creation of the NDIS Savings Plan. A deposit of $2.1 billion of budget savings will be placed in the NDIS Savings Plan Special Account and these funds will be quarantined, which will lock them in as protected contributions to the NDIS in the future.

According to the Government, the savings will come from:

• Closing carbon tax compensation for new welfare recipients from 20 September 2016;
• Closing carbon tax compensation for those single income families not already in the welfare system but who will enter the welfare system from 1 July 2017; and
• Additional reviews for Disability Support Pension recipients.

While the recommitment to the NDIS is sure to be positively received by those in the disability services sector, People with Disability Australia President Craig Wallace raised serious concerns over how it is funded. He states:

“We have always welcomed a discussion about funding the NDIS so it is sustainable into the future and to ensure it is taken out of the budget cycle. However, the NDIS Savings Fund announcements risk moving the NDIS further into the budget cycle by creating an expectation that the NDIS will be funded from ongoing trade-offs against other equally important human services expenditures. If there is to be a savings fund, it should not be a device to make savings, and poor trade-offs between programs and services supporting and sustaining vulnerable members of our community.”

Conclusion

Federal Treasurer, Scott Morrison, in his speech to parliament said:

“This Budget is an economic plan, it’s not just another budget.”

Unfortunately there will be some NFPs that will be disappointed with the level of funding made available for their own plans.

This article was originally sourced from Moores and was written by Andrew Brooks.

School's head says hiring policy a necessary step due to lack of representation in maths and statistics. 

An Australian university will only accept applications from women for three senior, full-time positions currently advertised within its department of mathematics.

The job advertisement for roles in applied mathematics, pure mathematics and statistics at the University of Melbourne states: “The school is seeking to lift the representation of women and therefore will only consider applications from suitably qualified female candidates for these three positions.”

The head of the school of mathematics and statistics, Prof Aleks Owczarek, said it was the first time the university had taken such a step. But with only 9% of mathematics professors in Australia women, it was necessary, Owczarek added.

“This isn’t just something that happens in the workforce, it happens in our student body,” he said.

“Only 28% of our mathematics students are female students and even earlier than that women stop studying high-level maths as they proceed through high school."

“So to drive change we believe it is important to provide role models for our female students and provide female mentors. This is a strategic move to drive change. And while hiring three outstanding female academics won’t change overall percentages too much, hopefully we will add momentum towards equality through new role models in the school.”

Women’s under-representation in high-paying jobs in engineering and information technology reflects earlier patterns in high school and contributes substantially to the gender wage gap, a University of Melbourne report published in November found.

The report, which followed 58,000 Victorian seventh-grade students in 2008 through to 2013, also found it was a myth that women did not choose science, technology, engineering and maths – known as Stem subjects – in high school because they are not as good at numeracy as men.

Among boys and girls who scored exactly the same in numeracy results in their early years of high schooling, the boys were much more likely to choose Stem subjects for their final school years, the study found. When girls did choose those subjects they actually performed better, on average, than boys.

In December, a Professionals Australia survey of 432 women working in Stem fields found a third expected to leave their job within five years. Women responded that a lack of career advancement and professional development opportunities meant they were considering leaving their job; 26% said their employer rarely or never proactively ensured men and women had equal opportunity to progress.

Just two of the 21 professors in the University of Melbourne’s mathematics department are women.

A professor of astrophysics at the University of Queensland, Tamara Davis, said there was “clear discrimination” in the hiring process of many workplaces. She referred to a study from Princeton University in the US that found when a resume for a science laboratory manager was randomly assigned either a male or female name, faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent than the identical female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male.

“So there is actually solid evidence that discrimination is happening,” she said.

Davis’s department recently established an equity and diversity committee to review factors such as gender imbalance. One of the first things they did was review how many women were invited to deliver a colloquium about their work, a sign of prestige that provides an opportunity to gain broader recognition.

“Over three years we had exactly 100 people invited to deliver a colloquium,” Davis said. “Four of them were given by women. Two of them were given by me. Given 15-20% of our high-level postdoctorate students are women, that’s the percentage you would have expected to see invited to give a colloquium.”

The school has since raised the percentage of women delivering a colloquium from 4% to 35%.

“All we had to do was find and recognise the bias and, once we did, we easily found females capable and worthy of the honour,” she said.

“There are many forms of subtle discrimination like this against women and once you notice it, you say: ‘Oh my god.’

“These subtle biases, when they accumulate over a career, keep women down. Initiatives like the hiring process at the University of Melbourne that explicitly promote women are counteracting lifelong biases.”

Davis is the second woman to have been appointed a professor of physics in the University of Queensland’s almost 100-year history. The first was appointed in 2000.

The University of Melbourne was unlikely to run into any legal issues by advertising for women only, Kamal Farouque, a principal in Maurice Blackburn’s employment practice, said.

“Under discrimination law there are exemptions for special and positive measures directed at achieving substantive equality, as this measure clearly is because of the low number of women appointed to academic positions in this field,” he said.

“Anyone who challenged the university’s scheme would find it very difficult to win.”

This article was originally sourced from The Guardian and was written by Melissa Davey.

Welcoming today’s release of the Pathology Australia report on the community health benefits, efficiency, and cost effectiveness of Australia’s pathology sector, the AMA is again calling on the Government to abandon its planned cuts to bulk billing incentives for pathology services.

AMA Vice President, Dr Stephen Parnis, said the report confirms the efficiency and quality of the pathology sector in Australia, and the value for money it provides to Australian taxpayers.

“Australia’s high quality pathology services are vital to the work of GPs and surgeons who consult patients and conduct surgery every day across the country,” Dr Parnis said.

“We have a highly efficient pathology sector that provides affordable services to the Australian community."

“It is irresponsible to disrupt this core element of the health system."

“Today’s report is further conclusive evidence that the Government should abandon its ill-conceived cuts to the bulk billing incentives, which will have a direct harmful impact on patients."

“These incentives support patient access to essential services without any out-of-pocket costs.

“They provide greatest benefit to the poorest and sickest in the community."

“If the cuts go ahead, pathology providers will have no choice but to pass on costs to patients.”

Dr Parnis said the report demonstrates that the pathology industry has already increased productivity and efficiency to maintain high bulk billing rates, enabling high levels of access to these services.

The analysis undertaken in the report is based on reliable and official data sources. The key findings are that:

• Australia is a leader in delivering value for money pathology services while maintaining quality of services, when compared internationally;
• the increase in government-funded pathology expenditure has been driven by growth in the Australian population, and ageing and increased referrals, not by pathology services prices. Prices have actually fallen overall in the last 15 years; and
• around 17 per cent of pathology tests are provided free to the Australian community, providing savings to the Australian Government of around $450m last year.

The Pathology Australia report is available here.

This media release was sourced directly from the Australian Medical Association.