Bold horizon

Following the publication of the very excellent report A Sound Investment that sets out the worth and value of the NGO impact in mental health and addiction, I want to continue the conversation by considering the worth and value of what we do from the perspective of - what would happen if we didn't do the mahi .If you haven't had a chance to reflect on the report here it is

What if NGOs simply didn't exist?

It’s a question that should chill anyone working in mental health and addiction. Strip away NGOs and you don’t just lose services—you lose the soul of the system. You lose innovation, leadership, community, and accountability. You lose people.

Engine room

Too often, NGOs are treated as peripheral—nice-to-haves when the core system is overburdened. A prop supporting clinical teams. But here’s the truth: we’re not the prop. We are 41% of the sector. That’s not an accessory; that’s the engine. Remove us and you wouldn’t just feel the gap—you may hear the system screech to a halt..

Innovation is what we do

NGOs are where new ideas are born and tested. Almost every major innovation in mental health and addiction support over the past decade has started life in an NGO. Peer support, employment services, community-based recovery—these weren’t handed down as policy They were grown, locally, by people who saw a need and made it work. We are the testing grounds. And when those ideas succeed, the wider system benefits.

Future shapers

Our role goes far beyond service delivery. We are embedded in the governance of the sector—often under paid, under resourced, perhaps not acknowledged enough, but always present.

We don’t just do the mahi. We also sit on strategic committees, regional planning groups, operational alliances. Not because someone funds us to be there, but because we believe in building something better. Strip that away, and who replaces that leadership? Who speaks for community. Who speaks for the people, if not the people closest to them?

Resilient community

This is fundamental to what we really are: the voice of community. I think NGO is an ugly acronym, bureaucratic and bloodless. What we are is community.

We are rooted in place and experience—whether that’s a geographic neighbourhood or a shared identity: people in recovery, people exiting prison, people rebuilding after trauma. And when we step into those government rooms, we bring that voice with us. We don’t represent theory—we represent lives.

So if you removed NGOs, you’d be left with silence where once there was story, structure where there should be soul.

System change power houses

But what if we flipped the question? What would it take to make the future of NGOs not just viable, but powerful?

For me, it starts with system change. We keep trying to solve crises at the crisis point—overcrowded EDs, acute distress, suicide rates—and wonder why we’re always chasing our tails. But the solutions don’t sit in the hospital. They sit in the community. If we invested more in resilience where people live—in schools, families, workplaces—we wouldn’t see the same bottlenecks downstream.

Earlier and sooner

Right now, accessing mental health support is still like passing through the old asylum gates. You need to be sick enough, assessed enough, and approved enough. We still expect a psychiatrist or GP to be the gatekeeper. That’s outdated. That’s institutional logic wearing a new uniform. We need to tear open those entry points. Make it possible for people to seek support early, without always navigating a clinical maze.

That means peer support. That means cultural support. That means employment services, marae-based programmes, digital tools. We know they work. And we, the community organisations, are best placed to deliver them—closer to home, at the right time, in the right way.

Increased investment

In a perfect world, if we got upstream of trauma, maybe we’d need fewer services across the board. But we’re not there. We’re seeing increasing complexity and unmet need. So right now, we need more NGO services, not fewer. We need more flexible, fast-moving, grassroots services that respond to real lives—not the fiction of tidy spreadsheets.

If I could pull three levers tomorrow, here’s what I’d do.

First, I’d change how people enter the system. Break down the barriers, stop waiting for people to get “sick enough.” Second, I’d massively scale up peer support. Not as a side project, but as a central pillar. Third, I’d make co-design with people with lived experience not just a buzzword, but a non-negotiable. We should never build anything—programme, policy, service—without starting with the people who will use it. Not consult them halfway through. Start with them.

Working in an NGO isn’t a stopgap. It’s a career. In fact, it’s probably the most intense learning environment you’ll ever experience. I’ve worked in DHBs, in government, but I love the creativity and chaos of an NGO. We’re adaptable, inventive, and deeply human. And that’s why so many of the best leaders in our system cut their teeth in the community sector.

If we want a future where mental health and addiction services actually meet people where they are—literally and metaphorically—then we need to stop treating NGOs as optional. We’re not the backup plan. We ARE the plan. And it’s time we were funded, respected, and understood accordingly.

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