The Citizen Advocacy Trust of Australia raises money to provide grants supporting the continued essential work of Citizen Advocacy Programs across Australia. The Trust seeks to ensure that Citizen Advocacy can continue in the lives of vulnerable people throughout Australia, and to ensure new programs can be initiated as a direct result of the Trust.

An additional purpose of the Trust is to improve the quality of citizen advocacy practice within Australia. To this end, the trust only provides grants to programs that meet the stringent requirements of the grant conditions. Those conditions are based on the “Citizen Advocacy Model”; a way of working that is likely to increase the number and quality of citizen advocacy matches being made.

 Typically, a program will have to provide evidence of a commitment to using and striving to use the “Citizen Advocacy Model” in order to be awarded a grant and to show evidence of the effective use of grant monies towards some aspect of the Citizen Advocacy Model.

While there may be many noble ideas and efforts that a group of people might embark upon to improve the lives of others, the Trust is committed to supporting only those efforts that increase the likelihood that an unpaid citizen can be recruited, matched and supported in such ways that the resultant citizen advocacy relationship with a person with a disability is likely to be effective (to have a ‘fit’) and to be on-going, long-term and even life-long.