Audience 01 · Where we started

Not-for-profits

The organisations Selma was built for. They want it and their data needs it, but their money is thin and tied up.

At a glance

A concentrated, reachable market with very little spare cash.

~2,500
Human-service charities with A$1M+ revenue and 20+ staff
ACNC 2024 data, our cut Estimate
A$4,592
Average spend per staff member per year on all technology, 18% lower than 2015 in real terms
Infoxchange 2025 Verified
50%
Name data security, ethics, sovereignty or privacy as their main barrier to AI, up 37% in a year
Infoxchange 2025 Verified
14%
Have an AI policy, while 67% already use generative AI
Infoxchange 2025 Verified
Who they are

53,600 charities, but only a few thousand could buy Selma.

Australia's charity sector is enormous: A$239b in revenue, 1.6 million paid staff and 3.9 million volunteers. But 53% of charities have no paid staff at all. Filtering the raw ACNC data to human-service charities with at least A$1M revenue and 20 staff leaves about 2,460. Adding Aboriginal community controlled organisations and church welfare agencies the filter misses gives a realistic pool of roughly 2,500 to 3,000.

Sub-sectorAll charitiesA$1M+ revenueA$1M+ and 20+ staffWhy it matters for Selma
Community services / family5,3221,427879Largest pool. Note-heavy casework.
Disability (incl. NDIS)1,6621,012856Most mid-size employers, under severe price pressure.
Health / mental health / AOD3,3321,113693Covered by the Privacy Act at any size.
Aged care1,073594510Many very large, likely to buy enterprise platforms.
Housing / homelessness1,282520317Regulated tenancy records.
Child protection / OOHC544230174Closest fit: court-facing notes, the OVIC case.
Family violence / sexual assault456225155Victim location secrecy makes "never in the cloud" land hard.
Legal services (incl. CLCs)28816499Small but networked, privilege concerns.
Environment1,526313136Lower data sensitivity. Research and grant packs.
All eight human-service groups (deduplicated)11,4143,7382,462

Source: ACNC 2024 Annual Information Statement data (data.gov.au), matched by programme classification. Categories overlap. Staff counts are self-reported. NACCHO alone represents 150 ACCHOs employing ~7,000 people, many not captured by name matching.

A typical 25-staff charity

  • Median revenue about A$4.0M, around half from government
  • Total tech budget roughly A$115K a year, covering laptops, M365, case management, IT support and phones

A typical 150-staff charity

  • Median revenue about A$25M, around 60% from government
  • Total tech budget roughly A$690K a year
How the money moves

Funders pay for programmes, not for the systems that run them.

True overheads in Australian charities average about 33% of costs, but funding agreements typically cover 10 to 20% (Paying What It Takes, CSI, SVA and Philanthropy Australia). Government contracts fund outputs, capital items above a threshold often need funder approval, and unspent money can be clawed back. NDIS prices are hourly service rates with no technology line at all, and nearly half of disability providers reported a loss in 2024-25.

That shapes what can be bought. Two things fit:

  • One-off equipment bought from a specific grant. Queensland's Gambling Community Benefit Fund gives up to A$35,000 for equipment, which lines up almost exactly with a "A$30K unit" idea. Lotterywest, ClubGRANTS and philanthropic capacity grants can work similarly.
  • A small recurring cost that fits inside an existing overhead line. Roughly A$1K–2K a month is absorbable. Much more needs a board conversation.

Philanthropy is shifting a little. The Paul Ramsay Foundation adopted a 30% indirect cost allowance on its grants. Microsoft went the other way, retiring its free Business Premium grant for NFPs from July 2025, which raised baseline costs across the sector.

Why they'd want Selma

The barrier is trust, not interest.

Pull

  • Half of NFPs name privacy or sovereignty as the main thing stopping them. That is Selma's pitch in one statistic.
  • OVIC's block on GenAI for Victorian child protection staff runs to 5 November 2026. Community service organisations follow DFFH's lead on what "safe" looks like.
  • Privacy Act automated decision transparency from 10 December 2026. Overnight case-note analysis could count as "substantially assisting" decisions, and the Ledger is the evidence.
  • Child-safe records kept for 45 years favour AI that cites sources and logs what it produced.
  • Data and reporting is now the sector's top tech priority (44%, up from 17% in 2023), driven by grant acquittals.
  • Indigenous data sovereignty: a community-owned box under a community-signed Constitution is "authority to control" made physical, if it is truly co-designed.

Push back

  • ChatGPT and Claude cost about A$12 a seat for NFPs. Boards will ask why a box costs more than three years of ChatGPT for everyone.
  • AI progress notes are becoming a free feature inside cheap case management systems.
  • Only 23% of NFPs have a cyber plan. A box in a poorly secured office can be less safe than a well-run cloud tenancy unless patching, backup and encryption come with it.
  • Microsoft runs the sector's main AI accelerator with Infoxchange. Selma sits more easily alongside M365 than against it.
Who else is in the room

Cloud AI is close to free for charities.

ProductNFP price≈ A$/user/monthRuns whereNote
Google Workspace for Nonprofits + GeminiFree up to 2,000 users0–9CloudGemini features reportedly included
ChatGPT Business (OpenAI for Nonprofits)US$8/user/month annual~12Cloud, USEnterprise up to 75% off
Claude for NonprofitsTeam US$8/user/month~12CloudLaunched Dec 2025
Microsoft 365 CopilotUS$25.50/user/month + base licence~39Cloud, AU residency optionsCopilot Chat free with M365. About a third of NFPs use Copilot.
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud / AgentforceA$84 / A$140 / A$42084–420Cloud10 free licences
ShiftCare (NDIS, home care)A$8–25 per user8–25CloudAI progress notes on every plan
CareMaster / Brevity / LumaryA$16–36 per user, or per client4–36Cloud, AU-hostedCase management with AI arriving
Lyrebird, Heidi (scribes)Free tiers, Pro ~A$160/month0–160CloudUsed in community health
Magic Notes by Beam (UK social work)Not publishedn/aCloudProof that sector-specific AI spreads fast through councils
Local AI for NFPsNo Australian vendor selling an on-premises AI appliance to not-for-profits was found. Low confidence, search was limited

For a 150-staff charity, ChatGPT or Claude for everyone is about A$22K a year; Copilot for everyone about A$70K–85K including base licences.

What price could look like

The ideas floated so far, tested against real budgets.

Model25-staff charity (~A$115K tech budget)150-staff charity (~A$690K tech budget)
A$30K unit + A$10K/yr licenceYear one A$40K, 35% of the tech budget. About A$67 per user a month over 3 years.Year one A$40K, 5.8%. About A$11 per user a month over 3 years.
A$20K setup + A$100/user/monthYear one A$50K, 43%.Year one A$200K, 29% of the whole tech budget.
ChatGPT / Claude NFP for all staff~A$3.6K a year~A$22K a year
Copilot NFP for all staff~A$13.8K a year~A$83K a year

Our calculation. Excludes GST. Per-user pricing also penalises charities for large part-time and casual workforces.

Shapes that match how NFPs are funded

Grant-ready package

Appliance, commissioning, Constitution, ingestion and 12 months support under A$35K including GST, with an applicant pack (quote, budget line, outcomes, letter of support). Then A$6K–10K a year.

Size-tiered subscription

Priced by organisation size, not seats, with the hardware leased and refreshed. Illustratively ~A$12K–15K (under 50 staff), A$20K–30K (50–200), A$40K–80K (200+).

Per-programme licence

~A$8K–15K a year for one funded programme (an OOHC service, a CLC practice area) so it can be written into that contract's budget.

Funder or sponsor-paid cohorts

A foundation, a department or a corporate funds 5–20 installs as "paying what it takes" in practice, with de-identified impact reporting back.

Peak-body hub

A peak body or consortium hosts one or two units for many small members over VPN, each member's data kept separate. Mirrors the Pacific hub-and-spoke idea.

Founding partner rate

Publish a list price, then give pioneers a locked discount in return for case studies. Avoids a cliff from free to full price.

All illustrative. Hard costs are about A$3K hardware plus 5–10 delivery days (~A$9K–19K delivered), so there is room for a lower entry point.

Beyond Australia

Other NFP markets, briefly.

MarketSizeSignal
New Zealand~28,000–29,000 charitiesTech spend NZ$2,248 per staff member, down 27% in real terms. Māori data sovereignty (Te Mana Raraunga) is a strong fit.
United Kingdom170,727 charities in England and Wales, £91b income79% use AI; distrust of AI tools more than doubled in a year. Magic Notes shows sector AI scaling through councils.
United States~1.8M nonprofitsCrowded and price-anchored; the NFP discounts originate here. Behavioural health providers under HIPAA are the closest analogue.

Key sources

  1. ACNC 2024 Annual Information Statement data
  2. ACNC Australian Charities Report, 11th ed.
  3. Summary of ACNC 12th ed. Secondary
  4. Infoxchange Digital Technology in the NFP Sector 2025
  5. Paying What It Takes (CSI/SVA)
  6. NDS State of the Disability Sector 2025
  7. QLD Gambling Community Benefit Fund
  8. OVIC DFFH investigation
  9. OpenAI for Nonprofits
  10. Claude for Nonprofits
  11. Copilot nonprofit pricing Secondary
  12. Salesforce Nonprofit pricing
  13. ShiftCare pricing, CareMaster, Brevity
  14. NACCHO