Made by Many: How a grassroots idea became a Company Limited by Guarantee.

Stable enough to last, human enough to matter.

“[Integrity Initiative] only exists now because of community, stubbornness, rage, persistence, and an unhealthy number of emails.”

- Rachael Burns, Founder and CEO of Integrity Initiative

On Friday, 12 June 2026, more than fifty people gathered at The Backlot Perth for Made By Many, Integrity Initiative’s first birthday celebration, board announcement, incorporation party, and official website launch.

For the first time, we (the Integrity Army, special shoutout to Avie O’Neill and Jessi Townley who handled tech for the day) coordinated a livestream and recording for those who couldn’t be in the room, extending its reach to interstate supporters and remote participants watching from across the country.

You can watch the recording here:

With around 50 in-person attendees, 144 page visits, 10 online attendees, and over 70 views of our recording, the event was a monumental success that was also widely felt within the Integrity community.

Made By Many was a showcase of what is possible when lived experience becomes expertise, through hard work, dedication, skill refinement, passion, and refusal to give up.

When a fractured sector unites in pursuit of a common mission, in spite of a funding landscape that too often encourages organisations and individuals to see one another as competition.

When that competition is replaced with community, compassion, and collaboration.

It also reflected honestly on the sometimes impossible realities of leading a grassroots organisation from nothing, whilst celebrating what has been achieved regardless of that reality.

Most of the time, advocacy doesn’t come from resources or opportunity, but from denial of it… a repeated narrative.

From The Ground Up:

To understand what this moment and those that it served to celebrate really meant, it helps to understand what came before it.

In its first year, with no paid staff, no government funding, and a budget that would not cover a single month’s rent for most organisations, Integrity Initiative:

• Created and delivered 275 care packages to inpatient mental health settings across WA, establishing the Caring With Integrity program.

• Developed 12 workshop modules covering dignity, rights, lived experience leadership, and more.

• Facilitated 14 workshops across psychiatric units, universities, and community spaces.

• Led a volunteer team of six to Albany, connecting with more than 780 people across eight days and hosting more than 26 contact hours with the community.

• Co-produced Unfiltered with Lily Gresele of How To Be Well, a lived experience documentary made on a budget of zero dollars, publicly screened five times and now on its way to being used as a professional training resource.

• Became a finalist in multiple awards, including the Y Collective Action Award, Auspire Active Citizenship Award, and the Suicide Prevention Australia LiFE Award.

“Anger doesn’t have to be destructive or combative. It can be an incredible tool. Beyond that, it’s evidence that something matters and that people care and that humanity still remains. Integrity Initiative only exists because I’ve gone through so, so, so much agony to bring it to life. And it only exists now because of that anger.”

- Rachael Burns, Founder and CEO

And whilst those of us with Lived Experience of mental health challenges and systems not designed to support us should not HAVE to have experienced what we did, there is no denying the power that can and does emerge when this Lived Experience - through hard work and determination - is translated into expertise.

Messiness, hopelessness and frustration is the reality of grassroots advocacy. Not a strategic plan, not a funding body, not a board room full of people who already believed. What built Integrity Initiative was the refusal to accept that the gap between what existed and what was needed was someone else’s problem to solve. It was late nights and personal savings and cold emails to strangers and the particular kind of determination that only comes from having lived the alternative. From knowing, with absolute certainty, what it costs when the system gets it wrong.

And through it all, despite the barriers, the hurdles, the newness and the rest, the impact Integrity Initiative has already had cannot be denied. We are now beyond ‘proof of concept’ and into the phase of scaling, building, growing and shaping the system and the world in the ways it most needs.

“I see proof that recovery can be built on dignity rather than shame. I see that lived experience belongs at the centre of care. And I see proof that no one should ever be made to feel that they are beyond hope.”

- Lexington Mitchell, Registered Occupational Therapist and Integrity Army Member

When Resourceful Meets Resources:

People are not only capable of great things when they have support to do them… but that support sure does go a long way.

When you come from grassroots, you come from next to nothing. When you come from grassroots whilst navigating intersectional challenges, marginalisation and discrimination, you come from even less.

When Integrity Initiative began, it was from a place of knowing how it feels to sit in a ward with nothing but a label, often stripped of personal belongings and any semblance of identity away from illness and disorder.

In that knowledge and in compassion, Integrity Initiative has been rich from day one. However, as for many grassroots organisations, funding has always been (and remains) Integrity Initiative’s most significant challenge.

Building an intersectional, human rights-grounded and multidimensional organisation that challenges conventionality respectfully and collaboratively has been hard. Even harder has been doing that without government funding, without paid staff, and without the structural credibility that formal registration provides. That is an exercise in persistence that most people never see.

The reality of advocacy - especially that from Lived Experience - is not award gala dinners or suits and briefcases. It’s not dressing up or lanyards and decked out offices. It’s the shining light of a laptop at 10pm on a Saturday night, drinking energy drinks and powering through emails. It’s grant applications written late at night that likely will follow an email reading “competition was high and unfortunately in this occasion you have not been successful”.

The reality of grassroots advocacy is sacrifice. It’s the cost of nights out and family celebrations. The cost of directors insurance covered out of personal savings. A storage unit stacked with donated goods, run on goodwill and determination.

And whilst that is still a reality, the WAPHA Peers Helping Peers grant of $15,000 provided support we have long called for.

Not a large grant by sector standards. And still nothing to pay staff or to cover the mundanities of running a charity… but it allowed the professionalisation of something of which the roots have spread and outgrown the metaphorical overflowing flowerpot in which it was planted.

And in the hands of a founder who had already proven that nothing could be stretched into something, it was transformative.

This funding enabled Integrity Initiative to do what it had not yet been able to do on its own: build the infrastructure required to exist, survive, and grow.

As part of the WAPHA Peers Helping Peers grant, we achieved:

• Registered as a company limited by guarantee, approved 22 May 2026

• Lodged its application with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, including DGR-1 status

• Transitioned from an auspice arrangement with Consumers of Mental Health Western Australia into a fully independent registered entity

• Secured public liability, professional indemnity, volunteer, and director’s insurance

• Recruited and inducted an inaugural Board of Directors, eight members bringing lived experience, clinical, governance, and community expertise to the table

• Supported five board members through AICD Board Bootcamp governance training

• Developed a foundational constitution, five-year strategic plan, and a full suite of governance and policy documents

• Redesigned and relaunched its website with expanded functionality and scope for growth

• Refined its branding, core programs, and member hub

• Launched Made By Many, a public event attended by more than fifty people in person and many more online

“I’m so excited to have seen you go from the idea in the back of someone’s brain to the incredible community organisation you are today. I can’t wait to continue witnessing the magic that is happening in your space.”

- Sophie Falkenhagen, Yourtown Youth Engagement Coordinator

“Such an important and fantastic creative organisation. We’re so proud of you and just in awe of everything that you’re doing. The present and the future are in fantastic hands.”

- Sharon Lawn, Executive Director Lived Experience Australia

The People Who Made It Mean Something:

Through it all, the constant has been the people. The single thing that has made all of this possible was the determination of people with lived experience of a system not designed for them. Who believe in dignity more than they believe in the ‘best intentions’ or a system that is fractured and causing harm.

“What Rachael has done, and what the army has done, is mobilise a group of people through the board who believe.”

- Raffael Di Bartolomeo, Board Chair

And whilst bound by this central belief, Integrity Initiative is also tied by the belief that collaboration and connection is key. That Lived Experience Expertise is an adjunct, an essential component of partnership between all walks of life, all perspectives of mental health in practice, all ways of being and existing in the world.

“Integrity Initiative represents the power of lived experience, community, and the power of holding human rights as a founding principle. My wish for you is that you are able to move forward in a way that is meaningful both for yourselves as well as for community.”

- Julian Robinson, Peer Educator and Lived Experience Advocate

In all of these rooms, government policy, conference rooms, academia, it actually didn’t matter how senior these people were, or how polished the language they used was, what textbook they studied from, or what impressive title they had on their lanyard. People are still just people. And systems only improve when people who are most impacted by them are allowed to shape them.

This is the uniting factor. Humanity. Something we often fail to comprehend until we find ourselves without it. And it is in that experience, the direct experience, the lived experience, the lived expertise, that Integrity Initiative came to be.

Collective action. Voice beyond tokenism. Advocacy beyond storytelling.

The Made By Many event was the actualisation of everything the WAPHA funding made possible. More than speeches, it gave voice to people who had lived that reality and chosen to do something about it. Lexington Mitchell, Sophie Seinemeier, and Jessi Townley each took the microphone and offered something the sector rarely gets: honesty, without softening. And that honesty came from a place of action, not passive hope.

“I came to understand how valuable my assets are, both professionally and personally, through lived experience, from a grassroots lens. I have a power and a voice that can fight for the individuals and communities and systemic injustices for the voices who are silenced.”

- Jessi Townley, Integrity Army Member and Lived Experience Advocate

“As young people, we are often expected to come with fresh energy and new ideas. When in reality, many of us are tired. We are worn down by broken systems… We don’t have to wait for an invitation. We can make action ourselves and we can build our own table, our own agendas, and be the ones that create this change… Leadership is not a solo act and I am grateful that this is a space where we get to lead together, refusing to be invisible and refusing to conform.”

- Sophie Seinemeier, Integrity Army Member and Lived Experience Trainer

It was an honour to have Raffael Di Bartolomeo, our Board Chair, and Ryan D’Lima, an inaugural Board member speak to their ‘why’.

“It is essential that lived experience organisations are guided by strong lived experience leadership, including at the governance level. Our mission, strategy and decisions should remain grounded in the perspectives of those we exist to serve.”

- Ryan D’Lima, Integrity Initiative Board Member and Lived Experience Coordinator

The evening ended with networking, frog cupcakes donated by Hayley Harris, and catering donated by Nosh, because the budget had been consumed by the things required to make Integrity Initiative structurally sound. The event happened because of in-kind generosity, the same way most of Integrity Initiative has happened: through people believing in something and showing up for it.

There are still people in psychiatric wards tonight with their belongings in paper bags, wondering whether anybody outside those walls remembers that they exist.

Integrity Initiative was built for them.

Not one part of this has been easy, but it’s been full of moments worth holding on to, of joy, connection, and true meaning. This is all of that, and it was made by many.