Miscarriage Matters Chairperson's Report
- Aleisha Black
- May 4
- 6 min read
Chairperson’s Report
1 April 2024 - 31st March 2025
Miscarriage Matters NZ
Introduction
I am very proud of what our volunteers have been able to achieve this year. Huge thanks to my fellow committee members who all continued on from their term last year; Corrine Christian, Barbara Frazer, Lisa Heatley, Ruth Bryson, Amy Frazer, Linda Skelton and to our Auckland Chapter leader, Tessa Chaffey. We now also have a Timaru Chapter led by Katie Lane and a Top of the South Chapter led by Linda Skelton. We have many volunteers who have helped with care packages, the Butterfly Fun Run, and fundraising. I would also like to acknowledge our ongoing collaboration with SANDS Canterbury.
Goals
This year we did things a little differently with our goals, rather than having a huge number of objectives on the go, each committee member selected 5 objectives that they believed we should concentrate on. From these selections we ended up with 11 objectives to achieve in pursuit of our overarching goals.
Society Goals
We have three overarching goals in general as a Society, they are as follows:
To be an open and welcoming society
To be ambitious, but sustainable
To uphold our charity purposes
OBJECTIVES
Update our society rules and practices to conform to the new requirements for charities in order to re-incorporate prior to the deadline
We have done this and will be able to approve the changes at our AGM. This gives us a year to make any amendments, if required, before the new rules come into place.
Distribute our pamphlet to 19 health districts in NZ.
This was an incredible objective - to reach every health district in New Zealand in our first year of production. Through a small amount of organic promotion on social media, along with word-of-mouth, and utilising our care-package contacts we reached 17 of the 19 health districts. I think this is incredible. Especially as all of the logistics were carried out by our already busy Treasurer and Head of Care Packages, Barbara Frazer.
Get the ‘Night Sky’ Project live
We had a planning meeting about this and had volunteers from Enable on board to get this live for our fifth anniversary fun run. Unfortunately it didn’t transpire. I recommend that our next step would be working with the Enable Volunteers to set a budget and raising funds (there is little that we can do when we are relying completely on voluntary time and expertise).
Care Packages Goals
The purposes of our Care Packages are:
- For women in to feel that they are cared for by a high quality charity
- To support local medical professionals who deal with miscarriage
OBJECTIVE:
Achieve a continuous supply of care packages for Canterbury, Auckland and Timaru chapters (once Timaru is underway)
We have achieved this objective. Huge thanks to our Head of Care Packages, Barbara Frazer, along with Tessa Chaffey (Auckland Chapter), Katie Lane (Timaru Chapter) and Linda Skelton (Top of the South Chapter).
We successfully received funding for Auckland Care Packages for the next two years ($23,000 in total)
Last year we noticed a significant drop in the number of care packages given out in Canterbury. This year the numbers have increased again (918) but still lower than 2021, 2022 and 2023. This may be the result of outside factors or may indicate that we are reaching less people through midwives
According to Statistics NZ, “2023 had the lowest number of births registered in 20 years”. There were 56,955 live births in 2023. Also U.S. births declined in 2023 to their lowest level in more than 40 years. Note that the statistics below are a January to December year, whereas our reporting is the 1st of April - 31st of March financial year.
Fundraising Goals
Our fundraising subcommittee organises our annual Butterfly Fun Run, along with applying for grants, prizes and product donations. We celebrated our fifth anniversary of the Butterfly Fun Run and installed the memorial seat at The Groynes Reserve in Christchurch. This year the weather was not so nice for our Butterfly Fun Run but we still achieved similar numbers to the year prior.
OBJECTIVES
Host our Fifth Butterfly Fun Run
We achieved this objective. We sold 214 tickets (down from 249 the previous year). Weather was likely a big contributor as the forecast was very bad leading up to the run and then slight rain on the day. I would like to see us link our fun run to a fundraising goal in 2025 e.g “Help us print ____ pamphlets”
Celebrate our Fifth Anniversary
We celebrated this with our Butterfly Fun Run and by installing the memorial seat at the Groynes Reserve. We also recognised fun run volunteers who had reached their fifth year of volunteering:
Communications Goals
Our purposes for the Communication Subcommittee:
- To be a national voice for miscarriage
- To raise public knowledge and understanding of miscarriage
- To be uplifting, approachable and empowering
OBJECTIVES
Develop communications guidelines
Not achieved
Develop Relationship with College of Midwives
Initiated. I had a great conversation with Violet Clapham, Midwifery Advisor at The College of Midwives. From that conversation we have been invited to exhibit at the 2025 Midwifery Conference in Hamilton
Update website Colour Scheme and Content
Partially achieved. Updated the colour scheme on the ‘What We Do’ page and the ‘Legal’ page and added Paid Parental Leave info. Added a new page for the Butterfly Fun Run. Still need to update the colour scheme on the remaining pages and blogs.
Media Coverage in a major outlet
Achieved. The PRESS covered our Butterfly Fun Run with the best write-up we have had so far.
Six blogs on the website
Not Achieved
Last year we had an 890% increase in sessions on our website. This year the session numbers have dropped by 5254. Below is a chart of the website sessions on the website since we launched in July 2020. Our sessions from within NZ have continued to increase and the average amount of time spent on the site has increased. It is most likely that our decrease overall is due to a lower standing on Google as organic Google searches are the number one source of traffic to our site. We can do things to improve our SEO (search engine optimisation) e.g. writing blogs to increase key words, generating more traffic from social media. There is also a possibility that the new AI features of Google utilise the info on our website and, therefore, answer queries without people needing to visit our site. People accessing our site directly from our web address has increased again this year which we could attribute to our 30,000 calling cards that were included in Bountiful NZ pregnancy packs.
WEBSITE DATA | |||||
LAUNCHED JULY 2020 | |||||
Year | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
1 APR 2020 - 31 MAR 2021 | 1 APR 2021 - 31 MAR 2022 | 1 APR 2022 - 31 MAR 2023 | 1 APR 2023 - 31 MAR 2024 | 1 APR 2024 - 31 MAR 2025 | |
Site Sessions | 1050 | 1,655 | 5,983 | 58,597 | 53,343 |
Unique Visitors | 774 | 1221 | 4,450 | 48,110 | 44,806 |
Top Location (number of sessions) | NZ (907) | NZ (1432) | NZ (4014) | United States (13593) | NZ (15,029) |
Sessions from NZ Location | 907 | 1,432 | 4,014 | 12,437 | 15,029 |
Average Duration on Site | 1m 52s | 1m 55s | 2m 15s | 2m 45s | 6m 41s |
Top Page (duration) | Thumbelina Post (5m 8s) | Health Hub (5m 29s) | Inner Healing (4m 28s) | Inner Healing (5m 43s) | Blog Post 2021 Newsletter (5m 57s) |
2nd Top Page (duration) | Causes & Prevalence (4m 47s) | Inner Healing (3m 22s) | Health Hub (3m 56s) | Health Hub (5m 8s) | Health Hub (5m 2s) |
Traffic Source | Organic Google | Organic Google | Organic Google | ||
4,660 | 51812 | 44,515 | |||
Traffic Source | Direct | Direct | Direct | ||
824 | 5760 | 7473 | |||
Traffic Source | |||||
113 | 405 | 345 |
Social Media - Our Facebook followers increased to 1500 (up 200) and Instagram increased to 892 followers (up 179). We produced 50 % less content than the previous year but had an increase in views (+36 %), reach (+49 %) and interactions (+7 %).
Conclusion
It has been really great simplifying our objectives this year. There were still objectives that we didn’t get to, but we have done well with what we have achieved. Every year I am blown away that we can host the Butterfly Fun Run and deliver all of our care packages. Those are incredible achievements by themselves but we keep achieving more each year. This year saw us delivering 2626 information pamphlets to reach almost every health district in the country, installing a memorial seat at The Groynes Reserve in Christchurch, supplying 30,000 calling cards for Bountiful NZ to include in pregnancy packs, starting two new care package chapters, and receiving a $23,000 grant for Auckland. We continue to strive to make the experience of miscarriage better. We look forward to seeing the recommendations of the Bereavement Pathway Panel this year and we are hopeful that our recommendation of ‘making miscarriage count’ will feature.
Although Miscarriage Matters NZ is an official registered charity/incorporated society, it is really just a collection of caring people who are doing what they can to make things better.
Aleisha Black
Chairperson
Miscarriage Matters NZ
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