About Us About Us

About Us

The Mankind Initiative is the principal, expert and specialist charity in the UK focusing on male victims of domestic abuse. The charity collaborates and works in close partnership with other organisations and practitioners to support these victims too.

We were the first in Great Britain to support male victims. Our expertise derives from directly supporting male victims since 2001, our qualified professionals who manage the charity and our board which also consists of the UK’s leading academics and survivors.

Our three main activities are based on:

Direct support to male victims through a national helpline funded by donations (over 2,000 calls per year)
Support for organisations and practitioners who want to better recognise, support and understand male victims. This is through our specialist training, consultancy and support service, MIDASS and the national community and information network for practitioners that we created, own and manage, MDAN
Giving male victims a voice by engaging with stakeholders such as the government, statutory agencies, politicians, academia and the media.

Our aim is to ensure all male victims of domestic abuse (and their children) are supported to enable them to escape from the situation they are in. We are gender inclusive in our view so we want all female victims (and their children) to escape too.

The charity’s principles are based on the Small Charities Governance Code and its values are Responsive, Inclusion, Integrity and Confidence.

We employ staff to operate the help-line and run our training programmes plus we rely on a small team of volunteers to run the charity. Three of the team are qualified Independent Domestic Violence Advisers (IDVA) and two have Domestic Abuse Services Manager qualifications. We currently receive no funding for our helpline from government (or the “state”), trusts or grant-making bodies so we rely on the kind generosity of the public to provide this vital service.

Out 2023/24 Impact Report can be found here Impact Report 23 24.

Find out what we do in more detail here.

Our views on a range of matters can be found in this Policy Briefing and Policy Statement.

Trustees

Mark Brooks OBE (Chairman)
Associate Professor Elizabeth Bates
Lori Busch (IDVA)
Professor Ben Hine
Jon Service

Roz Willis

Rob Parkes

Dr Alexia Papamichael

Honorary Patrons

Ann and Derek Goodchild
Clive Lever
John Penrose (former Member of Parliament)
Erin Pizzey CBE
Sara Westle
Ian Young

Ambassadors

Ian Young
Kieron Bell
Simon Smith
Sara Westle
Alex Skeel

Richard Spencer

We are currently not seeking new ambassadors

Donation site

Just Giving

Twitter

@mankindinit

Facebook

ManKindInitiative (main)

Our sincere thanks to Marc Hughes for setting this up.

YouTube Channel

ManKind Initiative channel

Funding

The charity is funded by donations from members of the public and company donations for its helpline alongside grants/fees for training.

It has in the past been funded by:

HM Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer to deliver domestic abuse support to the Armed Forces.
The Home Office to provide training to police forces across England and Wales.

The ManKind Initiative fully supports the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Domestic Violence and Abuse Quality Standard (QS116)

Quality Standard

All of our services meet the Quality Standard.

We support and endorse the UK SAYS NO MORE campaign

Facilitated by Hestia – the UK SAYS NO MORE campaign involves a broad coalition of advocacy and service organisations, leading corporations, media companies and major advertising, branding and design firms.