Client: Tend Health Ltd
In 2025, Tend Health successfully secured $2 million in funding for a new digitally enabled initiative to help New Zealanders access mental health services more easily. We supported Tend along the way by providing an assessment of the social return on investment for the initiative.
Tend Health's new initiative centred on a digital "front door" where patients can access mental health care as part of a wider integrated primary healthcare service. This was particularly aimed at improving access to funded mental health services for under-served populations, including those not enrolled with a GP, youth, and Māori.
The initiative also included designing a new, culturally responsive mental health service that is integrated into Tend Health’s primary care clinics, with care provided both in-person and virtually, and with longer hours.
Tend Health applied to the Government’s Mental Health and Addiction Community Sector Innovation Fund, which is providing $10 million over two years for innovative, time-limited initiatives supporting mental health and wellbeing. Applications had to include a “robust assessment and evaluation” of the potential social return on investment (SROI), and this is where we came in.
A busy two weeks
The timeframes were tight, with only two weeks for us to scope and understand Tend’s new initiative, collate the data, do a literature review, develop and run an SROI model, and then produce a report on the results.
We worked with Tend Health’s senior leaders to articulate an intervention logic model that stepped through what the initiative would deliver and the intended outcomes. We also produced an investment map of the expected flows of costs and benefits, and we quantified those costs and benefits.
We estimated that the initiative would provide a social return on investment of $11.1 million, for a return of $2.99 on every dollar invested.
A successful client – and more flexible access to mental health care for New Zealanders
Tend Health was one of nine successful recipients of first-round funding from the new Innovation Fund. In May 2025 the Government granted Tend $1.97 million over two years, which Tend is matching dollar-for-dollar for a total of just under $4 million.
The Government’s announcement of the successful funding bid noted that it would enable Tend’s multi-disciplinary mental health and addictions team to support patients virtually as well as in-person and with extended operating hours, giving people more flexible access to help when they need it.
For us at MartinJenkins, there’s nothing better than working closely with a client to help them make a difference for Aotearoa, and then seeing them succeed. After the project was over, Josh Robb, Tend Health’s COO and co-founder, had this to say about how we had worked with them:
“MartinJenkins guided us expertly through our first SROI process for our digital mental health initiative under extremely tight deadlines, putting in extra hours well beyond normal expectations to help us meet the deadline. Their expertise and experience, genuine belief in our vision and calm professionalism made all the difference. They went well beyond the analysis itself, helping to strengthen our overall funding proposal. We are looking forward to working with them again, in the future.”
