GetUp! in crisis — CEO ousting, job cuts and clash on Palestine prompt staff revolt
Exclusive: staff members pass a motion of no confidence in GetUp!'s chairman and deputy chair after CEO "forced out"
Leaked internal documents and a staff member’s testimony from the progressive campaign group, GetUp!, reveal the organisation is in crisis.
The staff member who spoke to Deepcut on condition of anonymity claims the former GetUp! CEO, Larissa Baldwin-Roberts, was unofficially forced out of her role by members of GetUp!'s board in December 2024, with staff barred from contacting her for months.
In January 2025, GetUp!'s board then began a major round of redundancies that the staff member claims left key positions unfilled and threw the organisation's election planning into chaos.
In February, GetUp! staff members passed a motion of no confidence in chairman Glen Berman and deputy chair Stephen Monk. In a letter to the board seen by Deepcut, staff claimed Berman and Monk had "demonstrated poor financial management, lack of accountability to GetUp!'s values, and have created an unsafe work environment for staff," and that staff "have no confidence that the board as it stands is properly equipped to ensure the solvency of the organisation into the future".
"As a collective of employees concerned for the future of the organisation and the welfare of our colleagues, we call on Mr Berman and Mr Monk to resign," the letter states.
The letter of no confidence also claims that GetUp!'s board failed to act in response to "numerous occupational health and safety risks" that were raised with them, leading to "the resignation of key staff".
The no confidence motion comes amid growing concerns held among staff with the organisation's direction. Multiple rounds of staff cuts have decimated GetUp!'s workforce, with the number of paid staff shrinking from over 70 just three years ago to less than 10 today. Yearly revenue from donations has more than halved since the 2021-22 financial year. The staff member also alleges members of GetUp!'s board vetoed months of planned campaign work focused on the genocide in Gaza, infuriating employees and Palestinian advocacy groups.
The staff member says GetUp!'s fill-in election director and sole remaining senior election campaigner quit on election day, effectively leaving the organisation without a campaign team.
"At the moment, I think there's two campaigners left. Most people have a foot out the door – if they haven't given notice already, they're about to," says the staff member. "There's absolutely no direction from anyone."
'We weren't allowed to have contact with her'
In December, Baldwin-Roberts and staff were preparing to launch the organisation's federal election campaign. In an all-staff email sent on December 24, and obtained by Deepcut, Baldwin-Roberts was frank about GetUp!'s finances and limited ability to wage a large-scale campaign like in previous election cycles.
"Financially we've had to hold on tight this year – to everyone who contributed to the herculean effort to keep us solvent – thank you," Baldwin-Roberts wrote.
"We've never gone into an election with so little to spend and while that is frustrating for many, my commitment remains that I will not put the organisation through the financial stress [of] an election over securing the wages of staff."
Despite GetUp!'s difficulties, Baldwin-Roberts expressed optimism that the coming federal election would improve the organisation's fortunes.
"Last week the campaign directors completed what will be an impactful election plan within our financial capacity," she wrote. "We'll be back at it in January but we will benefit from heading into a certain election year."
When staff returned to the office in the new year, however, Baldwin-Roberts was nowhere to be seen.
On December 17, Berman had told staff via email that Baldwin-Roberts would be going on "an extended break," but that she would be returning to work in January. The only communication staff received from Baldwin-Roberts was that December 24 email, which she sent while on the imposed break.
"Then we noticed her name had been removed from all emails; all our Slack channels; all our internal comms," the staff member says. "We asked the board about it and they told us it was a 'glitch in the system', but they later said we weren't allowed to have contact with her and she wasn't allowed to have contact with us."
A Widjabul Wia-bal woman from the Bundjalung Nations, Baldwin-Roberts has more than a decade's experience campaigning on issues of First Nations justice and self-determination. Besides her three and a half years as GetUp!'s First Nations justice campaign director, Baldwin-Roberts also co-founded the Seed Indigenous Youth Climate Network and served on the steering committee of Passing the Message Stick, a First Nations-led research organisation in support of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. As GetUp! CEO, Baldwin-Roberts also led the organisation's campaign in support of the Voice in 2023.
Staff naturally assumed Baldwin-Roberts would be heavily involved in GetUp!'s planning in the lead-up to Invasion Day.
"She wasn't allowed to be involved in any of that," the staff member says. "We couldn't even get in touch with her to get quotes."
Repeated questions from staff to GetUp!'s senior leadership about Baldwin-Roberts' whereabouts or status at the organisation went unanswered – as did their questions about who would take on Baldwin-Roberts' responsibilities in her absence, according to the staff member. In their letter of no confidence, GetUp! staff criticised Berman and Jones' "failure to appoint an acting political director or election director" – both roles Baldwin-Roberts had been filling.
GetUp! staff who signed the letter called on the board to support Baldwin-Roberts as CEO, stating that "staff have a high level of confidence in Larissa's leadership and vision for the future of GetUp!"
In April, Crikey reported that Baldwin-Roberts had left GetUp! in March with the organisation making no public announcement. Staff were not informed of Baldwin-Roberts' departure until April.
"Basically, Larissa didn't step down," the staff member says. "It was more of a forced move."
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'Can we talk about Palestine?'
According to the staff member, the tension between Baldwin-Roberts and the board began long before December 2024.
"The issues with Larissa started when she went on Q+A."
In October 2023, Baldwin-Roberts appeared as a panellist on the ABC's Q+A. Wearing a keffiyeh that featured a depiction of pre-nakba Palestine and Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque, she spoke about the "incredible solidarity" between First Nations people in Australia and Palestinians.
"The board were very angry with her for that. That was when the rift started between the board and what Larissa was doing," the staff member says.
Shortly after Baldwin-Roberts' Q+A appearance, the GetUp! board abruptly postponed the organisation's extensive plans to campaign on the issue of Gaza.
"We had started working on Palestine, we were meeting with other organisations, we were planning what we were going to do. And then the board just shut it all down," the staff member says.
This continued for over a year.
"In every meeting we had, we were asking 'Can we talk about Palestine? Can we do stuff about it?' And over and over again, we were told no."
GetUp! has campaigned vocally on the issue of Gaza before. During the Unity Intifada in May 2021, in which Israel killed more than 250 Palestinians, GetUp! released a video titled 'Why Australians should care about the Palestinian fight for freedom'. In the video, then-GetUp! board member Sara Saleh explained the history of the Israeli occupation, comparing it to the dispossession of First Nations people in Australia and criticising the federal government for selling arms to Israel.
Since October 2023, however, GetUp! has mentioned Gaza in its emails to members just four times. In December 2023, an email signed by Baldwin-Roberts urged GetUp! members to sign a petition and "demand that Prime Minister Albanese calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and an end to the violence in Gaza".
Two emails in 2024 briefly mentioned Gaza. In a post-budget email sent on May 15, GetUp! stated that "the Albanese Government must do better to act and support Palestinians under international law as we are witnessing in real time their basic human rights are ripped from them at the hands of the Netanyahu Government". Another, on August 21, criticised then-opposition leader Peter Dutton after he called for a blanket visa ban for Palestinians fleeing the Gaza Strip.
On February 15, 2025, GetUp! sent a pre-election fundraising email titled 'Warning: Advance Australia just tripled their war chest'. The email included a brief mention of Donald Trump's plan to turn the Gaza Strip into a resort.
According to the staff member, citing Gaza in a GetUp! fundraising email after more than a year of near-silence on the issue received an angry response from Palestinian advocacy organisations.
"We got a lot of feedback that it wasn't a great look for us to be using Palestine to fundraise when we'd been silent on the issue for 15 months," the staff member says. "Internally, the staff were so frustrated by it. We wanted to be a part of that movement."
Job cuts and financial woes
GetUp!'s annual financial reports show a steep decline in donations since the 2021-22 financial year, when it reported $10,046,934 million in donations revenue.
In 2022-23, GetUp! reported $6,703,280 in donations. In its financial report for the 2023-24 fiscal year – which, unlike past reports, has not been published on the Transparency section of GetUp!'s website – the organisation reported donations valuing $5,952,460.
According to the real-time donations tracker on GetUp!'s website, the organisation received $4,269,574 in donations in the 365 days before May 18, 2025.
GetUp!'s financial reports also show that payments to employees, clients and suppliers have plummeted since the 2022 election – an indication of the organisation's shrinking workforce. GetUp! spent $5,439,226 on payments to staff, clients and suppliers in 2023-24, down from $11,461,771 in 2021-22.
Since the 2022 election, GetUp! has undertaken three rounds of cuts and redundancies. The most recent round, which saw 12 people leave the organisation, began on January 16 – a move the staff letter characterised as a "snap decision to restructure the organisation without consultation of staff, members or movement partners", and which they were not informed of for two weeks.
"Major restructuring and redundancies were decided in secrecy," the letter of no confidence states. "Our CEO, Larissa Baldwin-Roberts has been excluded from the process, despite her key role in fundraising and strategy."
Staff blamed the organisation's "long-term financial challenges" on "numerous gaps within the professional qualifications of the GetUp! Board as a whole, particularly with regards to fundraising strategy, philanthropic engagement and financial management".
The staff member who spoke to Deepcut alleges they were told the redundancies were necessary for GetUp!'s survival, and that the financial situation was so bad the organisation could not afford to make redundancy payouts.
They also claim the rushed and haphazard nature of the redundancies has left key positions inside GetUp! unfilled, leading to essential work being left undone for months.
As one example, the staff member points to GetUp!'s failure to publish a press release since November 2024.
"The board were letting people go with no insight into what they were actually doing on a daily basis. They let the media person go and didn't hire a replacement."
GetUp!'s quietest election
Staff who signed the letter of no confidence warned the board that starting a redundancy and restructure process so close to a federal election would hamstring GetUp!'s ability to run an effective campaign.
"The Board's push to almost halve GetUp!'s capacity and significantly disrupt internal processes and culture approximately 10 weeks before the federal election reflects a blatant disregard for the political stakes of this election for our members and the marginalised communities the organisation purports to represent," the letter states.
The decline in GetUp!'s paid ad spend on Meta social media platforms gives a snapshot into how much the group's fundraising and campaigning capacity has shrunk. From January 1 to election day, the group spent a maximum of $46,361 on 62 paid election ads on Meta platforms. The group didn't run paid ads at all until March 19, less than seven weeks out.
Ahead of the 2022 federal election, GetUp! spent up to $222,088 on 310 paid ads.
In a post-election video published to Instagram on May 7, GetUp! talked up the impact the organisation had had on the result, claiming to have "reached 2.5 million people".
"That's 4 million impressions, 2 million actions, and 1 million moments that mattered," the video claims.
GetUp!, chairman Glen Berman and former CEO Larissa Baldwin-Roberts were all contacted for this story but provided no comment.