NDIS referrals:
enquiries you can actually serve.

The how participants choose page covers the people who refer: coordinators, plan managers and families. This page picks up after that. Once enquiries start arriving, which ones turn into a service agreement, and which ones waste a week of phone tag?

Enquiries usually come through a handful of doors, and each door brings a different kind of enquiry. A coordinator usually knows the plan details. A parent searching at 11pm in Penrith often doesn't yet, and needs a patient first conversation.

The first filter isn't marketing at all. How a participant's funding is managed decides who they can pay. The NDIS says participants can use unregistered providers if their funding is self-managed or they use a registered plan manager, and that registered providers can't charge more than the NDIS price limits. The same page says unregistered providers can charge above or below those limits, and both follow the NDIS Code of Conduct. If the participant is plan-managed, ask the plan manager what they can pay before you quote. Plan-managed participants can choose registered or unregistered providers.

So an unregistered provider whose ads reach NDIA-managed participants is paying for enquiries it can't take. The fix costs nothing: state your registration status and the plan types you work with on your website, on every listing, and in the first sentence of the intake call.

The other filters are practical. Does their plan fund the support you deliver? Are they in your area? Can you staff it at the times they need? 'Yes, but not until March' is an answer a family can plan around. A week of silence isn't.

Answer from the first call or email. It's a guide to the funding rules and your own capacity, not a decision about anyone's needs.

In most industries a referral fee is normal business. In the NDIS it's a red flag. The NDIA says its investigations show a strong link between providers making 'incentive' or 'referral' payments and fraud, and it acts quickly on high-pressure sales tactics. A joint NDIS Commission and NDIA crackdown in the Northern Territory, covering September to December 2025, involved providers allegedly offering cash, alcohol, cigarettes and other inducements to pressure participants into signing up.

That doesn't stop you marketing. It means the reward a coordinator gets for recommending you is a participant who gets good support, and an invoice that's right the first time. The NDIS advertising rules page covers gifts and inducements in ads.

Some agencies sell 'NDIS participant leads'. Ask exactly where they came from before you pay. Information about someone's disability is health information, and the OAIC treats a disability service provider that handles health information as a health service provider, covered by the Privacy Act whatever its size. Using sensitive information for direct marketing needs the individual's consent.

A list of names and numbers bought without everyone's consent is also what the OAIC calls trading in personal information. Add the Spam Act's rules on consent and unsubscribing for texts and emails, and the Do Not Call Register for calls, and a bought list is usually more risk than it's worth.

Unsolicited selling is under the spotlight as well. In July 2026 the ACCC reported widespread non-compliance in door-to-door and phone selling, named health and wellbeing among the industries most reliant on it, and recommended bringing lead generation explicitly into the rules.

A good intake reply does four things. It says whether you can help, says when, says what happens next, and asks what the person wants to achieve. It doesn't push for a signed service agreement on the first call. A family that feels rushed will ring the next provider anyway.

When you can't help, say so in the first conversation, and point them somewhere useful: back to their support coordinator or local area coordinator. Coordinators remember the providers who give a straight answer, and that's the referral pipeline that lasts.

Then count enquiries by door, and how many became a service agreement. After a quarter you'll know whether your website, your listings or your coordinator relationships bring the participants you can serve. If calls to past enquirers are part of your follow-up, remember that numbers on the Do Not Call Register need consent and that calling hours apply.