Underfunded, undervalued and overwhelmed - that's how social service providers describe themselves.

Charities are calling for a better partnership with government and more support as they struggle to meet rising demand from precarious funding.

Mana Communications hosted a hui in Wellington on Thursday where dozens of not-for-profit organisations gathered to discuss the challenges facing the industry.

More than 90 percent of attendees responded to a poll by Mana saying they faced funding challenges.

Several participants used the phrase "perfect storm" to describe the current difficulty of meeting rising costs while a cost-of-living crisis made providing those services more expensive.

Participants said they struggled to make lasting change with year-long government contracts.

"We need a fundraising model where we don't spend our year fundraising for next year," one attendee told the room.

As a result, charities said they often ended up competing for money from a shrinking pool of funding.

Charity funder Nikau Foundation told RNZ it had observed an increase in the number of requests for funding, and in the amounts being requested.

Value for money

On top of being frustrated with having to "beg for money", as one attendee put it, charities said they felt undervalued.

Several participants raised concerns around compliance - "the multiple, similar-but-different reporting that people have to do to keep tiny amounts of funding", one person told RNZ.

This administrative work was often not funded by grants or contracts, despite being a requirement to prove an organisation's value for money, they said.

Several charities also said they wanted funding for prevention and to not be the "ambulance at the bottom of the cliff", simply reacting to crises.

Two manuhiri, or visitors, spoke to the audience about the need for and impact of social service providers.

Denis McBride said he turned to Wellington's City Mission, where he was offered transitional housing and eventually a role in the City Mission outreach team.

He told the audience he would have gone back to jail and drugs had the mission not been there.

"I've been there for eight months now in the peer support role and I've been blessed [with] the opportunity as well as I've found my purpose, I've found my why in helping people and I heal myself every day I go to work."

Twenty-three-year-old Luta Matagi said Youth Inspire had taught her and her peers life skills and lessons they hoped to pass on to their children.

"They taught me that I can move and that my voice, my ideas and my experiences do matter in life and that we need to be heard. They make us feel listened to. They make us feel at home and also they make us feel so safe," she said, voice shaking with emotion.

Multiple charities said the stories helped remind them of the purpose of their work.

"If we started off feeling undervalued, the value of the work was demonstrated by what they said," Kathryn Ross, chief executive of counselling charity Skylight Trust, said.

Whose job is it?

Mana Communications compiled attendees' concerns and ideas into one statement, which called for a "genuine partnership between government, iwi, the sector and those who invest in our communities; we need a shared direction that extends beyond election cycles and is shaped by lived experience from the outset".

Mana Communications then moderated a panel of politicians responding to the concerns raised.

Praise for the sector was universal but there was no consensus on how the government and the sector should collaborate.

A particularly divisive question was that of responsibility for society's ills.

NZ First's Gerald Warner said his party believed the state had a responsibility to get communities thriving but that it also believed in "people helping themselves", giving a "hand-up not a handout".

"Intervention does not deprive individuals and communities of the right to exercise self-responsibility."

He argued that an overhaul of the economy would ease demand on social services.

But Tamatha Paul from the Greens said the state should guarantee human rights such as affordable healthcare and housing,

She said these differences in opinion got in the way of the cross-party collaboration necessary for long-term change, especially when it involved financial investment.

"Our system is set up to scrap with each other rather than to find those areas of consensus."

Others were more hopeful.

Labour's Helen White cited her cross-party work on rough sex and strangulation as an example of bipartisan collaboration.

She said she heard the sector's frustration and said there was a possibility for more collaboration between the sector and the state, sharing responsibility for helping communities between the local and governmental levels as appropriate.

Opportunity's Kayla Kingdon-Bebb said her party saw providers as a "genuine partner" to government rather than as a "cost to be managed".

National's Greg Fleming said there was no government agency that could replicate the work done by social services.