BEST PRACTICE + EMERGING NEW PRACTICES
Here we aim to shine a light on new initiatives, practices and strategies that are helping our social sector be more considered, strategic and impactful.
What examples of leadership and change have you noticed? Please contact us with ideas and examples to share on this page.
RESOURCES
Pay What it Takes
What is this?
This is a report which looks at the upstream issue in our sector of under-investment in overhead costs in NFP’s.
Why is it relevant?
If we are going to change the conditions that hold problems in place - this is one of them!
“Indirect costs, or overhead costs, are a fraught topic in the not-for-profit world. Many people across philanthropy, government, the public and the media all expect them to be minimised, or not to pay for them at all. Yet they are essential to running a functioning, effective organisation.
In the context of a struggling not-for-profit sector, this is a crucial issue to ensure the long-term effectiveness of Australia’s charities. US research has shown that one of the key drivers of not-for-profit vulnerability is insufficient funding of indirect costs. This is called the ‘non-profit starvation cycle’, which starts with funders’ inaccurate expectations of the true costs needed to run not-for-profits. These expectations lead not-for-profits to underreport their costs to funders. In the end, they lead to a sector starved of the necessary core funding required to create resilient charities delivering long-term impact on complex social issues.”
Collective Impact
What is this?
Collective Impact, or Systems Change is a method for shifting the dial on complex or wicked issues. This method was identified by Mark Kramer and John Kania of FSG consulting house in the US. They had spent most of their careers working for social change and after a time came to comment that "system - wide progress has seemed virtually unobtainable."
They found one "remarkable exception", an education initiative called Strive in Cincinnati, and analysed why they had made progress and were able to create lasting outcomes when so many other efforts had failed. They identified 5 conditions "that together produce true alignment and lead to powerful results: a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support organizations".
The Systems Change approach is an evidence informed approach for issues which are “tangled”, i.e. they have multiple causes, components and players.
“A systems change approach recognizes that large scale problems require close collaborations among various sectors, including governments, nonprofits, foundations, multi-lateral organizations, religious communities, business, academic institutions and the communities themselves.
These large scale problems cannot be solved by any individual or single entity, no matter how large or powerful. Rather, the key to success lies in optimizing the activities, relationships, and interactions among among the various components of a system.”
Srik Gopal & Tiffany Clarke, FSG 2015
Leaders in this work in Australia are Collaboration for Impact and The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) and some funders who are using this approach, especially through place based initiatives are Dusseldorp Forum and The Fay Fuller Foundation.
Why is it relevant?
Wellbeing and good mental health are not silver bullets. There are complex drivers of mental ill health and the wellbeing deficit in the social sector. Whilst cumulative disasters and the pandemic have exacerbated things, this issue is pre-existing. It is the ‘elephant in the room.'
Globally the social sector wellbeing deficit is quite invisible, let alone the resources for mitigating it. Collaborative Impact is social change intelligence of how to shift the dial through techniques such as a common agenda, mutually reinforcing activities, communication, shared measurement and use of a backbone coordinating body. To us this is some of the best work being done in the social sector because it combines deep collaboration with agility and funding for the time it takes to align strategy, share measurement and work together. Organisations are funded well, over a long period which removes the time / effort taken to find new funding and allows them to get on with the work. The article that brought collective impact to the world and the collective impact forum are here.
