$1 million to tackle challenging social issues

The program named The Search, is an initiative to develop the capacity of communities in the early stages of implementing the Collective Impact framework – an innovative approach to tackle entrenched social challenges. The Search is the first program of its kind in Australia.

Launched in June 2014, the initiative has attracted 49 expressions of interest nationally. Of the 49 submitted applications, the largest proportion came from NSW (17), followed by Victoria (11) and Tasmania (5).

A panel of national and international judges has assessed the applications and shortlisted the 11 most promising early-stage collective impact initiatives. They are:

Victoria

• Great South Coast focused on cradle to career
• Central Goldfields Shire focused on children, youth and families
• Geelong Region focused on joblessness.

Tasmania

• Clarendon Vale focused on increasing public safety
• Launceston focused on cradle to career
• Burnie focused on worklessness.

New South Wales

• Bourke focused on youth justice
• Claymore focused on cradle to career.

Queensland

• Logan focused on early childhood.

South Australia

• Whyalla focused on health and wellbeing of children and young people.

Western Australia

• Halls Creek focused on healing.

The shortlisted communities will continue to develop their applications over the next four months and will have access to a grant of up to $5,000 to purchase services and support to do so. They will submit a final application by 11 February 2015, with the selected community to be announced on 11 March 2015.

“The overwhelming and nation-wide response we have to this initiative reflects the fact that many communities around Australia are fed up with short-term, fragmented and unco-ordinated efforts to tackle our most challenging social issues,” says Kerry Graham, Convenor of the Collaboration for Impact community of practice.

“These communities are stepping up to the challenge of working together to identify and solve their own issues, on their own terms.”

Andrew Young, CEO of the Centre for Social Impact and Convenor of The Search said “There are many communities and many social issue areas in which we’ve made little or no progress in two or three decades, and this is in spite of massive spending growth over that time. In areas of complex social need, the verdict has been returned: finding and funding another program through a competitive tendering process will not fix it.

“We need whole-of-community approaches for our most complex social issues. This is hard work and it requires real investment in the willingness and capacity to collaborate. The Search provides a process and support to catalyse this change in approach.

“Congratulations to the 49 communities that have entered into the process. These communities have all recognised the need for new approaches and many have already made significant progress by bringing people together to work towards better outcomes.”

The Search was initiated due to a gap in the current models for social change and intervention to achieve significant social impact. It’s part of a broader strategy to grow the field of collective impact in Australia and will help transform the way social purpose organisations – including government and funders – and communities respond to complex social problems in Australia.

The Search is convened by The Centre for Social Impact and supported by a Catalysing Group, which includes the following organisations: Westpac Foundation, Results Leadership Group (Australia and USA), Social Solutions Group (USA), Blackbaud Pacific, Social Ventures Australia, Australian Communities Foundation and the Centre for Social Impact.

Sarah Harding

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