(Illustration by Hugo Herrera)
In 2011, the original Stanford Social Innovation Review article, “Collective Impact,” found fertile ground in Australia, describing and validating an approach pioneered by a small number of Australian collaboratives working to achieve population-level change. Importantly, the collective impact framework endorsed a compelling case for social change and provided a shared language for existing place-based collaborative initiatives, capacity builders, and funders. At the same time, applying collective impact beyond its North American origins has meant grappling with dynamics of power and authority embedded in Australia’s colonial origins.
In 2012, as a start-up nonprofit organization, Collaboration for Impact (CFI) started connecting and convening early adopters of collective impact for capacity building—to more directly address power dynamics—and assumed a national intermediary role for scaling collective impact in Australia. In this article, we explore how Australia’s history and culture have influenced the application of collective impact and outline the work for collaboratives centering and sustaining community and First Nations perspectives and leadership in their work.
Australia’s Historical, Structural, and Cultural Context
Systemic collaboration in Australia necessitates working with the long tail of our colonial origins and our relationship with authority. Paradoxically, Australians are both anti-authoritarian and highly dependent on authorities. We have a long, and in many ways fruitful, dependency with our UK colonizer, with little mainstream appetite for independence. Culturally, Australians look to government to fix problems and also complain about the role government plays. Rather than advocating for less government, Australians expect governments to do more.
At the same time, we have significant mistrust of authority. The nation, which began as a penal colony and a process of forced removal from the United Kingdom, in turn forcibly removed Indigenous people from their land. Abuse of power and authority lingers and has been repeated over time and culture. In order to apply the collective impact framework, collaboratives must understand this context and navigate the dynamics of how formal and informal power enables and hinders collaboration.
The cumulative effect of Australia's historical, structural, and cultural context is that collective impact is framed and practiced with an explicit focus on power. Community members and leaders have had to undertake significant work to understand and step into their personal, cultural, and collective power. Backbone organizations and other intermediaries, dedicated to aligning and coordinating the work of a collaborative, need skills to help collaborations surface and navigate entrenched power dynamics to transform how both formal and informal power are either enabling or hindering their shared agenda. Governments and philanthropists must also acquire a greater level of power awareness to negotiate dialogues on power sharing and enable community decision-making over policy and allocation of funding.
Australia’s infamous culture of being “mates” is real and pervasive. Informal ways of engaging are the national currency and embedded in the social fabric. But “mateship” comes with an inherent casual approach toward different levels of power. While mateship can be an asset to collaborative efforts, its shadow side reveals a low tolerance for conflict or difference. The result is that much of the work of nudging systems toward a shared agenda happens through relationships and outside of formal structures, making the systemic work of scaling impact and sharing power more challenging. Much of CFI’s work as an intermediary is focused on helping collective impact initiatives use formal and informal power to increase readiness, practice, and confidence, to surface and work directly with difference, divergent perspectives, and conflict within the system itself.
The Role of Government in Relation to Communities
Within this broader context, Australian collective impact initiatives are working hard to broker a different relationship between governments and communities. To the onlooker, Australia can seem over-governed, with three levels of government—national, state, and local. These three levels intersect with communities in ways that are often disconnected and fragmented. The government is the largest service provider in communities (schools, health, police, social welfare benefits) and the largest funder of service providers. This policy and funding dominance creates a cultural overreliance on government and significantly entrenches power imbalances.
As a result, the collective impact work of engaging with, convening, and bringing local coherence across the three levels of government weighs disproportionately on community leaders. For example, when community-led agendas for change are developed, most initiatives build local structural mechanisms, such as government alignment tables, to incrementally align the multiple departments of each layer of government to the community-led agenda. This work is significant, resource-intensive, and ongoing. It shapes the work, role, and size of collective impact backbone entities and the structure and composition of community leadership tables, as well as the focus of the intermediaries that support them.
The Growth of Philanthropy and Intermediary Organizations
Australia has a proportionally smaller philanthropic sector whose role is less disruptive than in other parts of the world. In the early part of Australia’s collective impact decade, a small group of progressive philanthropists invested in communities showing readiness and progress toward shifting population-level outcomes. This group learned quickly what it meant to become engaged philanthropists. Instead of solely funding programs, they actively partnered with community leadership. The payoffs were significant. Within seven years, philanthropic investment in early collective impact initiatives contributed to the larger-scale arrival of government as a collective impact funder. Government funds enabled place-based initiatives to move from insecure, patchwork funding to five-year investments in backbone infrastructure and capacity building. And perhaps more importantly, government collective impact funders began shifting from detached funders to partners in the collaborative change process. Different levels of government shared data more readily, participated in leadership tables, and enacted policy changes such as devolving decision-making to the local community.
Increased engagement from the philanthropic sector also supported collective impact field building and intermediary organizations, including CFI. From its origins convening and building collaborative capacity with Australian early adopters and practitioners, CFI was founded in 2014 and has gradually expanded its work as a national intermediary building capacity for collective impact and systems change. Our organization convenes learning events to promote and formalize collective impact efforts, bringing lessons and proof points from the United States, Canada, and early work in Australia. We work to identify and build the capacity of diverse champions from local communities, government, philanthropy, and the service sector through coaching, learning programs, and direct support. Our online, open-source learning site Platform C provides resources, tools, case studies, and support for collaboratives. As of 2021, there are more than 90 initiatives in Australia using collective impact as an approach for population-level change, predominantly focused on creating equitable outcomes in early childhood, First Nations advancement, youth transitions, racial justice, and employment.
First Nations Leadership
Collective impact has had particular traction with First Nations communities. The importance and advocacy for community-led change has aligned with historical movements and agendas for self-determination. For instance, the national movement for First Nations recognition in the Australian constitution and a First Nations leadership agenda, Statement from the Heart, have galvanized public and institutional support for a First Nations First approach when working in collaboration with government.
Currently, there are more than 20 First Nations-led collective impact initiatives across Australia. All of them partner with government, business, and philanthropy to advocate new ways of working and sharing power. In 2012, for instance, the Maragnuka collective impact initiative started working to change outcomes for young people and communities in contact with the criminal justice system. In 2017, they reported a 23 percent reduction in police recorded rates of domestic violence, a 31 percent increase in high school graduation, and a 42 percent reduction in days spent in police custody.
In 2015, CFI developed a strategic focus on Deep Collaboration to build the capacity for First Nations and other multicultural leaders to navigate power dynamics and find new ways to lead together. Deep Collaboration emerged from earlier collaborative work between First Nations and multicultural Australians and developed into a practice for how to work collaboratively in contexts where the systemic impacts of colonization are ever present, but not worked on as dynamics of power. The practice has been used as part of the early stages of building readiness for treaty work with the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and the state government of Victoria to recognize and celebrate the unique status, rights, cultures, and histories of Traditional Owners and Aboriginal Victorians. In the collective impact initiative, Just Reinvest, Deep Collaboration provides a context to create shared language across First Nations and multicultural leaders to discuss power and cultural dynamics among backbone groups and leadership groups.
Deep Collaboration has surfaced a key tension First Nations leaders negotiate in collective impact work. Often, non-Indigenous leaders hesitate to use the formal power invested in their roles when working with First Nations leaders. Their reticence significantly increases the weight of expectations placed on First Nations leaders for representation, participation, and expertise, on top of the existing range of requests made for their time, input, consultation, and advice in collaborative efforts. Stakeholders must endorse and foster First Nations authority by considering broader systemic perspectives. Mobilizing different levels and kinds of authority will strengthen First Nations community leadership and scale social impact in institutions and governments. This work is emergent and tentative, focused largely on building readiness and creating conditions for everyone in a collaborative to work explicitly on power dynamics and conflict.
What’s Next?
Ten years on, there is much progress. More mature collective impact communities are calling for sustainable and structural power-sharing mechanisms with governments in order to rebalance power. At the same time, institutional power sharing is vulnerable. Where power is being shared with communities, it is most often located in individual departments or positions within institutions who are early adopters to collective impact, rather than being embedded into institutional operating models and policy.
The next horizon for collective impact in Australia will be shaped by our historical, cultural, and structural context. With the COVID-19 pandemic shining a spotlight on systemic and cultural inequalities, there is an opportunity for place-based collective impact initiatives to be drivers for much larger systemic change. Those engaged in collective impact work are evolving to focus less on the model and more on the work of changing the conditions that hold disadvantage and inequity in place. With this progression of language and ambition, there is more appetite to learn and apply systems thinking and systems leadership to efforts for social change.
However, the core question for Australian collective impact initiatives over the next decade will be: “How do they center and sustain community and First Nations perspectives and leadership?” The opportunity presented by Australia’s legacy with power is to simultaneously hold formal power to account by challenging the role the service system, government, and philanthropy play in enabling or hindering systems change; while lifting up, supporting, and stepping into the intrinsic informal power held by communities. Across the board, this will require learning and making change to current mental models about where power lies and how it is used for purpose and impact.
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Read more stories by Kerry Graham, Liz Skelton & Mark Yettica Paulson.