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This library holds a chosen collection of useful tools, guides, and resources in the social enterprise sector. You can explore guides, articles, and more to support your journey. If you're starting a social enterprise, facing sector challenges, or looking into the impact economy, you’ll find something useful here.
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This article examines Indigenous perspectives on economics and self-determination in Australia, highlighting historical dispossession, economic exclusion, and alternative frameworks for wealth. It explores Indigenous values of communal wealth, economic sovereignty tied to land and spirit, and sustainable solutions.
Aboriginal Economics
This article by Terri Janke and Company explores the impact of artificial intelligence on copyright law and Indigenous culture in Australia. It explains how AI technologies raise new risks for protecting Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property. The resource discusses ownership, consent, and the use of Indigenous art and knowledge in AI systems. It encourages readers to consider ethical and legal safeguards as digital tools expand.
Artificial Intelligence, Copyright and Indigenous Culture – The New Frontier
This article explains awqaf, a 1,000-year-old Islamic endowment model that has funded hospitals, schools and infrastructure across the Muslim world. It argues awqaf offers a proven blueprint for patient, values-based capital that Australia's impact investing sector has yet to tap.
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Certified B Corporations (B Corps) are redefining business success by proving financial performance and social responsibility can coexist. A recent B Lab white paper highlights how B Corps outperformed traditional businesses during 2019–2021, demonstrating resilience, stronger revenue growth, and higher job retention. Their stakeholder governance model, which balances the interests of employees, communities, the environment, and shareholders, is key to their success. This article explores the impact and growing influence of B Corps in modern business.
B Corps Bring Purpose and Profit for Sustainable Business
This opinion piece argues that Australia's debate over how to define social enterprise is a symptom of a deeper problem: First Nations peoples were excluded from building the frameworks in the first place. It calls for genuine co-design grounded in First Nations sovereignty and terms of reference.
Beyond the Definition Wars: Structural Exclusion, Sovereignty, and the Future of First Nations Social Enterprise in Australia.png?w=192)
This article explores the idea of “balanced governance” and why good behaviour in organisations is about more than just following rules. It encourages leaders to think beyond compliance and focus on values, culture, and everyday actions that shape how organisations behave and make decisions.
#BeyondtheRules - Balanced governance and ‘behaving well’ everywhere, every day
This MIT D-Lab article introduces participatory design as a powerful approach to fostering equity and creating sustainable solutions by engaging end-users as co-creators. It explores the benefits of building skills, trust, and ownership while producing durable, context-specific outcomes. By tailoring methods to different challenges, participatory design promotes inclusivity and addresses systemic inequities.
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People often ask if a social enterprise can be scaled. In this blog, Gord Tulloch challenges the idea that scale only means growing bigger or reaching more people. He explains five different ways to create impact, including changing rules, beliefs, social norms, and the conditions that help people take action.
Expanding Concepts of Scale
This article explains systems thinking from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives. It shows how First Nations approaches view the world as connected relationships between people, land, culture and community. The resource introduces key ideas from Indigenous knowledge systems and compares them with Western problem solving methods. It helps readers understand why Indigenous ways of thinking are valuable for addressing complex Australian challenges.
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This article by Sally Osberg and Roger Martin examines how social entrepreneurs drive systemic change, highlighting Andrea and Barry Coleman’s Riders for Health. By addressing transportation gaps in African healthcare, the Colemans exemplify how leveraging expertise and engaging stakeholders can create sustainable impact. The authors argue that successful social entrepreneurs focus on specific needs while aligning broader ecosystems, enabling transformative change that goes beyond business-driven outcomes.
How Social Entrepreneurs Make Change Happen
This Stanford article shares nine practical strategies for strong board leadership in social enterprises. It explains how board chairs can build a positive culture, clarify roles, support executive leaders, plan for succession, recruit the right members, and address underperformance to create a respectful and effective board.
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This resource, adapted from the teaching profession, provides social enterprise leaders with strategies for navigating challenging management conversations. It highlights the ineffectiveness of "hard sell" or "soft sell" approaches in driving change and maintaining relationships. Instead, it introduces the "Open to Learning" framework, emphasising validity, respect, and commitment. Leaders are guided to approach conversations with shared decision-making and an open mindset, offering a practical tool for addressing performance issues and implementing change in dynamic work environments.
How To Have Challenging Conversations. Tips From Organisational Science
Impact-led design 2.0 is a way to create programs and projects that are built around the change we want to see, not just around funding or activity. It uses evidence, lived experience, co-design and systems thinking to make solutions stronger and more effective across sectors such as government, philanthropy, business and not-for-profits.
Impact-led design 2.0
This is an International Labour Organization (ILO) interview with Richard Warner, CEO of Nundah Community Enterprises Cooperative, a worker cooperative for people with disabilities in Brisbane. It shares how the cooperative built inclusive, sustainable employment over 25 years.
Interview with Richard Warner, Coordinator and CEO of Nundah Community Enterprises Cooperative in Australia-1.png?w=192)
This article outlines a national conversation led by the Australian Law Reform Commission on legal structures for social enterprises. It explores whether current laws support purpose-driven business models and invites input on how legal reform could better enable social enterprises to grow and deliver impact.
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This article shares practical tips for managing a social enterprise effectively. It covers leadership, financial discipline, team management, and staying focused on mission while running a sustainable business. The advice is designed to help social entrepreneurs balance impact goals with strong operational performance.
Managing the Managers: Nine Tips to Help Social Enterprises Build Outstanding Management Teams
This online resource by Wedgetail brings together multiple examples of nature-positive business models being explored around the world.
Nature positive business models
A rich introduction to the history of measurement and how different drivers have informed how we think about, and practice, impact measurement and evaluation today. Also includes some useful graphics that help distinguish different terms and approaches from each other.
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This article introduces participatory budgeting, a democratic process empowering citizens to influence public fund allocation. It covers its origins in Porto Alegre, Brazil, outlines key stages, and highlights benefits like transparency, trust, and community empowerment, making it an ideal resource for those exploring the concept.
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The Acumen Academy offers free online courses and resources for social entrepreneurs. Their blog series on fundraising and pitching social enterprises provides valuable insights for changemakers seeking to refine their pitching skills and increase their chances of securing support and funding.
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This blog delves into power through a systems change lens, emphasising its importance in tackling sustainability challenges. It redefines power as a relational dynamic rather than a static state, exploring shifts from “power over” to “power with” approaches. Key themes include privilege, systemic challenges like climate change and inequality, and the fractal nature of power across scales. Combining theoretical insights with practical strategies, it provides tools for minimising hierarchical power, fostering collaboration, and building capacity for transformative, inclusive decision-making.
Power dynamics: A systemic inquiry
This report, developed by the Blueprint Expert Reference Group with support from the Department of Social Services, sets out a ten-year plan to strengthen Australia's not-for-profit and charity sector. It argues for stronger funding, regulation and government partnership so charities can keep supporting communities long term.
Project Compass: A Social Enterprise Learning Program Empowering 11,500 Girl Guides
This article by Adam Kahane introduces ‘radical collaboration’ as a transformative approach to tackling systemic challenges. By integrating love, power, and justice, it fosters empathy, empowerment, and fairness among diverse stakeholders. This method aims to align differing interests and capacities, enabling inclusive and impactful systems change while navigating inherent tensions in collaboration.
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This framework categorises leadership into seven stages, from Opportunist to Alchemist, reflecting increasing complexity and transformative impact. Each stage highlights unique approaches to challenges, relationships, and organisational goals. Leaders can progress through feedback, self-reflection, and embracing new responsibilities, with growth beyond the Achiever stage requiring deep self-awareness and the ability to challenge assumptions. Teams led by Strategists are most adaptable, benefiting from diverse perspectives and innovation to navigate complex challenges and drive organisational transformation effectively.
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It’s difficult to keep up with the latest trends in social media. Hootsuite regularly updates its advice and offers many free tools for planning and posting on social media. This page pulls together 35 different templates and while they won’t all be relevant to you there are some useful ones in there.
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Community-owned cooperatives are growing in regional Australia, particularly in Victoria, as innovative responses to market failures and threats to local businesses. By providing essential services and reinvesting profits locally, examples such as Yackandandah Community Development Company (YCDCo) and renewable energy projects demonstrate their impact. These models prioritise community ownership, resilience, and local economic benefits, yet are underrepresented in mainstream business education. The article examines their increasing adoption and potential to address community needs effectively.
The amazing world of our thriving co-operatives, especially in the regions
Discover the basics of customer journey mapping—an end-to-end visualisation of your customers' experience. This article explains how journey mapping helps you understand customer needs, improve design processes, and boost satisfaction and loyalty. Learn its benefits, how to create a map, and use insights for better customer experiences.
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This guide explains the Brand Pyramid, a simple model for building strong brands. It outlines five stages customers move through to develop loyalty: Presence, Relevance, Performance, Advantage, and Bonding. The model highlights the importance of understanding customer perceptions and creating positive brand experiences.
The Brand Pyramid
Systems change offers a way to address complex social issues like poverty and homelessness by moving beyond traditional, linear problem-solving. This blog contrasts ‘clock’ problems, which are solvable with structured solutions, with ‘cloud’ problems, requiring ongoing adaptations. It emphasises the need to shift from quick fixes to fostering resilience, healing relationships, and supporting long-term system health to address deep-rooted challenges effectively.
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Frederic Laloux's article explores Teal organisations, a progressive management model emphasising self-management, wholeness, and purpose. It outlines organisational paradigms, highlights successful examples, and offers insights for social enterprises to balance purpose and effectiveness, even with partial adoption.
The future of management is teal
This article reflects on a peer learning project that could not go ahead, for First Nations founder-led businesses approaching $1 million turnover. It finds that time, not interest, was the barrier, and explores what this reveals about founder overload.
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This blog introduces the concept of ethical leadership, where decisions prioritise integrity, societal impact, and the common good. It outlines six key principles—respect, accountability, service, honesty, justice, and community—that foster trust, equity, and collaboration in leadership practices.
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Psychological safety is crucial for innovation, teamwork, and organisational success. This article highlights its role in fostering inclusive and high-performing cultures. It outlines leadership strategies to build trust, such as open dialogue, curiosity, and equitable participation. Learn how consultative, supportive, and challenging leadership styles enhance team resilience, creativity, and productivity, particularly in remote and hybrid work environments.
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This article explores inclusive leadership, which fosters belonging, psychological safety, and respect within diverse teams. It highlights six traits—commitment, humility, bias awareness, curiosity, cultural intelligence, and collaboration—demonstrating how inclusive leaders drive team performance, decision-making, and collaboration through consistent behaviours.
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This article by entrepreneur and educator Steve Blank was published in the Harvard Business Review in 2013. It introduces the lean startup method, which focuses on testing ideas quickly, listening to customer feedback, and improving products step by step.
Why the Lean Start-up Changes Everything
This short blog focuses on developing a pitch deck for ventures seeking funding. It shares practical tips, a template to structure your pitch as well as common questions. Since it’s from a conventional business perspective you’ll need to consider where your impact proposition should be included.
Your Guide to Making an Excellent Investor Pitch Deck