Resource library
This library offers a curated collection of valuable tools, guides, and resources that exist in the social enterprise sector. Explore guides, articles and many more to support your journey, whether you’re starting a social enterprise, tackling sector challenges, or navigating the impact economy.
34 results found
This concise resource provides a comprehensive guide on how to conduct market research, aimed at beginners. It explains the importance of market research, outlines different types and methods, and offers a step-by-step process for conducting research.
This guide introduces adaptive leadership, empowering individuals to lead without formal authority. It explores core principles, distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical problems, and practical steps like shifting perspectives, framing challenges, and fostering collaboration. Additional resources and free courses are included.
This resource provides a guide to conducting an Empathy Mapping exercise, a technique used by teams to better understand their customers' needs and experiences. It outlines a step-by-step process for creating empathy maps, including preparation, running the session, and determining actionable insights from the exercise. The guide emphasises the importance of basing the empathy map on real customer data rather than assumptions, and suggests ways to use the resulting insights to improve products or services.
This guide by Social Ventures Australia (SVA) shares insights from over a decade of outcomes-based contracting and social impact bonds (SIBs) in Australia. It offers practical advice, key lessons, and policy implications for organisations exploring these funding models.
This Ethical Fields guide explores community wealth building as a transformative approach to creating equitable, resilient local economies. It highlights principles like local ownership, democratic participation, and wealth redistribution, alongside practical strategies for stakeholders to implement this model in Australia.
This guide introduces 'impact enterprise' as a broad term for businesses creating positive social impact, focusing on core purpose over specific labels.
The Common Foundations from Canada provide easy-to-understand general guidance on measuring impact. The report focuses on five essential practices that comprise a minimum standard of impact measurement.
Learn how to create an effective communications strategy with this practical fact sheet for community organisations. Covering key topics such as audience identification, crafting messages, platform selection, and evaluation, it provides a step-by-step guide with exercises and tips to help community foundations implement and refine their communications efforts.
This Diversity Australia resource provides practical guidance on integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into workplaces. It explores key concepts, outlines benefits like improved culture and business outcomes, and offers strategies for fostering inclusivity. Highlighting leadership's role and the need for ongoing training, it frames DEI as both a moral and strategic imperative, emphasising that building an inclusive workplace requires sustained commitment.
CPA Australia’s guide aids not-for-profits, including social enterprises, in finance management, governance, risk, compliance, and tax—vital for sustainable operations.
This guide, developed by the Centre for Social Impact (CSI) Flinders, provides food relief organisations with strategies to move beyond emergency provision by integrating dignity, choice, and community connections. It offers practical approaches to improving service delivery, emphasising people-centered practices, community engagement, and collaboration. By focusing on long-term solutions, the guide helps address the root causes of food insecurity and fosters sustainable change within communities.
The free, self-directed Impact Investing Hub Playbook supports Australia’s impact investing ecosystem, offering modular content on Impact Investing, Impact Measurement, and Revenue Diversification, tailored for investors, advisors, and organisations seeking investment.
This playbook by Acumen and EY provides a framework and case studies for building inclusive businesses that benefit low-income and marginalised communities while remaining financially sustainable. It offers practical guidance on strategy, governance, workforce inclusion, and impact measurement.
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This guide, supported by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, helps communities manage funds from renewable energy projects and other sources. It covers fund management models, practical steps for distribution, case studies, governance, and long-term sustainability. By providing best practices and real-world examples, it equips communities with the tools to reinvest in local initiatives, ensuring transparency, resilience, and long-term benefits.
This guide by Social Ventures Australia (SVA) helps organisations assess program suitability for the Australian Government’s $100 million Outcomes Fund. It outlines key funding criteria, evaluation methods, and practical guidance for securing outcomes-based contracts and social impact bonds (SIBs).
Crafting a compelling pitch video can provide you with an excellent (and multi-use) resource. This guide shares tips for creating standout videos, different story arc models and advice for working with production agencies.
This Justice Connect guide outlines the key legal obligations organisations have towards volunteers. It provides practical examples, templates, and tips to help organisations navigate crucial areas, including the legal differences between volunteers, employees, and contractors; managing volunteer relationships; ensuring volunteer safety; addressing unlawful workplace behaviour; and handling intellectual property, privacy, and record-keeping issues.
This guide by CSI explains what an outcomes fund is - a financing mechanism that pools funding to support organisations addressing social issues, with payments tied to achieving specific measurable outcomes. This guide by CSI shares more detail on what and who are usually involved in setting up and managing an outcomes fund.
This handbook helps you answer, ‘what problem are we really trying to solve with our social enterprise or project?’ Understanding this helps to find better solutions. This canvas and supporting guide offer a selection of tools to help you frame problems, recognise different types of problems, and open up opportunities for action.
This resource from the Australian Indigenous Governance Institute (AIGI) examines the significance of relationships in First Nations governance. It covers cultural, community, and environmental connections, balancing roles, building trust, and fostering effective partnerships. The guide also explores allyship, network expansion, and practical strategies for creating balanced, respectful collaborations within Indigenous communities and beyond.
Self-determination is vital to the governance and aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, enabling them to lead decision-making, exercise sovereignty, and build community-driven governance systems. This toolkit section outlines principles, pathways, and practical steps toward self-determination, including nation building, treaty processes, and sustainable development.
Justice Connect’s guide helps social enterprises with legal needs, covering structures, governance, setup, compliance, and operational issues for all stages.
"Social Investment Explained" was produced by the Big Lottery Fund and Social Enterprise UK. It aims to help community and social enterprises understand investment options and readiness requirements. While it’s UK-based it offers good questions for consideration for Australian organisations too.
While not specifically about pitching, this comprehensive guide serves as an excellent resource for preparing a social enterprise pitch. Use it as a valuable checklist and preparation tool, to help organise your thoughts and information in a way that resonates with investors, partners or supporters.
Discover the Story Canvas—a practical tool to craft impactful, strategic stories tailored to your needs. Designed by Digital Storytellers, this downloadable canvas simplifies storytelling for nonprofits, social enterprises, and impact organisations. With step-by-step guidance and resources, it helps you create engaging stories that inspire action and advance your cause effectively.
This is a useful guide and template for creating effective investor presentations. It combines crowd-sourced input from top industry experts and the author’s personal experience. It also shares examples, practical design tips and strategies for addressing investor concerns.
The Community Investment Handbook is a guide for communities and practitioners on establishing cooperatives to meet local needs, raise funds, and build circular economies within the framework of national legislation.
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'The DIY Toolkit', NESTA
GuidesNESTA is an independent charity based in the United Kingdom that works to increase innovation capacity in the UK. They have developed this toolkit to help people invent, adopt, or adapt ideas that can deliver impact. It features 30 practical social innovation tools that are quick to use and simple to apply.
This guidebook, made by and for social entrepreneurs, covers building effective boards to balance social mission with financial goals. It includes advice on governance structures, board composition, recruitment, roles, and managing conflicts, highlighting how governance needs evolve as social enterprises grow.
This guide introduces the Participatory City model, designed to create vibrant, inclusive neighbourhoods through active resident engagement in practical projects. It offers principles, methods, and insights for addressing social challenges and building community resilience, serving as a valuable resource for policymakers, community leaders, and organisations.
Discover T.E.S.T., an anti-oppressive framework for ethical storytelling that prioritises the rights and needs of all individuals. T.E.S.T. empowers Story Holders to control their narratives while providing Story Caretakers with principles to ensure safe, ethical storytelling. Explore related resources, including guides and an ethical storytelling video, to deepen your understanding.
This booklet goes beyond the Business Model Canvas as a general tool. It outlines how Ingrid Burkett, an Australian social entrepreneur, applies the Canvas to the specific needs of social enterprise. The booklet walks you through how to use the Canvas step-by-step.
This report provides an excellent guide to developing impact measurement and management strategies. Critically, it advocates for enterprises adopting different strategies depending on their stage of development versus a one-size-fits-all approach.
Wellbeing Matters Guide
GuidesThe "Wellbeing Matters Guide" offers insights from social enterprise leaders, particularly in regional, rural, and remote areas. It provides resources to support leaders in enhancing their wellbeing and effectiveness by sharing real-life experiences.
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