Transcript: Rural and Remote Funding to Deliver Social Impact

Music: Yolngu (Club Mix) Rrawun Maymuru

Sherryl Reddy: Thanks so much for joining this open learning session on rural and remote funding to deliver social impact. My name is Sherryl Reddy and it's a real pleasure on behalf of Social Enterprise Australia to introduce this webinar. It is convened by Jennifer Jones from Sefa Partnerships in collaboration with a group of wonderful participants from a community of practice that they have collectively brought to life over the past year. We're really excited to learn from your experiences as peer experts and peer learners in the rural and remote social impact space. Thank you in advance, Rachel, Andrea, Clare, Rebel, Sarah, Trevor, Fiona and Jennifer, for your time and care in sharing your insights with us today.

By way of background, we host these webinars and support a range of peer-to-peer learning communities as part of the Social Enterprise Development Initiative, funded by the Federal Department of Social Services. Our intention is to create spaces for change-makers across the social enterprise community to share knowledge and share experiences that help strengthen connection and collective care across the sector. 

Before I hand over to Jennifer, and this incredible lineup of speakers, I'd like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and care holders of the unceded lands from which we're all joining today. As a migrant settler to this country, I'm privileged to live as a guest on the lands of the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal language group. That's a photo behind me of the beautiful lands that I live, work and play on. I pay my respects to Elders past and present who've cared for Country and community for thousands of years, and I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today or viewing this recording later. I appreciate and am thankful that your presence holds over 65,000 years of systems thinking and relational care for people, place and planet.

Over to you, Jennifer. 

Jennifer Jones: Thanks so much, Sherryl. 

Hello everyone, thanks for joining us today. My name is Jennifer Jones, and I'm joining you today from the beautiful unceded lands of the Gadigal people. I'd like to take this moment to pay my respect to the Elders of this nation and acknowledge the continuous care and connection to the country that hosts us and nourishes us and inspires our listening and learning together today. 

It has been my great pleasure over the past year to host this learning community, exploring the challenges and opportunities to change the way that we fund impact in rural and remote Australia. I do this work on behalf of Sefa Partnerships in collaboration with our sister organisation, Sefa. If you don't know us, we provide flexible finance to impact-led organisations to help them access the resources they need to grow, promoting a more inclusive and equitable future. I can see some of our collaborators on the call today, and I thank you for joining us and being partners in our learning journey. I'm also grateful for the support of the Australian Government, Social Enterprise Development Initiative, for funding this work and to Social Enterprise Australia for their support delivering the program.

Last year, I went to the Impact Investment Summit and I was asking impact investors, how much of your investments are targeted towards rural, regional and remote communities? I got a lot of blank looks and not many concrete answers. One man asked me, are you talking about agriculture? 

When I started reading, I noticed two things. The first was a deficit narrative around rural Australia - the daycare deserts, the workforce challenges, you know the drill. The second was the ease with which the solution was often, ‘we'll just build the capacity of the rural folks’. I work from an office in the heart of Sydney, so I know I'm not speaking from lived experience here, but I really don't think that's the end of the story. While there are lots of great people doing wonderful work building the skills and capacity of rural and remote social entrepreneurs, and I really hope we continue to fund those programs, this learning community was designed to explore other opportunities for change within the funding system.

I started off earlier this year with stakeholder interviews to listen and hear from people who are already doing this work. I want to take a moment to acknowledge and thank everyone who gave their time and shared their experience with me. I think we have someone on the call today from the Australian Centre for Rural Entrepreneurship. I also want to thank wonderful intermediaries in our sector like SECNA, SECTAS, WASEC and the Foundation for Regional and Rural Renewal for their time, expertise and great work in this space. 

I had the great pleasure of hiring a regional artist (Rachel Viski) to work with me on this project. Using an artist was pushing us to be creative in our conversation and to explore other ways of communicating, rather than verbally on zoom. It's been great watching her bring to life complex feelings and concepts in visual illustration. We're going to be launching the Illustrated Guide to the Rural Funding Landscape soon, so you'll get to see all of Rachel's work in that publication.

I learned from working with her about using visual tools to spark conversation, to form connections and to strengthen our relationship. I'm super excited to explore how we can bring art and finance together in the future and where that might take us.

Our learning community brought together two distinct groups. We had six impact leaders from across Australia working in various sectors and we also have a group of eight funders who come to us from traditional finance institutions, from philanthropy and from community foundations. We met separately and then we came together in conversation around three key themes. Talking about how we were experiencing funding and the opportunities for change. 

I am so delighted to be joined today by six of the members of our learning community. Five of the impact leaders and one of the funders. I think I was the most surprised in our conversations about how many funders in Australia are excited about rural investment, curious about working differently and are creative in their ways of thinking. I'll be sharing some of their stories with you in the illustrated guide. It's inspired by the way all of us as a group heard and moved from the frustration and the pain that we were feeling towards fruition, healing and opportunities for change.

It's my great pleasure to hand things over to the members of our learning community to share with you what they've learned. First off the rank is the wonderful Rachel Viski, talented Illustrator and graphic designer from Wagga Wagga. Take it away, Rachel.

Rachel Viski: Thank you so much for that warm introduction, Jen. Good afternoon to everybody on the webinar. My name is Rach Viski, and I'm a regional artist and graphic designer from Wiradjuri Country in New South Wales. My practice focuses on amplifying the voices of regional Australians through illustration. I tell stories visually to help people connect to their community and to their identity. 

I was invited onto the Rural Impact Program because of my lived experience as a regional practitioner who knows what it's like when funding appears through open tender or when you're dreaming up ideas in response to grants that might materialise on the horizon one day. That waiting and that hoping your vision and their objectives might somehow align.

Jennifer Jones brought me in to translate the challenges articulated by people in this program into illustrations. Iteratively and honestly, and as you'll learn very soon, very much out of my comfort zone. The imperfect illustrations I created were then discussed by the cohort in each session. These illustrations became bridges connecting rural, remote and metro landscapes. Three worlds that often cross but are seldom understood. 

Working imperfectly meant I had to let go of my ego completely. These were not my illustrations; they were tools. Sometimes rough, like my axe skills chopping wood in the wintertime. Sometimes they were right to the point, like when I'm fencing a paddock, and I drive the start picket straight into the ground. When we put something visual in front of people, something imperfect, something human, the cohort was able to participate equally. We found the formal language fell away, the status quo softened, and people started having real conversations about what they actually think and feel. 

For example, the hearts on the ground in this illustration are from the person carrying the backpack. This one really spoke to me because we all dream big. There's a lot of love to give, but sometimes there's a trade-off in what you're allowed to deliver based on KPIs, budget or relationships you have or don't have with people on the team. Through this process, I realised my own challenges aren't unique. Regional funding applicants face similar struggles. There's that balancing act of applying wholeheartedly, knowing parts of your vision will become remnants along the way, like those hearts on the ground. The burnout when you succeed, and the program consumes you. That sense of good is defined by metrics and economies of scale that don't fit our context. We do experience these challenges in isolation, but when we have the space and time for knowledge exchange, we realise, oh, you feel this too. This isn't just me.

This program taught me something crucial about trust. I had to own my narrative, and I had to trust Jen's process. Even when it felt deeply uncomfortable, even when the work wasn't polished, and even when I didn't know where we were going. Being perfectly imperfect, showing the rough sketches, the iterations, the works in progress, created something more meaningful than any polished vinyl product would have. It prioritised humans as central to the conversation, not outputs or deliverables.

Both Jen and I agreed the art is the tool and the conversation is the work. That shift in thinking changed absolutely everything. It meant that we weren't measuring success by how beautiful the illustrations were, but by what dialogue it opened. Working on these illustrations validated my lived experience of frustration, gatekeeping, and the feeling that the system wasn't designed for people like me. Everyone felt versions of this. There needs to be a better way to communicate and to build relationships across the rural, remote and metro landscape to make funding more human-centred. This program showed me it is possible. The illustrations were bridges, and the conversations they carried showed me we can build something better when we trust the messy, uncomfortable human process of getting there.

Jennifer Jones: Thanks so much, Rachel, and thanks for getting messy with us. It's been such a pleasure. I'd now like to hand over to the fabulous Trevor Meldrum, who joins us from Cape York in Queensland. Over to you, Trevor.

Trevor Meldrum: I'm Trevor. I run an Indigenous not-for-profit for Cape York. We work with the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, and were formed to try to stop our people from suffering on the ground. 

Our background. I think we can fit Tasmania into Cape York three times, but the first thing people talk about when they hear Cape York is that it is pristine, when it is not. We have been dealing with over 150 years of human impact. Because the majority of our people are Indigenous, we have suffered from that impact for these times. We have tried to make it positive by working on Country.

We work with young people, old people and everybody in between to get the work done. We can do a lot with very, very little. We do a lot of work on Country because that's where our people are bonded. It doesn't matter whether you're Indigenous or non-Indigenous people, our Country up here is so special that it affects you one way or another. With that comes a shared responsibility for looking after our Country, and we try to blend our Indigenous knowledge with our modern scientific stuff. 

We've worked with scientists who have their funny ways of doing things, same as we do as cultural people. We are also attuned to our ancestors because our ancestors have instructed us over the years that we must share everything…whether it's imperfect, perfect or no good at all, we like to share our good, the bad and the ugly.

The other point is that we would like to encourage people, philanthropists, or whoever has an interest in Cape York to come up and have a look at what we do and what we can achieve with so little. So that's about where we are.

A story, in 2019, I saw a dugong in a dugong nursery that had not been there for 25 years because of this pond apple you're seeing on the screen now. We got rid of it, and the seagrass beds that are needed for the turtles and the dugong have regenerated. Mighty proud of what we achieved. It also helps our people to work in amongst Country and make a living, look after our Country and re-obtain or re-gather our pride in our Country. Most of us are from here, and once Cape York calls you, you can't get out of it. You've got to stay here. We're encouraging people to join us on a journey, and hopefully we can keep establishing the partnerships that we already have, and we're thankful for whatever resources that we have. Thank you very much for listening. 

Jennifer Jones: Thanks Trevor. I think your participation enriched our conversation so much. The message about having people on the ground, routine presence, visits that last longer than a quick fly-in, fly-out, and seeing and experiencing the wonderful work you do. It speaks louder than words on a page. If anyone can get up to Cape York, I strongly recommend it. I would love to come swimming with the dugongs with you.

Trevor Meldrum: We can always introduce you to our crocodiles. No drama at all. 

Jennifer Jones: I might pass on that one. Thank you. 

It's my great pleasure to hand over to Clare Wood. Clare joins us from Western Australia, and what struck me about her is the vast distances she travels as part of her everyday job. So Clare, over to you. Tell us what you've learned.

Clare Wood: Thanks, Jen. Yes, so I'm Clare. Today I'm coming from Wadandi Boodja down in Margaret River in the southwest. I'm the Director of Enterprise Partnerships, and we support First Nations women in entrepreneurship using leadership to change their communities and lead and create thriving places across the Kimberley. We work with a whole variety of language groups across the Kimberley. 

I really enjoyed meeting this group, and I have to say Jen's facilitation was excellent. I was thinking about what it was about Jen's facilitation that made me enjoy the conversation so much, and it was that sense of curiosity. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone were this curious about our work? People who fund us. 

It got me thinking about how people who live in their regions, live in their places, live in their towns, are the experts on that context. How do you shift that expertise and that power dynamic between funders and people seeking funding? How do you make more collaborative language so people share the risk of funding together? 

These are photos I took last week on Kwini Country. The community you can see in the photo is Kalumburu, where the Kwini and Wunambal Gaambera people live. Occasionally, when I fly out of these places, I get this bird's-eye view. I think this is the same for many regional places; people fly in and fly out. I look down upon the streets that you can see and think of how rich it is in stories, place, culture and change-makers. How vast the disconnect is between First Nations women's aspirations and the capital funding system, and how are they translated to other places?

It struck me, you can see this river is starting to fill up. There was some rain, and a pressure system came over. Quite often it could be dry and desolate, and then other times it's in complete flood. I think that's the experience of running a social change organisation. Hanging on through dry periods and then experiencing a flood, and then not having the growth to do that properly. 

I was thinking about the question; what are the opportunities for change in this funding space?

Just imagine, what if First Nations women were backed, trusted and funded over time for their long-term mission of social change versus the reality of short-term projects? What if, within those projects, travel cost, distance and time were separate from the actual delivery of those projects? 

To fly from Kununurra out to this place. Kununurra is the closest regional town at the very top of the Kimberley. It's a thousand dollar return ticket basically. So to then think, okay, how do I get that First Nations woman in front of someone in Sydney? That might be $1,000 to get out, an overnight stay, because there's no way that Virgin or Qantas will run on time. How do you manage all of those challenges and the vast spend it takes to get people in front of networks to make their aspirations possible? 

Then I had this other picture zooming out of just how awesome it was to meet the great people on this call, and you multiply that by all of the amazing change-makers, and it's just absurd. The system is absurd. I think people are incredible with their outcomes on such leanness. Often, on the edge of burnout or this idea of hero entrepreneurship, it is really not helpful. So again, I was imagining what if you had conversations with funders that got to back you in those times and understand the context of floods and dry seasons, and capacity might be stronger?

Can we just dismantle that word ‘capacity building’ and say it's more like ‘barrier removing’? People who live in rural and remote areas have the most incredible creative capacity-building skills ever. With all the hardships they might face and increasing hardships with climate, risks and challenges. I feel like I could rant.

I've really enjoyed being part of this group. It's been helpful to zoom out and not feel alone in this space. Dream about what could be created if the people seeking funding and the people providing funding came together in a more collaborative, relationship-based way rather than transactional.

Jennifer Jones: Thank you, Clare, that was perfect. Thank you for bringing those photos and showing us a little taste of what your context looks like. I think Western Australia often gets left off the conversation, and it was so wonderful to have your insight with us.

We're going to move now over to Queensland. I'm so delighted to introduce you to Sarah. Sarah has the joy of organising Queensland's Music Festival and Music Trails, which helps bring people to explore regional, remote and rural Queensland. Over to you Sarah.

Sarah Kilalea: Thanks, Jennifer. I wanted to start by saying I feel very strongly about what Clare said. I feel like having the group together, feeling like you're not alone and sharing your thoughts and feelings about funding struggles was such an amazing experience. I really enjoyed being a part of it.

My name is Sarah Kilalea, and I work for the Queensland Music Festival. We started off as a festival in Meanjin, Brisbane. Over the last four years, we've created the Queensland Music Trails, where we go into regional and remote areas, collaborate with local communities, and

First Nations groups. We have a very strong local buy policy and EOI's for everything that we do in the festival. The idea is that we bring incredible musical performances to areas that wouldn't be able to experience them otherwise and inject all of this amazing support into the local economy. We're bringing tourists, who stay longer, and help support local businesses. We're supporting local artists who get a platform to be on stage with people like Xavier Rudd. We've got these amazing events that happen throughout the Outback.

We've got three major trails, we've got the Outback Trail, which culminates in Mount Isa with Outback sounds. We've got my personal favourite, Between the Tides, which is happening in Airlie Beach next year. There is a section of beach, and as the tide pulls out, a stage is constructed, and this incredible performance happens with a Welcome to Country from the amazing First Nations peoples. We have these stellar, incredible artists, local, international and national. Then as the tide comes back in, we leave absolutely nothing behind. It's such an incredible experience that if you haven't done it, I would recommend it because you feel so connected to Country and to the people who've performed. The audience comes away with a whole new perspective on the land that they've maybe walked on a million times.

As you can see, I'm very passionate about my job. Jen, maybe now is a good time to show a little video of what we do. 

Video clip started

“We love QMF because they drive regional dispersal, support regional communities and help to increase length of stay. Partnering with QMF is partnering with the regions of Queensland.”

“We love being a part of this music festival that's right across Queensland and that's the best thing about it. It shows people from one end of the state the wonderful things that we know already. How good is Queensland?”

“The Queensland Music Trail is a special initiative that brings economic and cultural benefits to the community and our region.”

Video clip finished 

Sarah Kilalea: From that video, it looks like we are incredibly successful and have all the money in the world. The problem we face is that so much of it relies on philanthropy and grants. I've applied for about 66 grants in the last seven months, and only one of them was multi-year. To achieve the impact, go back to these communities and help support them economically, you can't just be there, like we discussed in the meeting, like a seagull, where you fly in and you fly out. We want to be there for months at a time, helping support, helping collaborate and building the skills so it stays in those regions. To do that we need grants and sponsorships that actually sustain us so we can achieve that amazing impact. 

That was incredible to share with the group and hopefully come up with some solutions for funders to think of better ways to support in a more long-term fashion, because all of us felt exactly the same. You don't just want a year of funding, you want 10 years of funding. 

We've partnered with 18 councils and 28 communities statewide. 170,000 attendees have seen our events, generating 26 million in economic impact. We win loads of awards for the work that we do, but with every single other not-for-profit that we spoke about in our working group, we have exactly the same struggles. The box office is only about one-fifth of the money that we need to keep this happening. 

Going into regional and remote areas, we've obviously got staging infrastructure, paying for these really high-level artists, collaborating with all these amazing local communities. We have events in local schools called the Outback Exchange, where Spinifex College in Mount Isa, get to see Taylor Moss and all these amazing artists. They hold questions and answers and learn about employment pathways for young artists. We have a healthy ageing collaboration project, which is an aged care facility and a young dance house of 10-year-olds. They collaborate and make a dance, then they perform it on the stage at Mount Isa for Outback Sounds. 

We've also got our incredible First Nations songwriting programs as well. There's an area called Jibija Ung-gwee where William Barton, who is a Traditional Owner from Mount Isa, is going to collaborate and create some original works. We try as many ways as we can to create creativity within the areas we go. We just need the support to keep doing it.

Jennifer Jones: Thank you so much for sharing that, Sarah. What you brought to the conversation is that incredible impact measurement. Sefa started out thinking that one of the topics we might discuss is how we can measure impact more effectively. We realised that actually, you guys have all the skills you need to be measuring and communicating your impact. Really, that tightrope of not wanting to appear too polished and amazing, needing to be deserving of money and walking that tightrope was really evident in the conversations you shared. So thank you so much, Sarah.

I would now like to introduce, many of you might already know Rebel Black. She is one of the sector champions with SECNA, and she's been championing rural women across New South Wales for so long. It's my great pleasure to introduce all of you to the wonderful Rebel Black. 

Rebel Black: Thank you, Jen, it's lovely to be here with you all. Great to see so many people on the call and interested in the learning experience that this incredible cohort of people has had together. 

I'm on the land of the Yuwaalaraay people in Lightning Ridge in western New South Wales. I've lived here for 25 years, and for more than the last decade I've been building THE Rural Woman Cooperative, firstly as a business and secondly as a community-led exert. I worked with a group of colleagues to build a cooperative that then acquired the business that I had been building for about seven years prior to that. Really passionate about ownership and stewardship. How do we build community wealth? 

When you live in a remote community like Lightning Ridge, where it's essentially a 10-hour drive to anywhere of significance, the opportunities for connection and networking are limited and costly. Having said that, I've always said yes to as many of those things as possible. 

There were a few things that really struck me about this opportunity. One was that I would be in the room with both peers and colleagues in the social enterprise sector. Two, that I would be in the room at the same time with funders and people that are on the other side of this double-sided marketplace that we perceive, that we play in anyway. 

The other thing is that we were offered to be paid. Even though it was a nominal amount, it was still the first time ever in 25 years of community advocacy that an offer had ever been made. Very often, in fact, almost 100% of the time in all of the community advocacy work that I do, I am the only person at the table unpaid, because I am a volunteer advocate. I am the volunteer Chairperson of THE Rural Woman Cooperative. I am the volunteer Vice Chairperson of the Lightning Ridge Opal Fields Reserve Trust. I don't get paid for these roles. In fact, most of the time I'm paying for the privilege. That to me signalled an incredible shift, like a tidal seismic shift, in the way that consultation was at least being framed up. I was super curious to see how that played out. 

I wanted to echo Clare's words that Jen was an outstanding facilitator, and the facilitation methodology and her manner have been exceptional. I want to thank you for that, Jen, because I really think you brought the best out of everybody who was at the table and enabled safe, real, transparent and authentic conversations to happen. Because change does not happen in the absence of that. We can't move the needle on anything that we're not willing to be truthful about. We can't be truthful about these things unless we're in safe containers to have those difficult and uncomfortable conversations.

Another thing that was brilliant about being here was reinforcing that change cannot happen by gaslighting individuals. We need to take both a bottom-up and a top-down approach to change. I've been building a concept around change needing to be around four S's. We need to help change the self. That seems to be where we're very narrowly focused a lot, that the individual must change. We also need to address systemic and structural issues that are presenting themselves in the marketplace, in the sector. We also need to address societal barriers. That to me was what was great about this community of practice: we were able to extend ourselves into all four of those areas, and have conversations around what it means to be a founder. And what does it mean to be a social entrepreneur? The structural, systemic and societal barriers that we face. What does it mean to be a funder in that same space? The challenges and complexities. 

I loved hearing about the challenges from funders because when I'm in a room with a funder, they're not telling me their problems. They're listening to me pitch and thinking how do I solve their problem? I think that was a really beautiful relational opportunity, to get more real in a way where there were no expectations and no power dynamics. That is the other thing that we face at the intersection where I work, of gender and geography; the power imbalance is enormous, it's unaddressed, it's unnamed, and it is huge. To be able to speak to that is really important. 

The final thing that I saw recently in Malaysia, on a trip that I took with thanks to SECNA and the social enterprises I'm part of, was that we need a minister. This has to be top-down as well. It's fine for all of us to want to make change and to get into rooms together and collaborate, but we need a policy agenda being driven through ministerial portfolios. A Minister for Community Wealth Building, Minister for Social Entrepreneurship, Minister for something that is around the change that we're really trying to see. Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in the entire experience.

Jennifer Jones: Thank you, Rebel. Rebel was actually one of my stakeholder interviews getting started. She very generously calls our attention to the vast amounts of unpaid labour that support social impact across regional, remote and rural Australia. I think a lot of that unpaid labour is very gendered, it's often women, and that is what is driving so much of the incredible impact that we are seeing across our country. Thanks to women like yourself for your leadership. I'm so glad that you were able to participate, Rebel. Thank you. 

I have the incredible privilege of introducing you now to Andrea Hogg. Her job is also building the capacity of rural leaders across Australia. She is based in Canberra, but she works all across this incredible nation. Over to you Andrea. 

Andrea Hogg: Thanks Jen. Thanks, everybody, for joining in today. 

I'm Andrea Hogg, and I live on Ngunnawal Ngambri Country in the ACT. As Jen has just mentioned, it's my absolute privilege to be able to work for an organisation that develops leadership for people who live, work, play, have great times, and are also challenged in rural, regional and remote Australia. We're going into our 34th year of operation, and that sounds amazing. That probably makes it sound like we've had endless security of funding to be able to do that. But I think anybody who has worked here, there have been many, many periods where we weren't quite sure that we were going to make it into the 34th year, because it's not always secure, as we all know. 

Not wanting to repeat everything that's already been said by the other amazing people who have been part of the group, similarly, I have found this to be such an incredible opportunity to have really open, transparent conversations where we've been able to challenge each other and also to connect within this sector. It's almost strange that we don't do this more often. I think one of the reasons we don't, is that frequently in this sector, you are pitted as a competitor rather than a collaborator. We are all competitively trying to secure grants.

We were joined by a couple of people from time to time in this community of practice who had some data sets on the number of grant applications that not-for-profits submit in a calendar year. It had been calculated in terms of all of our time, all of the monetary value, and then what amount of money was delivered or able to be secured by the people who got the money in the end. It was really skewed in terms of how we were all competitively working for this amount of money. Those were the kinds of conversations that we unearthed. We already knew some things, but we didn't know others, and we were naming them. I think once you name something and bring it into the public consciousness, then you have to do something about it. Right? You can't pretend that it's not there because you know about it. It was a great opportunity.

Also we did get to hear from funding entities. Like Rebel, I really appreciated that opportunity, because we can all hold assumptions about why we're not getting the money, and they've got the power over us, and so on. It was really useful, informative, and I suspect, for a lot of the people that we were able to speak to, they genuinely are looking for alternative mechanisms as well. I suspect in the busyness and in the legacy that a lot of us inherit as either fund-seekers, fund-makers or grant-makers, we need to take that time out to do these sorts of things to be experimental.

That leads me to some of the things that I think are further opportunities for the sector and for this community of practice, which is money for experimentation for the social enterprise sector or the not-for-profit sector, which is not very forthcoming. You generally have to prove your runs on the board. You have to indicate in a grant proposal that you absolutely, 100% can deliver on a certain set of outcomes and will be able to measure them. There's very limited money and appetite for people to come with you on an experimental ride. There's a real need for operational and untied funding, and I think we would all say that.

As an organisation that brings people together in our leadership work from all over Australia, we are really consciously attempting to be equitable and always have been equitable around people who come from rural, regional, and remote areas. If you consider the map of Australia, the distances involved, and Clare mentioned earlier, the distances involved in transiting somebody from remote Australia are exhaustive. Just so much money. Any money that can help offset those operational costs would be really great. 

I’ve actually got a good news story. During the course of being part of this community of practice, our organisation was fortunate enough, after many years of having conversations with a philanthropic foundation, where we were talking openly about the possibilities of aligning and working together. They approached us, and they wrote the proposal for us. They have offered us a proposal, and in our world that's unique. We've never had that before, but we know it's possible, and we'd love to see more of it. Thanks, Jen. 

Jennifer Jones: Thank you so much for sharing that story with us, Andrea. I also have never heard of a funder writing the proposal, and I love it. I'm super keen to try it out next year and see how it goes. Thank you.

We are nearing the end of our conversations, and it's my great pleasure to introduce you to one of the many participants who was in a group of funders. Fiona Maxwell is the CEO of the John Villiers Trust. We are so delighted to have you join us today. Fiona, over to you. 

Fiona Maxwell: Hi Jen, and many thanks for having me. I'm coming from the Turrbal and Jagera lands in Meanjin, Brisbane, and delighted to be here.

The John Villiers Trust is a public ancillary fund, and we specifically fund children and families in regional and rural Queensland. You have to get out of Brisbane before we'll fund you. Our focus is very much on community-led, place-based, but also prevention and early intervention work. We're invitation only, and that's really with a view that we don't want not-for-profits to be writing lots of applications that aren't going anywhere. We will have a coffee or a chat with anyone, and then it's about working with the people that are the right fit from an application point of view. We also have a focus on elevating country voices. 

I grew up in North Queensland in Mount Isa, Winton, and Cairns. It's staggering in Brisbane how little conversation or awareness there is of regional Australia. In fact, I was in a national conversation, and someone was talking about a Melbourne-based organisation that was complaining about having to travel to Warrnambool. Warrnambool's three hours from Melbourne, whereas in Queensland, you could travel three hours and not get very far, although your mobile phone probably won't work.

So many questions that this whole process threw out. How do we create more intent in our philanthropy rather than simply giving to good causes? How do we think about the role of philanthropy beyond giving away money? 

The Queensland philanthropic sector is immensely connected, and we have a number of strong collaborations. One is the Queensland Kids Funders Alliance. Those of us who are funding in the child and family space work very collaboratively. Also emerging is the Queensland Place Funders Network, which is exciting with both Queensland funders, and also a number of national funders who are at that table.

I was new in the role when this whole journey started, and so it's been a great learning process for me, to meet such a diverse mix of funders and social enterprises working regionally and nationally. I think a number of our calls, we had people literally calling in from caravans where they were road tripping all around the countryside. It's been a good test of the internet capacity at various places, among other things. 

Working in social enterprises regionally is so different. The role in the community, the interface with local business, the challenge of connectivity, all those things that people have raised, or even just the cost of getting somewhere, or coming to participate in a professional development experience. I think Trevor's internet dropped in and out half the time, that was a good example of that reality. 

I really valued the process with the artist. My background is in visual arts, so that was just lovely, Rachel, to have your interpretations of our journey. Also the ability for us to have had a discussion, have it illustrated and then come back to go, well, what were we trying to say there? Does that illustrate what we were trying to achieve? Was that a positive sentiment or a challenging sentiment? How can that be visually represented? That was a really healthy practice, and I think a type of collaboration, Rachel and Jen, that you could very well do again. 

To pick up some of what others have spoken on. It became a strong, trusted and respectful conversation around the power dynamic that ultimately exists between funders and grant seekers. Having spent nearly all my career as a grant seeker, it is an immense privilege to be in this position of giving money. We had a really hearty discussion around, yes, this very major national funder who had very proudly received 3,000 applications for 30 grants and thought that was a good thing. Across all of us in the group, we were appalled. That was not something to be proud of. That was 10,000 not-for-profit hours that hadn't translated. 

What it meant for me as an invitation only funder. I would never want to appear as a closed shop or having closed doors. How do we maintain an open conversation whilst also not getting people to write grant applications that are never going to go anywhere? We've had some good follow-up conversations with folks since then. 

I'm really excited, we just had a recent grant round for a new strategy, and one of the proposals we've supported is multi-year untied funds to a regionally working organisation in Central West Queensland. So that's something really delightful. They have strong community relationships, and when there's a crisis or an issue in that community, they need to be able to respond. What I heard recently, which has really lifted the benchmark, I think someone said, couldn't we have 10-year funding? I heard about a beautiful family foundation in a regional area of Victoria, that just made three 10-year grants to organisations that they're working with, that are a million plus each. So that's an extraordinary relationship and legacy. 

It's been a fantastic opportunity and a great connection. I hope that others can join in these kinds of forums moving forward, and we can continue the conversations. Thanks Jen. 

Jennifer Jones: Thanks so much, Fiona, and thank you for your insights and the learnings. I will also say that in some of those conversations, I tended towards the grant seeker side of things myself and really appreciated funders calling me up on that. We do have a tendency to slip into frustration and demonising. This community was wonderful in connecting us and bringing us together. 

That wraps up our formal part of the conversation. Alice, were there any questions that you wanted to throw to us or should we just go live to the audience?

I can see one from a participant for program and service providers. What type of evidence of expected and actual results from your work do you think funders and impact investors should expect to see?

Fiona Maxwell: The evidence piece is such a tricky thing. The measurement of impact, particularly of long-term social programs, is often quite challenging to measure. It's both the data, in terms of participation and outcomes, and impact, like some of the stuff that Sarah put up about QMF. Also the stories, the case studies, the individual, here's so and so they participated in this program and here's something that happened in their life that came out of it.

I think specifically around impact investors and how to measure or compare that. That's a whole other piece, because how do you measure social housing compared to carbon farming compared to solar projects? That's really challenging. There are global entities that are trying to do that work, like the Global Impact Investing Network. So yes, when someone figures out how to compare that let me know. 

Sarah Kilalea: I do think as well, to lead on from Fiona, the grants that I think are the most aligned are when they've got the big blank boxes, and they go what sort of impact can you achieve, and what are your ways of showing that? Because, as Fi was saying, every single application and grant is different, so you do have to have different ways of measuring. The social lasting impact of what you've left in the community is very hard to gauge. The best way is maybe asking for testimonials and feedback, then going back the next year and seeing how things have changed. Again it's the long game, right? 

Rebel Black: Reading the question around the evidence, what is the evidence? It is actually crucial that organisations are better at collecting that evidence and are resourced and supported to collect that evidence. Especially when people are grant writing or building programs, they're not necessarily embedding evaluation and measurement or evidence gathering as part of their core business. They're just thinking, we want to get the job done, we want to get the impact. 

The actual building of the evidence is quite a costly exercise to do properly, to gather those case studies, to do the longitudinal research. I think it's a really great question that we all need to be embedding as best practice of core business that we're constantly building evidence banks that are both qualitative and quantitative as well.

Jennifer Jones: I noticed as well that we didn't have any government folks participate in our conversations. We did have the invitation out to some departments, particularly in New South Wales. It was really challenging for people to represent the government and participate in a group like this. 

I think the big challenge I heard from our social impact leaders was that government funding changes because of policy change, and not because of evidence. We had great examples of programs with solid evidence that invested time and money in that collection of evidence, and that had no impact at all on whether funding continued or not. The emotional toll of that is quite devastating over time as well, so just recognising that.

Participant 1: My question is around, there's a lot of work that goes into writing grants or applications and gathering information, gathering support, doing all those sorts of research things. I've started to notice that, maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, grants don't actually value the work before you put the application in. It's all about what you're going to do after. I wondered if I was missing something or if that's just the way it is, that's part of being in this space.

Rebel Black: I noticed recently, I don't know if others saw it, but Minderoo Foundation partnered with Regional Arts Australia, and they did an expression of interest. So a double process. The expression of interest was pretty comprehensive, even though it was an EOI. They were paying a thousand dollars for those who were moved through the EOI into an application. There was a $1,000 contribution to the applicant for the next phase. I hadn't seen that before, because you're right, Andrea, even to build those grants requires a huge amount of work, especially for letters of support and all sorts of things. 

I think that's a natural part of the process of building a great project anyway. You shouldn't avoid doing that. But there is no recognition of that in the process. I did see a shift, and I think it's upon us all to amplify where we're seeing good change practice happening and tell everybody about it. 

Jennifer Jones: Sarah, I saw your face light up too. Did you want to jump in? 

Sarah Kilalea: I just absolutely love the fact that they're finally recognising there are two rounds. That, yes, both of them, an EOI and the full application, take exactly the same amount of work. So that's lovely what you said, Rebel, that someone's finally acknowledged that and they're willing to support people through that next phase. That just made me really happy. 

Jennifer Jones: We did have a discussion in our group about how we could better resource collaboration. Noting that some of the greatest proposals out there involve a lot of work from communities that are connecting and figuring out how to do things more efficiently and work together. It takes not just time and money, but also skills. We looked at some examples. Foundation for Regional and Rural Renewal has a program, and there's some great inspiration out there. They are just a few at the moment, so hopefully we can grow those moving forward

Participant 2: Thank you all for your inputs today. It's really good to hear about Minderoo, because this is something I've been talking about, and I've actually had a conversation with Jen about the costs up front, and unsuccessful applications, I believe should get a small amount of money in return for the work that goes into it. 

It's also interesting to hear from Andrea on the same issue of the cost of putting together an application. So my question/comment is around the number of charities that are out there, the number of funders, the amount of applications being put to funders and how, from my perspective, I think the sector needs to learn how to collaborate more. To work in partnership with other charities and not feel so threatened by working with a charity that's similar to the one that you represent.

I appreciate that comes with some big challenges, but I think we need to start thinking about that seriously and how we can do it so we are sharing costs and reducing the pressure on funders and maximising outcomes. Curious on some thoughts or ideas on how to do that because I know it's a big piece of work, but I do think it's something we need to start thinking about. 

Clare Wood: In response to that, it's somewhat connected to how do you fund operations? I think there were some language changes that I saw in a Minderoo post. It was saying that some of that money goes into the potential to collaborate, to develop and to meet with partners. In the Kimberley, we're fortunate that a changemaker, Natasha Short, who runs Maganda Makers, has fostered a collaborative ecosystem between a lot of really small social enterprises. So we have a great sense of collaboration.

I often think, what would be possible if we were funded for that time, and it wasn't all about love and passion, because that only gets you so far. I think it loops back to if there was more flexible, untied, multi-year funding, then the collaboration for impact you would see would be much greater.

Jennifer Jones: I love that there are great things happening because of great people who have great skills that they have built. But how could we resource it so we're not relying on that individual and putting all the responsibility and burden on them? But resourcing everyone to gain those skills and moving from competition to collaboration.

Sherryl Reddy: Jen, I think Participant 3’s question is what advice would you give to individuals who wish to start doing great things in their local communities? 

Rebel Black: Just start doing the things. Have the conversation with the people who are going to do it with you, and don't feel like you've got to be the only person. You're probably not the only person thinking about those things. Just start, don't wait for permission. 

Fiona Maxwell: I think there are some great forums that a lot of people regionally are talking about. Social Impact in the Regions was a really great conference that was in northern New South Wales this year and will be in Stanthorpe, Queensland next next year. Change Fest has just happened in WA. So for people wanting to start out and maybe understand some different methodologies, some different ways of working in communities, if you can get to those things, they have a really strong regional focus. I think Change Fest will be in Cairns next year so they tend to move around the country. 

The other thing is, if you're very new to this kind of area, volunteer for an organisation that you like. Help that way so that you start learning the basics and then if you want to branch out and do something on your own, at least you know how it operates. In the meantime, you're still doing some good  while you're finding your feet.

Jennifer Jones: All great advice. I would add as well, looking for your sector intermediaries where you are. There's state and territory coordination groups for social enterprise. There's also some charity groups that coordinate, and finding some people to inspire, connect and support that work is a really great start. 

I would like to take this moment to thank everyone who's participated in the call today and in the funding conversation. It has been messy, uncomfortable, absolutely beautiful and flourishing to be sharing and experiencing this wonderful wild ride with all of you.

We will be making a concrete output in the months to come and releasing that illustrated guide to the funding landscape. Please follow us on LinkedIn, check out the website, and we'll send some things out to you. I might take this moment to hand back over to Sherryl, who will see us out of today.

Sherryl Reddy: Thanks, Jennifer. Thank you so much for facilitating such a creative, deeply connective community of practice, where participants clearly felt safe and brave to share the realities, their dreams, perspectives and pressures faced by leaders, change makers and funders in the rural and remote space.

There are so many takeaways. 

• The space and time for knowledge exchange. 
• Using art as a tool to spark honest conversation. 
• Trevor spoke about the shared responsibility of looking after Country. 
• Clare, I loved your approach to switching from capability building to barrier removing. 
• Sarah, you spoke about the power of music to connect rural and remote areas.
• Rebel the opportunities for change activation at the levels of self, system, structures and societal barriers. That we can't move the needle on anything that we're not prepared to be truthful about. 
• Andrea, you talked about once you name something, you have to do something about it, and wouldn't it be great if we took more time to be experimental and to fund that. 
• Fiona, I loved what you said about how do we elevate rural and remote voices? How do we acknowledge the power dynamics between grant seekers and grant providers? 

We definitely welcome with enthusiasm, multi-year untied funds to regional, remote and rural organisations. We welcome that trust in strong community relationships and strong community expertise. I think all of you have shared so much with us today. We've learned so much from having the privilege at Social Enterprise Australia to steward and to support the emergence of these learning communities. 

Mountains of gratitude to all of you, Rachel, Andrea, Clare, Rebel, Sarah, Trevor, Fiona and Jennifer, for being so generous in sharing your experiences and for showing us what trust-based care and collaboration look and feel like. Thank you also to everyone who took the time to join us online today.

Huge thanks to the team at the Department of Social Services, who are supporting the development of these learning communities with funding as part of the Social Enterprise Development Initiative. Thank you to the Social Enterprise Australia crew behind the scenes who make these communities happen.

Thank you everyone have a good afternoon.