The four key levers NFPs need to pull to drive systemic change

Uniting’s Tamara Pararajasingham explains how the sector was able to push NSW to extend state support for young people in out of home care to 21 and the lessons we can learn from the campaign.

There was a collective sigh of relief and victorious fist pumps across the not-for-profit sector last week when the NSW government finally announced its decision to extend state support for young people in out of home care from 18 to 21 years of age. 

These significant moments of systemic change are indeed very special, particularly when we know what a positive effect it will have on the life trajectories of so many vulnerable young people, and how much disadvantage can now be disrupted. 

But how exactly did it happen? 

At Uniting, striving for systemic change has been an intrinsic part of our purpose for a long time, but like many in our sector we want to make an even more intentional and effective contribution. Service providers with deep connections across many and varied communities are well placed to do this, and indeed our sector has been behind much of the social reform in this country for centuries. However, to get there we need to be focused, persistent and make better use of four key levers for change.

Identifying where we want to shift the dial and maintaining an unrelenting focus is critical.  We have been asking for over 15 years now, “How might we ensure that care-leavers don’t fear their 18th birthday? How might we re-imagine continuity of care as a right not a privilege?”. And, for over 15 years, we’ve been using four key levers to answer these questions and nudge the system towards greater equity and outcomes for care-leavers. 

The first lever is social innovation. Co-creating new and better solutions with the communities we serve is the NFP super-power. Most NFPs will find our origins lie in pioneering more impactful practices and models. In 2012, Uniting developed and proposed Aboriginal Aftercare, the first culturally specific service for care-leavers funded by government. It was born out of a collaborative design initiative with our First Nations practitioners and communities.  In 2016, we partnered with government to pilot the premier’s Youth Initiative across the Mid North Coast and set up coaching as an alternative approach to case-management. In 2019, we launched Extended Care, a self-funded pilot which combines coaching and extending support to 21 for better outcomes. In 2021, we launched Foyer Central, the only Foyer exclusively for care-leavers in Australia, funded through an impact bond with the NSW government, Social Ventures Australia and St George Community Housing. 

The second lever is to gather evidence and share it through thought leadership. Capturing and sharing outcomes data, investing in independent evaluation, and proactively sharing our results and analysis is critical. Too often NFPs (and their funders) see this as a nice-to-do or an ‘afterthought’, however, systemically, this is a critical contribution we can make. At Uniting, we believe our data, our clients’ experiences and practitioners’ insights give us the opportunity, indeed the responsibility, to influence the way funders and policy makers think about societal challenges. Our partnership with the Nous Group allowed us to assess our Extended Care pilot program with rigour.  The third annual evaluation was launched  earlier this year and revealed a host of compelling statistics, which helped us to prove there is a strong social and economic case for extending care.

The third lever is advocacy.  Armed with innovation and evidence, we can use our relationships and voices to influence decision-makers. As advocates, we can amplify the voices of people and communities trapped by disadvantage. We can and must create platforms and utilise media to tell and compel stories of change. To do this, we need to get sharp on our ‘asks’ and pragmatically consider how we can influence those with the power to make a difference. It won’t always be loud or radical in nature, more often it will be about incrementally influencing our funders, partners and regulators, the lesser-seen wheels of ‘insider-advocacy’. 

The final lever is partnership. No single NFP or system actor will ever shift the system alone. We can increase our impact when we work strategically with others. We amplify others’ impact when we work with them. We must have the discipline to ask ourselves, is this something we need to lead, support or act opportunistically on?  In the story of extending care across this country, the role played by field catalysts and aggregators is particularly noteworthy. Anglicare Victoria’s investment in the national Homes Stretch campaign is a great example of this, as is the CREATE Foundation which has enabled and ensured the voices of young people have been at the centre of our sector’s efforts.  

Activating and balancing our four levers for systemic change starts and ends with leadership and governance for systems change. Our organisations must have clarity on an end-game greater than ourselves. We must be curious, collaborative and think about multiple pathways to scaling our impact. This includes courageous boards willing to back investments into these four levers, senior leaders driving sector and philanthropic partnerships to bring those levers to life and leaders on the ground with a steadfast commitment to practice, outcomes, and client voices to ground our efforts. Regulation, risk-management, and contract-compliance are easy distractors to our purpose but it’s this sort of leadership that will cut through that.

With clarity of purpose and using our levers for change, the next ripples, waves and tsunamis of systemic change are there for us to identify and drive through. Right now, First Nations self-determination, climate change and housing inequality can seem insurmountable but working together with a systemic lens, our sector can effectively tackle some of our nation’s most pressing challenges.