Investing in Social Impact

We’re committed to supporting the non-government sector to maximise their social impact through strategic partnerships and relationships.

ARTD is a partner in the NSW Government’s Office of Social Impact Investment Expert Advice Exchange (EAX), which connects non-government organisations and social enterprises with leading legal and professional services firms, financial institutions and other companies to provide pro bono advice on growing and sustaining their impact.

Projects to date:

• Key Assets is a non-government, not-for-profit foster care agency providing out-of-home-care services across Australia. We worked with them to develop an outcomes assurance system for their organisation to improve monitoring, understand and strengthen the outcomes achieved for the children and young people they work with.
• Caretakers Cottage is a not-for profit organisation that helps young people and their families who face a serious crisis. We used a half-day workshop to work with staff to determine the strategic directions and priorities for their transitional youth accommodation service, Options Youth Housing. In response to findings from the workshop, we then assisted Options Youth Housing to trial an outcomes reporting tool to improve how client outcomes were being captured, monitored and reported.
• Midnight Basketball Australia is a national social inclusion and harm-prevention charity that provides a Midnight Basketball program to build the skills and confidence of at-risk young people. We worked with key stakeholders to develop a program logic and evaluation framework for their program. They’re using this to guide how they measure success going forward.

We have also partnered with non-government organisations to collect evidence of their achievements on a partial pro-bono basis.

• Weave Youth and Community Services is a not-for profit organisation in Sydney that supports Indigenous people through a range of services. We have a long-term partnership with Weave, most recently conducting an evaluation designed to understand the features of Weave’s support models that make a difference to clients, focusing on intergenerational connections and continuity of care, and using clients’ expert knowledge of their life experiences to contribute to good practice and development of the broader mental health sector. This was part of a larger Stories of Lived Experience project, which also included photographic portraits and a short documentary to capture the faces and stories of Weave’s clients and community.
• Manning Valley Neighbourhood Services is a community development organisation providing a range of programs and services that respond to local community needs. We evaluated their Mental Health Court Support and Referral Project, which provides non-legal support to people with mental health issues through their local court and legal processes. The evaluation assessed the effectiveness of the project delivery and the extent to which it achieved intended outcomes, and provided recommendations to inform future project development.
• Frankston Peninsula Carers (FPC) is a not-for-profit organisation working to address the significant need for specialist disability accommodation (SDA) in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. We developed a serious of information resources for FPC on a partial pro-bono basis, to increase the capacity of families of people with disability and interested community members to get an SDA project up and running. These included ‘top tips’, project profile and planning templates, guidance on MoUs and case studies of FPC’s projects to date. The resources also aimed to attract the interest of potential funders and developers of SDA.