Organising infrastructure, for feedback

Last month, a co-design process kicked-off to develop infrastructure for organising as a social enterprise sector nationally. This is being done to guide the way we plan to organise, cooperate, coordinate and engage.

What's happened so far?

A working group of Bec Scott, Alex Hannant, Mikey Leung, Kylie Hansen, Christina Chun, Cam Willis and Jess Moore designed and hosted focus groups. These were held to explore views and aspirations across the sector for this infrastructure.

The working group then took what was said and developed a draft.

 The team’s job was not an easy one. It was to take what was heard and draft a compass that a bunch of diverse people can get behind and build together.

It was to ensure this compass would support us to achieve our shared vision and mission. It was to check it will help us live our values and practice our principles. After all, this infrastructure has to enable these things to be realised. It was also to recognise and value what already exists.

This compass, once agreed, will give direction to:

• Design and build infrastructure together, and to learn  through doing
• Understand where investment is needed, and build credibility to secure it
• Work out time frames - these are big things that will take time to build

The team landed on the following draft, for feedback.

Social Enterprise Australia - the organisation that is being set up as our new national peak - will build infrastructure for:

Shared direction and action

It will provide functions to hold a shared direction and strategy, support aligned activities, build public will, advance policy and mobilise resources. These functions will be co-owned and informed by all who support the vision, mission, values and principles of the sector. 

Being informed

It will provide a gateway to share and learn about the sector, that is open source, continuously developed and built by the sector. This will include a function to support shared measurement, evaluation and learning to enable real-time understanding of our sector and our collaboration, and support decision-making.

Engagement and connection

It will provide pathways for people to engage and co-create around place, mission and sector development. It will connect existing collaborations, and facilitate new ones that the sector sees as critical, including cross-sector initiatives.

What do you think?

A breadth of voices in this process is critical. Please share your thoughts on these words by taking this short survey. It should take 5-8 minutes to complete.

The deadline for feedback is 5pm AEST, Thursday June 30.

Once feedback is in, it will be reflected back to all of you, and go to the Social Enterprise National Strategy (SENS) Advisory Council to inform finalisation of the compass for organising infrastructure.