Summary of the Bold Ideas Better Lives Challenge

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3. In creating the Challenge, we wanted to give local people the opportunity to lead this
experimentation.
We believe that people and communities affected by a particular social issue are the best
architects of possible solutions.
The Challenge put that resource to the test.
We saw an opportunity to:
- Identify what is happening around the country – in neighbourhoods and in local communities
- Build a portfolio of practical examples showcasing social innovation in Australia
- Explore our role in supporting people to turn good ideas into better lives
So we asked Australia: ‘What do you think are the big problems facing our society, and how
can we solve them?”
The opportunity: access to $1 million dollars of investment and the support of TACSI and our
network of mentors to test out those solutions in practice.
And so began the largest social innovation competition of its kind ever held in Australia.
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4. Our first step was to identify the cream of innovative ideas, methods and people.
We put the call out far a wide and received applications from Cape York to
Launceston, Sydney to Broome and everywhere in between. All in all, 258 inspiring
applications were submitted online, outlining the core issue, their bold idea and how
their approach would make for better lives.
Here is the initial pitch from one of the Challenge Winners, Who Gives A Crap:
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6. To help us in our search, we pulled together a four member Advisory Panel who
assessed each application against the following criteria:
Innovation: The creativity and innovation of the proposal (this included older ideas
not tried out in practice or in a particular context)
Impact: The relevance of the proposal to the Australian context and the degree of
benefit and lasting impact on communities
Implementation: The practicality of the idea and ability to muster the resources
needed to implement/replicate the idea plus the risks of implementation.
The 12 finalists each received an incentive grant of $1000 in addition to specialist
expert mentoring to further develop their pitch and project plan.
They were then flown to Adelaide to personally present their pitch to the judging
panel, the TACSI Board.
From this shortlist, the judging panel selected the following 8 winning projects:
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7. Aged Care Digital Lifestyles – engaging older people with technology to improve
their quality of life
AroundYou.com.au – enhancing social inclusion by connecting people with events
and activities in their local neighbourhood
Employment Pathways for Deaf Students – creating amazing communication
technology that will help deaf students get jobs in cafes and hospitality
Hello Sunday Morning – changing Australia’s binge drinking culture by getting
individuals to take responsibility for their drinking behaviour.
Renew Australia – placing creative, social and cultural initiatives in disused buildings
to re-vitalise urban areas.
Sharing Universal Stories of Healing from Depression – raising awareness of
depression among refugee communities through digital storytelling.
Tjungu: Learning Country – building social entrepreneurship in remote Aboriginal
communities across central Australia.
Who Gives A Crap – turning consumers into philanthropists through toilet paper that
gives twice.
More information is available in the booklets handed to you as you came in or on the
TACSI website.
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8. TACSI was keen to be more than just a funding body – we wanted to play an active role in the
implementation of these projects.
I came on board to mentor and support the projects fulltime.
My first challenge was to put in place flexible systems that promoted ongoing communication
with the ventures. This went beyond a traditional “progress reporting” framework and enabled
us to share what we were learning along the way as playing an active role in the success of
each project.
But how were we going to know what kind of mentoring or support they needed?
Inspiration was drawn from four key domains:
1. What were the day to day challenges they were facing
2. Issues / needs identified in reports
3. TACSI’s aerial perspective as the intermediary across all projects and with one step
removed from the frontline
4. Reflecting on evidence demonstrating the social impact being created by the project
But it was much more relational than this. It involved working in the café with deaf students to
get a real sense as to what the project meant in real life. Or getting a sense of what makes a
successful brand by sitting in supermarkets observing the way people select their toilet paper.
When I began the process of pin pointing the individual steps and actions undertaken over the
past year to get our ventures off the ground, four critical areas emerged. These are the four
foundations a venture needs to successfully succeed.
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9. Investment
More than just our own initial investment.
This is about ensuring long term financial sustainability for ventures through activities
like financial modelling and well as brokering relationships with potential financing
partners.
Strategy
This encompasses business development activities like research, marketing, strategic
& operational planning.
Hours were spent honing the pitch for investors down to the last word.
Knowledge & Relational Capital
This is about identifying and forming the relationships and connections needed to get
runs on the board. It’s also about using TACSI’s brand & relationships to open doors.
Sometimes this included playing Private Investigator trying to work out how to get an
idea across the desk of influential people like Dick Smith.
Impact Assessment
This is about helping the projects evaluate the real life impact of what they’re doing.
How does AroundYou.com.au know whether the technology they’re developing is
actually enabling Tanya in Kununurra to connect to the playgroup in her
neighbourhood – and how does this experience shape the ongoing development of
that technology.
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10. So what are the outcomes of our work?
1. Are these eight bold ideas actually resulting in better lives?
2. Has TACSI’s involvement helped amplify these solutions?
3. Was TACSI’s investment worthwhile?
We are still learning about what impact these ventures are going to have because some of the
projects are only now entering the implementation phase. We’re seeking to create long term
change which takes time to galvanize – we’re not looking for short term impact.
To give you an idea of some of the goals the more advanced ventures have been kicking:
Hello Sunday Morning now have 2139 registered HSMers which equates to influencing
21,390 peoples attitudes to drinking
AroundYou.com.au is connecting 150,000 unique visitors per month to information about
their local community. They are also partnering with Melbourne’s Herald Sun and Leader
Community Newspapers to take those events to their readers. You’ll soon be able to see these
events through AdelaideNow.
DVDs showcasing Universal Stories of Healing from Depression that were made
collaboratively with Afghan, Burmese and Sudanese communities are now available on the
iSee-iLearn and BeyondBlue websites to promote understanding of depression and healing
within refugee communities.
The experiences of turning vacant buildings in Adelaide, Townsville and Newcastle into vibrant
cultural spaces has created a new national organisation, Renew Australia, which is being
launched in Newcastle this coming Monday. Renew Australia is tailoring the Renew model to
support local communities who want to revitalise empty spaces in their towns and cities.
For TACSI, this experience has enabled us to develop a methodology which will shape our
ongoing work supporting innovation and entrepreneurship across Australia.
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11. What have we learnt along the way?
1. The challenge exposed innovation happening in the real world by real people – our involvement
provided capital, a national platform and access to a rich network of mentors, partners and people to
help them get to the next level
2. The selection process used yielded projects with a higher capability of effecting large scale social
change
3. You have to be 100% certain of the impact you’re aiming for, so that you don’t end up off track
4. Feedback from our ventures has clearly demonstrated the value of providing mentoring and support
instead of just investment $$
5. Active participation by TACSI as the investor enabled a more reciprocal relationship transcending
the barriers of traditional funding models
6. Reporting doesn’t have to be onerous. Our flexible approach meant that reporting actually benefited
the ventures. Some used a blog to track their progress for future evaluation data, others needed a
more frequent verbal approach which enabled conversational feedback, some used it as a chance to
produce a monthly report card.
What would we do differently:
- We underestimated the level of interest the projects had with the other ventures & in TACSI. Next time
we would spend more time fostering the community across our projects.
- TACSI was able to provide a stronger level of support to ventures when we untapped a broader range
of stakeholders including other TACSI staff and TACSI Board members rather than just relying on the
Venture Support Officer.
- And finally, financial sustainability needs to be a standing item on the radar. For most of these ventures,
TACSI’s investment was their first or main source of income. To ensure maximum return on our
investment and social impact, we, as the main investor, needed to put more of a focus on the venture’s
future financial sustainability beyond our involvement.
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12. A year into the Challenge, we’re already seeing amazing results emerge from the
outstanding work of our ventures. We’re looking forward to hearing the feedback from
today’s panel so that we can continue to strengthen the mentoring and support we
provide.
Stay tuned to the TACSI website to continue this journey with us.
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