bold ideas better lives challenge 360 critique

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Summary of the Bold Ideas Better Lives Challenge

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Page 1: Bold Ideas Better Lives Challenge 360 critique

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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