In early June 2025, a group of NGO CEOs in health and community services sat down for a private off-the-record breakfast conversation. The room ran under Chatham House rules. Two questions framed the morning: what does it take to influence the system when you are not the one steering it, and where do you find space to think instead of only respond. The conversation moved across policy, funding, commissioning, collaboration and culture.
Service access and equity
A concern came up about the policy drift from equity towards equality, treating fairness as if it meant sameness. Some funding continues to sustain models that are no longer fit for purpose. The framing matters because models built on sameness of input can produce inequitable outcomes for the people who most need access.
Collaboration and competition
Funders encourage provider collaboration in theory. In practice, trust and time are what make it work, and NGOs often carry the risk for both. In competitive funding environments, providers are reluctant to share openly where intellectual property, local knowledge or market position could be compromised. The result is that risk is shifted onto NGOs without shared accountability structures alongside it.
Funding and policy
Underfunding against known and forecast service demand was a shared concern. Short-term contracts limit long-term strategic planning, particularly across regions where continuity matters most. The pressure to be all things to all people, in order to stay viable, spreads organisations too thin to focus on their highest-value work. Funding flexibility is narrow, which limits the ability to respond to the specific needs of place and population. Government and NGO policy decisions also carry downstream impacts on service availability and on the workforce, including the availability of volunteers, that are not always visible at the point of decision.
Fragmentation
Duplication and gaps persist across different levels of government, and NGOs are often left to make sense of what will work on the ground. Silos exist not just across departments but between providers, particularly where place-based work is needed. Providers with scale and grassroots, community-specific organisations need to be commissioned more deliberately. That requires understanding who people in distress actually go to for support, and investing in local capacity, leadership and trust accordingly.
Innovation and change
There is a tendency to fund bright shiny new initiatives over scaling what already works. When government calls to fix what is not working, the response is often small tweaks and reviews rather than investment in early intervention or deeper redesign that would shift the underlying burden of complex needs in communities. Reform cycles tend to placate electorates and lobby groups instead of doing what needs to be done to achieve real change.
Where the conversation turned
The conditions for that kind of practice came up in several places. Greater flexibility in how funding is commissioned, used and measured. Harnessing the growing interest from philanthropy and the corporate sector in place-based investment alongside government funding. Creating space for NGOs to align on what will enable impact and sustainability over time. Being strategic about collective messaging, with multiple voices delivering the same messages. Building capacity to co-design and co-deliver at place, including defining shared strategy rather than only individual organisational plans. Removing barriers and creating levers that enable local, collaborative innovation, held inside shared guardrails on safety and outcomes. Designing services end-to-end with the lived needs of people and communities at the centre, not service boundaries. And developing the next generation of NGO leaders with a systems lens and the relational skillset to lead in complexity.
The Peer Room is an invitation-led breakfast for chief executives of NGOs in health, community and human services. The Wider Lens is a version of it for the senior leaders below them. Email susanne@lebout.com.au if you would like an invitation to either, or to put one of your senior leaders forward.
