Generously hosted by Cooper Investors, last night AIDN and Co-Impact brought together an engaged group of Australian philanthropists and development practitioners for a roundtable conversation ahead of Women Deliver. 🌍
Co-Impact shared the lessons they’ve learned from doing this work at scale: local leadership is non-negotiable, the time horizons often given to organisations to drive change are far too short, cross-sector thinking matters, and no single person or organisation can do this alone.
👉 We heard from Ristika Putri Istanti of Lingkar Temu Kabupaten Lestari | Secretariat in Indonesia, a Co-Impact partner working on sustainable development that protects the environment and improves community welfare through genuine mutual cooperation.
👉 The room also got into some meaty territory: what scale actually means (hint: it’s proportional, not absolute), how collaborative funding can function as a risk mitigation strategy, and why investing in peak bodies and re-granters matters more than it often gets credit for.
👉 One line stayed with us: “Women don’t lead single issue lives.” It’s a simple thing to say and a genuinely hard thing to fund for. The case for investing in sexual and reproductive health rights, climate change, gender based violence, advocacy and other chronically underfunded areas doesn’t need dressing up, it just needs resourcing.
The Australian philanthropic sector is shifting. There’s real collaboration happening now – around issues, not just interests. That feels meaningful. Thank you to Co-Impact, Cooper Investors, and everyone who came and contributed so generously to the conversation.