Three years turning strategy into reality, with people with disability at the centre

Afford Disability · Strategy Implementation · Human Rights, Social and Public Welfare

We spent three years embedded with Afford as a strategic partner, turning its human rights-driven strategy into reality across service design, impact and culture.

The challenge

Afford Disability is one of Australia's largest disability service providers. In the wake of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, Afford set out to become a leader in human rights-driven, inclusive service, with the voices of people with disability genuinely at the centre of its decisions. We had already helped design that strategy. The harder question was the one that defeats most strategies: how do you actually deliver it, year after year, until it changes how an organisation works?

What we did

We stayed. For three years we worked alongside Afford as an embedded strategic partner, helping turn the strategy from a document into the way the organisation runs, concentrated on Afford's three strategic pillars. Lifelong Support: we helped design the service line and value proposition. Increase Impact: we designed the impact framework, then ran three years of impact data collection, analysis and reporting. Good Humans: we helped design the diversity, equity and inclusion strategy and the employee value proposition. Strategy is the first one percent. We were there for the rest, holding the thread across three years so the strategy actually landed.

The impact

Afford moved from a redesigned strategy to a strategy in motion, with new service thinking, a working impact framework producing three years of evidence, and a strengthened culture to carry it.

Deliverables

Service line and value proposition design

Impact framework

Three years of impact data collection, analysis and reporting

Diversity, equity and inclusion strategy

Employee value proposition

Ongoing embedded strategic partnership

Case studies

• Monash University: Building resilient communities, and proving it
• Libraries ACT: A new chapter for Canberra's libraries, written with the community
• Bayside City Council: Shifting a whole organisation from outputs to impact
• Cancer Council South Australia: A clear strategy to carry a century of impact forward
• Afford Disability: Three years turning strategy into reality, with people with disability at the centre
• Fire to Flourish: Turning complex ideas into a story people can see
• NDIS providers: Finding where the NDIS opportunity really sits
• Bush Heritage Australia: A clearer digital story for some of the country’s most important landscapes
• Interact Australia: Proving the difference, in a way everyone can answer
• beyondblue: Rethinking workplace wellbeing, one leader's story at a time
• Indigenous Business Australia: An impact framework that helped secure $150 million for self-determination
• City of Greater Dandenong: A people-centred strategy, co-designed by the people who deliver it
• Snap Send Solve: One shared purpose, three pillars and a roadmap to take a homegrown app from local favourite to global platform.
• Cathy Freeman Foundation: A sharper story and a stronger funding base to close the education gap
• Philanthropy Australia: Turning a strategy about engagement into the way a team works
• Collaboration for Impact: Telling the story of systems change
• Orygen: A national youth mental health brand, launched on deadline
• MONA: A ticketing platform built for the arts, not the ferry
• Alannah & Madeline Foundation: Eight websites, one connected story
• The Reject Shop: Getting clear on why it exists and where it wins
• PrimeSafe Victoria: A board and executive, realigned around a clear strategy