Hunt begins for the nation’s social impact superstars

Posted on 01 Sep 2025

By Matthew Schulz, journalist

The competition to be crowned Australia’s best social impact practitioners is expected to be the fiercest for 10 years, amid a growing push by governments, funders and philanthropists to prove what works.

Social Impact Measurement Network Australia (SIMNA) this month opened entries for the 2025 awards, to be announced in November.

There are four entry categories:

excellence
innovative design
collaboration
funding, investment or grantmaking.

Last year’s winners came from a family dispute resolution service, a foundation supporting rural and regional areas, a data-based collaboration helping community college students, and a Salvos family violence project.

Lattitude Dashboard — ACE providers and the Latitude Network produced this dashboard to give users powerful insights to win last's years collaboration award. Read more

Each set the standard for social impact excellence through effective and strategic use of data, analysis, case studies, rigorous frameworks and demonstrated outcomes.

The competition comes amid a renewed national drive for better measurement championed by federal Charities Minister Andrew Leigh, who has backed the Australian Centre for Evaluation – based in Treasury – with a $10 million funding boost, established a triennial Measuring What Matters statement, and launched the Institute of Grants Management’s recent white paper on outcomes.

In a recent commentary about productivity in the public sector, Leigh argued: “Public sector productivity isn’t about profit margins. It’s about outcomes that matter: fewer people stuck in long-term unemployment, shorter hospital wait times, better school completion rates. And improving those outcomes begins with one key question: what works?”

SIMNA co-chair Sarah Barker – who is also the chief technology officer at SmartyGrants – said the awards, now in their 11^th year, “advance our mission to celebrate achievement and build practice across the social impact measurement community”.

Entries close on Friday, October 10.