This is a working draft for the Coalition to pull apart. Paper Giant wrote the first version in July from what the Coalition produced in its first phase, in the spirit of AEGN's climate and nature funding frameworks, which give philanthropists a shared picture of a complex field and practical ways in. Rohan Martyres (MLF) revised it in August, and this page carries that revision. Nothing here commits any member or funder to anything.
The case for investing
Trust in government has fallen to 33 per cent on the Scanlon Institute's annual survey, down from 53 per cent two decades ago, and the Royal Commission established after the Bondi Beach attack has strengthening social cohesion in its remit. The response so far has leaned on security and services. As ASIO's director-general put it, "you cannot arrest your way to social cohesion." What builds cohesion is slower and more local: the conditions that let people live well across difference. Those conditions are things a funder can invest in.
Lenses on civility and social cohesion
There are many ways to define civility and social cohesion. Two the Coalition has worked with:
Listening respectfully, speaking honestly, and staying engaged across our differences, especially when it's hard.
— Menzies Leadership Foundation
A condition in which people, groups and institutions with heterogeneous identities, views, and preferences are connected through durable, inclusive, high-quality relationships that enable collaboration towards collective goals across the whole of society.
— Australian Resilient Democracy Network, Discussion Paper 18
Prompted by definitions like these and by their own work, Coalition members identified four distinct lenses on social cohesion, each with implications for the type of work we might do together:
Civility as an outcome. A destination to aim for: a more civil Australia. This lens points towards measuring progress and defining what "getting there" looks like.
Civility as a process. A day-to-day practice that can be developed and improved. This lens suggests interventions that build habits, skills and routines.
Civility as a disposition. An attitude towards difference, held by individuals or communities. This lens suggests ways of embodying a particular stance towards conflict.
Civility as an infrastructure. A systemic asset: the web of systems, organisations, policies, people and connections that scaffold a civil society. This lens takes an asset-based view, where civility is the result of many things working together.
These lenses help identify the different approaches through which social cohesion can be funded, and what all of those approaches share and need.
Where a dollar lands
The Coalition's conditions framework shows a funder how any individual project or investment connects to others. It gives a system view that helps very different organisations see their work, and each other's, in one frame, across many places and settings.
Four conditions (capacity, capability, trust and belonging) sit against four levels (personal, interpersonal, community and systemic):
| Personal | Interpersonal | Community | Systemic | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity | Time, energy & headspace | Relational investment | Connective infrastructure | Structural enablers |
| Capability | Skills for dialogue | Brave conversations | Facilitated processes | Institutional practice |
| Trust | Openness to others | Relational trust | Civic trust | Institutional legitimacy |
| Belonging | Sense of place | Recognition & inclusion | Shared identity | National narrative |
Open the interactive map to see what each cell holds, including the member initiatives already working in it.
Every cell of this matrix already has organisations working in it. For a funder, the framework is a way to see what kind of thing you're funding, what level it works at, and whose existing work it lands beside.
Funding for system change
Funding for work on any condition, at any level, lands better if it's joined up. A local programme that knows the national frameworks around it goes further than one working alone, and the same applies in reverse.
Australia has no shortage of research, pilots, advocates and practitioners working to strengthen social cohesion. What remains scarce are the practical mechanisms, such as pooled funds and shared governance, that help diverse actors connect, coordinate and translate insight into collective action. The work exists; the architecture to connect and accelerate it does not yet.
Five ways into systemic funding for social cohesion
Different funders will enter this field with different priorities. The Coalition identified five recognisable pathways for funders to invest systemically in civility and social cohesion, each with live examples from member proposals.
Places. Back a community to set and deliver its own agenda, the way the Ballarat, Mparntwe and Tasmania pilots are doing. This pathway suits funders who want visible, grounded work and are comfortable with community pace.
Cohort capability. Grow the personal, community or institutional skills that social cohesion work depends on: critical thinking, dialogue and facilitation, organisational capacity building, and civic literacy. Member examples include The Ethics Centre's ethics curriculum, LINA's work with newsrooms, and MAV Lab's work with local government. This pathway suits funders who seek specific outcomes for particular cohorts of Australians or organisations.
Connective tissue. Help national actors develop the pooled capital, shared governance and intermediaries that hold the work between organisations. Examples include MLF's call for a national civility endowment and community foundation, CFI's Belonging for All strategy, and Welcoming Australia's work with universities. This pathway suits funders who seek catalytic, field-building impact.
Data. Fund shared measurement that lets the field see itself and tell its story. Intermediaries like PLACE Australia and Community Foundations Australia are working in this space, as are technology and impact consultancies like Purpose Made and Seer Data & Analytics. This pathway suits funders who support research, or who want to strengthen the evidence base for applied work on social cohesion.
Advocacy. Fund the work of making the case to governments and the public: the joint submission to the Royal Commission that MLF and partners have made, and the aligned policy work members identified in Meeting 3 as one of three things communities need, alongside visibility of existing work and shared resourcing. This pathway suits funders who want to change the settings the other four pathways operate within. Draft wording, to be confirmed by MLF.
What good system-aware initiatives look like here
Across the Coalition's five meetings, the mechanisms that drew the most energy shared a handful of features. They are a useful test for any initiative asking to be funded as part of a system. Draft, reconstructed from the meeting record, to be confirmed.
- It works across more than one level. The initiative connects work at one level of the matrix to another: a local programme that feeds a national picture, or a national framework that local work can align to without being directed by it.
- No single organisation owns it. Governance is shared, and the initiative would keep going if any one member stepped back. Members put most of their energy into coordination for this reason: who decides, who's accountable, and on what terms.
- It builds on what already exists. Members told us the field is short of alignment more than ideas. A good initiative starts by making existing work visible, then connects to it.
- Communities set the agenda. Local people name what matters to them, with facilitation, using the trusted places and local knowledge already in every community.
- It makes the work visible so it can travel. Shared data and measurement let the field see itself, and give what works in one place a route to another.
What good funding looks like here
Coalition members also identified what makes funding effective in this field, drawing on their experience of what actually shifts this system (the system levers from the first-phase interviews):
- Multi-year horizons. Trust-building is slow; twelve-month grants push organisations back into project mode.
- Readiness-aware. The same investment lands differently in different places. Fund the work of understanding readiness alongside delivery.
- Collaborative by design. Grants shaped so organisations contribute to the same picture rather than compete for the same pool.
- Lighter reporting. Members told us shared data infrastructure should lighten the reporting load organisations already carry.
- Participation costed in. The time community organisations give to coordination is real work, particularly for smaller not-for-profits, and should be paid for.
What happens next
The Menzies Leadership Foundation and the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute are collaborating on online workshops in November and December, bringing together a wider network of organisations to progress collective action on the priorities identified by the Civility Coalition, and on insights from the Annual Australian Social Cohesion Summit 2026, held in Melbourne in November. This framework will guide those collective-action convenings.
We will support the leadership of civil society, rather than government or philanthropy, by creating space for individual Coalition members to make their cases and pitches for transformative change. We hope participants in these workshops will use those pitches as inspiration to flesh out this framework, contribute their own ideas and proposals, and build consensus on priority mechanisms to reimagine civility and strengthen social cohesion across the country.
Feedback from Civility Coalition members
This draft is for the Coalition to pull apart. If the pathways don't match how you'd actually approach a funder, or your organisation's work sits somewhere this picture can't see, that reaction is the input we need.
Chris and Rohan chris@papergiant.net