At the Social Deck, we understand the important role not-for-profits (NFPs) and non-government organisations (NGOs) play in creating real change in communities. In service delivery, advocacy, and often tackling big, complex social, health and environmental challenges - often with small teams and tight budgets.
Many of us are volunteers, on boards or part of community groups such as in sport, firefighting, disability inclusion, surf lifesaving and other areas.
But we work professionally with a number of amazing NFPs. Since we began 11 years, we’ve always reserved a portion of our contracted time to support the work of NFPs, offering professional services at lower rates so we can help them have the biggest impacts possible.
As a for-purpose business, we're drawn to organisations trying to create real change. This includes NFPs and NGOs of all shapes and sizes - from small community-led organisations to national peak bodies - across mental health, multicultural communities, cancer prevention or allergy research.
What helps us work across that range of organisations is being a small, independent agency. Our founding Directors are still hands on, working closely with NFPs and able to make decisions with them about where we can add the most value. This also allows us to have a flexible approach when partnering with NFPs. We focus on practical work that fits how you actually operate.
'Working across government, NFP and community sectors gives us a strong sense of how NFPs operate and the challenges they are up against. As a B Corp certified for-purpose business, we're well placed to work as a values-aligned partner to support strategic work with social an environmental impact' – Mel Butcher, Director of Impact and Engagement
Peaks and NGOs
We work regularly with peak bodies and NGOs who are often the leading voice on big issues and in influencing systems change, as well as local community impact.
- National Allergy Council. We’ve supported the National Allergy Council on multiple engagement and research projects over the past 3 years. This included facilitating 12 stakeholder forums across regional and metropolitan Australia, as well as webinars, and focus groups with people living with allergies and their carers to improve accessing allergy care and on a shared care model for allergic disease in Australia.
- Cancer Council NSW. We worked with Cancer Council NSW to develop a Shade Advocacy Toolkit - a set of resources to help parents, teachers and community members advocate for more shade in their local areas. We then also partnered with them to develop the Outdoor Workers Sun Protection Toolkit, that is shared digitally to workplaces to support them to keep their workers sun safe.
- Ethnic Communities Council of Queensland (ECCQ). We partnered with ECCQ to develop and roll out a 12-month communications strategy to reach multicultural communities across their advocacy and services. This included refreshing the ECCQ brand, creating a style guide and templates, running staff training, developing a content calendar, and providing ongoing strategic advice on how to reach new audience segments.
- ALGA. The Australian Local Government Association is the only peak body that represents and unites local government across Australia to influence national priorities, shape effective public policy and drive targeted outcomes in every corner of the nation. We’ve been working with them to create a new Guide to support local governments to improve inclusion of people with disability in their communities including advice for implementing more accessible engagement, services and infrastructure. This is an example where federal government funding is used to create through the national representative peak body.
NFPs with big impact
Smaller NFPs are often doing big things, whether with grant funding to support a project or through other forms of philanthropy and donations. Funds are precious so we often provide a mix of contracted (paid) and probono support. Some examples of the type of partners and the work we do with smaller NFPs includes:
- Embrace Multicultural Mental Health: Since 2024, we've provided ongoing strategic communications support to Embrace, who work across the mental health sector to strengthen culturally responsive services for multicultural communities. Our work has includes developing practical communications, monthly environmental scans and producing social media content. We co-designed visual storyboards with Embrace's Lived Experience Group to explain mental health and address stigma. We’ve also helped to build capacity through workshops and social media training to support an internal capability lift.
- MBC Action Australia (MBCAA): We’re partnering with MBCAA, a relatively national lived experience led organisation for people living with metastatic breast cancer, to develop a new Information and Support Hub. This extensive work has included co-design workshops, content development, and building the Hub to brings together trusted, accessible information for the MBC community.
- Josh4Hearts Foundation: We’re supporting a new start-up NFP, Josh4Hearts Foundation protects young teen athletes from sudden cardiac arrest through preventive cardiac screening and providing community emergency response through education. We’re proud to support such an important cause with strategic communication advice, brand development and initial resources (like website content, info sheets, posters, social media tiles and advice and an animation) to help them hit the ground running.
Importance of building capacity
We believe strongly in building capacity of NFPs and the NGO sector through our work. We often do this through larger government contracts, where we can support the capacity and development of organisations in areas such as social enterprise, social policy advocacy, inclusion, and First Nations engagement. Many NFPs are stretched, with staff juggling multiple responsibilities and limited time to step back and plan. We can work alongside your team, providing expert support while also helping to build skills and confidence in areas like strategy, engagement, research or content creation. Over time, internal capability grows, and our support can shift or ease as needs change.
Are you a NFP or NGO? Here’s how you can engage us…
We work with not-for-profits in different ways, depending on the type of organisation.
- We partner on an ongoing basis - a monthly package of strategic communication support and content development offers NFPs consistent support at a lower cost than getting one-off services from PR and engagement agencies. We also build in time (often provided probono) to help build capacity of your in-house teams.
- Defined project or product – like delivering a piece of social research, a strategy, community engagement, a video series or a toolkit. Many of those relationships continue, with us working as a strategic partner on related projects in the future.
Get in touch
Whether it's a defined project or ongoing strategic support, we'd love to hear from you.
Please contact our Director of Innovation and Digital and COO, Steve Speldewinde at steve@thesocialdeck.com who’d be happy to have a quick conversation about how we can support you.
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