“CFI are not just facilitators or academics. They have the continuity of the journey as a key player in the work.
CFI really brings value and gold from being present across the system. Being present for all the different conversations for all those different levels and environments has been the glue of the work.”
Executive Director, Gladstone Region Together
Every context is different. We work with you to shape the right support for where you are now. Here are five of the services most often requested by our partners.
We’re a trusted learning partner, walking alongside communities, governments, and networks across Australia to grow collaborative, community-led systems change.
Whether you’re:
- a community initiative just starting to build its learning and evaluation practice,
- a national network scaling systems learning across a sector, or
- somewhere in the ‘messy middle’ of a multi-stakeholder collaboration, seeking a critical friend to support shared sense-making—
—we tailor our approach to meet your unique context and learning needs.
We often begin with a diagnostic tool, grounded in our Collaborative Change Cycle, to help you assess where you are now, recognise your strengths, understand what’s ahead, and clarify the support you may need next.
We work with you to embed reflection, learning, and knowledge sharing into the culture, structures, and practices of your initiative—and the wider systems it’s part of. We partner with you to help build the capability and conditions for community-led systems change.
We draw on the latest thinking and practice in systems learning, collective learning, and developmental evaluation—both in Australia and globally—as well as the deep insights of the hundreds of community-led initiatives we’ve had the privilege to partner with.
Are you looking to spark collaboration across diverse actors to address systemic barriers—but maybe there isn’t yet the clarity, alignment, and structure to act together effectively? Perhaps you’ve seen well-intentioned collaborations stall in conflict, confusion, or entrenched power dynamics.
That’s where we come in.
Drawing on deep experience, we don’t take over—we walk alongside. We support the people closest to the work to lead it, sustain it, and grow it. Through structured inquiry, co-design, and systems change facilitation, we help groups uncover root causes, navigate differences in race, power, and culture, foster relationships that make real change possible, and co-create strategic and practical responses.
Whether you're just starting out or facing a critical turning point, we work with you to build the foundations for collaboration that is durable, meaningful, and equitable.
Scaling collaboration isn’t just about expanding reach—it’s about deepening relationships, sustaining shared purpose, and cultivating the conditions for community-led change to thrive.
Since 2012, we’ve worked alongside national and local partners to understand what it takes for change to last. That includes shifting mindsets, growing capability, and aligning structures to support community leadership.
We help partners scale up, out, and deep—holding strategy and delivery while nurturing wellbeing and coherence across teams. This work requires shared accountability, collective practice, and space for reflection and learning.
Our expertise spans co-design, governance, capability-building, collective leadership, and adaptive learning. We foster mutual learning across places and sectors, and help governments align with what’s already working locally.
At critical moments of change and opportunity, we partner with you to hold the centre—building trust, clarity, and momentum for transformational impact that endures.
Need extra capacity, clarity, or momentum to move complex work forward? You might be navigating uncertainty, working across multiple stakeholders, or ready to take the next step in a collaborative systems change journey. Maybe you're looking for a critical friend, a trusted sidekick, or someone who can connect you to the right people.
Wherever you are on your journey—starting up, scaling out, or pivoting direction—we offer tailored support to help communities, governments, and funders make meaningful progress. From coaching and capability-building to hands-on delivery, we roll up our sleeves and work alongside you.
We support every stage of the project cycle: from co-design and community consultation, to technical advice and methodology deep dives, report writing, partnership management, and facilitating consortiums. We also help consolidate learning, capture insights, and enable adaptation.
Our team brings deep experience across place-based and systems initiatives—from early childhood and economic participation to justice reinvestment, disability support, and housing.
Today’s challenges call for leadership by people who can work systemically and navigate complexity—people who know how to harness collective power and agency to create meaningful change.
We believe leadership is a behavior, not a title, and it operates at the intersection of vision and reality—where the aspiration for a fairer future meets the constraints of current systems.
With over a decade of experience, we support individuals, organisations, and collaborations to build the mindsets, skills, and connections needed to lead in complex environments. Our programs blend knowledge and practice—drawing from systems thinking, Deep Collaboration, adaptive and collective leadership, and hands-on experience across diverse sectors.
You’ll explore practical ways to engage with diverse perspectives, navigate differences across power, race and cultures, and build peer networks that sustain learning and momentum for long-term impact.
Since 2012, we have partnered with over 400 communities, organisations, and initiatives. This spans the local, regional and national level.
We engage at different levels—and the spaces in between—because we believe this is an essential part of creating deep and lasting change.
Our collaboration with you is tailored to your unique context and the opportunities for systemic change. At every level, we remain committed to centring equity and amplifying the voices of those excluded from dominant systems.
Community level
CFI works with people and organisations from community, government, civil society, philanthropy, and the private sector. We prepare and support you to collaborate and do systems change work.
Network level
CFI fosters relationships across the field, builds an authorising environment for new ways of working, and spotlights both successful approaches and challenges, particularly in terms of amplifying the voices often overlooked in change processes.
Ecosystem level
CFI is part of building the movement for collaborative systems change by influencing national policy and narrative shifts in Australia. Across the community, network and ecosystem level, CFI is engaging in conversations, research and prototyping that push the field to innovate.
CFI cultivates strategic partnerships at home and internationally with global networks of field-building intermediaries. This includes Collective Change Lab, FSG, Tamarack Institute, Place Matters, Inspiring Communities.
We provide expertise to help you collaborate - in ways that transform the systems you are part of.
Today’s challenges requires leadership by people who can work systemically and in complexity. This includes being able to harness our collective power and agency.
We work with you to help build collective leadership. This may be within your organisation, sector or beyond.
With our partners, we design and demonstrate new governance models and practice. Our focus is enabling multi-stakeholder collaboration for systems change.
We specialise in centring principles of equity and shared decision-making in governance. We can work with you on local, regional and/or national governance.
Systems learning involves listening and hearing from the whole system and considering what this means for the work.
We work with you to embed systems learning and knowledge sharing. We provide support for strategy and narrative building.
Our approach focuses on redistributing power and accountability to people most impacted by the system(s).
We work with you to develop innovations that increase community control over resources and capital.
We do this so communities can realise their aspirations and sustain community-led change.
Our focus is how governance and practices can lead to community control of resources that is more equitable.
“CFI is not transactional. It is a two-way learning, partnership approach. They become experts in the field because they learn from others, but they don’t just finish the job and disappear.
There is a clear ongoing commitment to the broader social impact across the field. They care about the outcome.”
Chief Executive, Far West Community Partnerships
