Our Values & Principles
Our values and principles define how we work together and guide our decisions. They reflect our commitment to ethical innovation, inclusive collaboration, and practical action.
Core Values
Our Values
These foundational values shape our culture, guide our decisions, and define how we work together.
Public Purpose
We are driven by impact. Through close ties to benevolent institutions, we maintain a clear line of sight on community wellbeing, values and rights.
Bring People Together
We marshal diverse perspectives and resources across industry, civil society, academia, and the public sector to drive reinforcing action.
Long Term Impact
We exist to accelerate cross-sector, public purpose innovation at scale. We attract, include, and empower diverse partners by driving new ways of working, addressing systemic barriers, and ensuring marginalised voices are heard.
Stand for Change
We maintain a sense of urgency and stand together in the face of inertia and resistance. We are steadfast against attempts to dilute, delay or derail action, and drive systems that meet the needs of collaboration—not the other way around.
Empower, Don't Control
No centrally controlled plan or single idea will create sustainable, systemic change. Working together, we empower diverse groups to lead mutually reinforcing actions in different environments.
Adapt and Inspire
We stay flexible and entrepreneurial to recruit new allies, seize new opportunities, adapt to partners' strengths and resources, and discover valuable ways for our strengths to combine.
Our Fundamental Tenet
Design Thinking
Our Foundation for Change
Design thinking is more than just a process for us - it's our fundamental approach to both building our alliance and working together on initiatives. Every aspect of our work starts with understanding real human needs and evolves through continuous learning.
Building Our Alliance
- Apply design thinking to how we structure and evolve the alliance itself
- Understand partner needs through deep empathy and active listening
- Prototype and test different ways of working together
- Continuously improve our model based on feedback and learning
Driving Collaboration
- Bring diverse perspectives together early in the process
- Create spaces for collective sense-making and synthesis
- Design adaptive frameworks for joint action
- Evolve our approach based on what we learn together
Creating Solutions
- Start with deep empathy for real human needs
- Reframe technical possibilities as human opportunities
- Prototype rapidly to test assumptions early
- Evolve solutions through continuous feedback
Measuring Impact
- Focus on human outcomes over process metrics
- Gather stories that reveal patterns and insights
- Use feedback to improve both solutions and processes
- Share learning openly to benefit the whole ecosystem
Nothing About Us Without Us
Our commitment to meaningful community involvement is embedded in how we apply design thinking across all our work. We achieve this through:
- Human-Centered Design Practices: Starting every initiative by understanding the real needs, contexts, and experiences of the communities we aim to serve.
- Iterative Co-Creation: Involving communities from the earliest stages through rapid prototyping and testing, ensuring solutions evolve based on real feedback and experiences.
- Inclusive Infrastructure: Building platforms and processes that make meaningful participation easier, focusing on understanding and designing for real user needs and contexts.
Living Our Values Through Design
We are a staging area for partners to coordinate mutually reinforcing actions and combine strengths. Design thinking provides the framework for how we do this - helping us understand needs, prototype solutions, test assumptions, and continuously improve.
These values and our design thinking approach are not just words on a page - they are active commitments that guide our daily work and long-term strategy. We invite our partners and community members to join us in this approach, helping us continuously improve how we put these principles into practice.