The end of this year also brings a close to the engagement loops we’ve held to inform this evolving direction. After listening deeply to those who have shared their knowledge, expertise and perspectives, we’re getting near to finalising and releasing Fay Fuller Foundation’s first ever written strategy.  

Of course, our future strategic direction was not set solely throughout the past year. It’s something that has slowly formed into being. It’s found its way onto the page flowing from all that we have learnt and the ways we have been shaped through our partnerships over many years. But we have taken dedicated and intentional time throughout 2025 to reflect on what it means to keep moving forward, to understand what’s important about our ways of working, what we could do differently, and to bring a wider range of voices and perspectives into influencing our thinking. 

Naming and putting our strategy on the page is only a small piece of the puzzle. Over the past year, we’ve held the importance of not letting the words get in the way of doing or overly complicating things. But, equally, we recognised that taking time to deeply understand how different threads of our strategy and our engagement with communities weave together was essential at this stage of our journey. And we feel confident that spending this time will set our intentions and potential ripples of impact into the future, well beyond the life of a five-to-seven-year strategy cycle. 

Alongside our own conversations as a team and with our Board, the input we received from across our partners and networks have been invaluable. In our recent online sessions, we were excited to meet some new faces, hear different perspectives and forge new connections.  

Sharing and hearing feedback on draft content from our strategy has helped grow our understanding of where things feel clear, both for ourselves and in how we communicate our thoughts to people who don’t know us very well. It has also given us important signals around where we need to dedicate our time and resources as we work towards our strategic intentions, spaces where it’s especially important to walk gently, and input or perspectives that we are still yet to bring forward.  

Across our engagement, we were encouraged to think big in naming the future we want to contribute towards and be bold and intentional about our actions. To understand how this fits within a rapidly evolving (and often challenging) world and think forward to meet the responsibility we hold to future generations. And, while we’re travelling those paths, to stay grounded in what our partners value about the way that we show up, and the core beliefs and principles we hold. 

We heard important messages around what we should keep about our current ways of working, including: 

• Showing up as a flexible, relationship-driven funder that invests in what communities know they need to be well, connected and strong in identity 

• Recognising the strength and expertise of lived experience and of communities with shared identity and connection 

• Backing local responses to wellbeing that allow for testing, trying and adapting 

• Promoting strengths based, person and community centred approaches to mental health that emphasise connection and belonging, and 

• Walking alongside First Nations communities in support of self-determination and leadership

We also heard a call to go further, to support more funders to work like this, to invest in the conditions that let communities lead on their own terms and to translate our collective learning into a broader movement for change. 

Moving forward and our deepest gratitude

There’s a lot that sits around each of these areas, and we’re working towards sharing more detail around where we’ve landed in a final document – which we expect to be released around April next year (so watch this space!). While we are bringing this thinking into our first ever written strategy, we are committed to treating it as a living document; an anchor to ground us in our intentions as we move forward, while leaving space for all the learning, reflecting and adapting that sits in the reality of reaching for change.  

Alongside sharing our strategic direction, we also want to share openly about what that actually means and what people can expect to see from us coming up.  So, we will also be releasing more information at the same time with further details around what the early stages of implementing our strategy will look like, what we still need to understand and how we are looking to work with our partners and networks to ensure that our actions reflect intentions in areas we have been asked to work towards. 

As we head into the last couple of weeks of 2025, we extend our deep and heartfelt thanks to everyone who has shared their thoughts, perspectives, and themselves into shaping the next stages of our journey. We recognise just how valuable the time that people have gifted us is. We hope to honour that time with the deep reflection and thought we’ve given to the insights offered across each contribution, and how we’ve refined our direction flowing from these reflections.  

Most importantly, we hope to honour your time and contributions with our actions.  

As we enter the New Year, we are looking forward to sharing more and continuing to learn, evolve and work towards long-term collective impact with our partners and networks.