Our strategy 2026-2033

Partnering with Community for Long-Term Wellbeing

About our strategy

Over the past six years, Fay Fuller Foundation has been learning what it means to show up differently as a philanthropic organisation. Our work has been shaped not by a single plan, but by relationships built over time with regional towns, community groups, Aboriginal-led organisations, and alongside people supporting wellbeing in their own self-defined communities.

 

This strategy is not a reset. It is an evolution of that shared learning.

The determinants of mental health and wellbeing span our social, economic, environmental, and political conditions, and we continue to see people experiencing increasing challenges in navigating complex changes and impacts across all these areas. Our systems and designed responses are often stretched and reactive and often arrive once distress has already taken hold.

Yet communities continue to show us that wellbeing is built much earlier, in everyday conditions such as belonging, identity, culture, shared spaces, trusted leadership and collective care. That there is strength in working together and that small shifts can make big differences.

We believe this moment calls for long-term, preventative and community-led approaches. It asks philanthropy to move beyond short-term programs and to invest in the conditions that allow communities to shape their own wellbeing futures.

Download our 2026 – 2033 Strategy

Partnering with Community for Long-Term Wellbeing

Three Strategic Pillars

Three pillars provide the scope for where we will be investing our time, resources, relationships and networks over the next seven years. Each pillar’s intentions are relevant to all our focus areas and how we work openly towards change beyond our organisation.

Backing community-led wellbeing

We are working towards stronger everyday conditions that promote mental health and wellbeing. We support exploration, development, and sharing of learning and approaches that amplify narratives of community strengths, self-determination, identity and collective care.

Enabling what makes community-led wellbeing possible

We are working towards communities having greater power, resources and confidence to lead their own wellbeing. Our intentions encompass community wealth & access to capital, community leadership & agency, and more accessible community spaces & infrastructure.

Spreading the reach and influence of community-led change

We are working towards community voices having greater influence over systems that affect their lives. Vital to this is strengthening pathways for community stories and evidence, connecting community for movements of change, and negotiating with systems.

This strategy is an invitation.

An invitation to communities to continue shaping this work with us. An invitation to partners and funders to walk alongside community-led approaches. And an invitation to keep learning, adapting and acting together in service of long-term wellbeing. 

We know that lasting change does not come from quick fixes. It comes from sustained relationships, shared power and a collective commitment to building the conditions that allow communities to thrive, now and for generations to come. 

That is the journey we are committed to over the next seven years.

Setting the foundations: Our strategy in the first 18 months

Our 2026 - 2033 strategy is an expression of our commitment to continue and deepen work towards our vision of communities leading their own wellbeing futures – grounded in connection, culture, identity and collective care.

The hope and ambition underlying our strategic pillars will require meaningful steps and action across the seven years and will only be possible by working in partnership with communities, stakeholders and systems.

Our 2026 - 2028 Implementation Plan signals how we will begin putting the strategy into practice over the first 18 months – building the foundations that allow this work to grow over time.

Download our 2026 – 2028 Implementation Plan

Theory of Change

Our Theory of Change centres around our fundamental belief that communities are the experts in their own lives and our greatest impact is contributing to pathways for communities to lead preventive wellbeing solutions.

We believe that if we focus our actions on how we show up in partnership with communities then not only will we better support their work, but we can be part of shifting broader funding and systemic conditions.

Through measuring and sharing social impact aligned with our Theory of Change, we hope to tell a story about how funders can work in different ways and how elevating community leadership contributes to broader social transformation.

Read more about the journey of evolving our strategy

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©Fay Fuller Foundation
We acknowledge the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and the traditional custodians and owners of the lands on which we work and live across Australia. We pay our respects to Elders of the past, present and into the future. We are committed to collaboration that furthers self-determination, as we go forward, we will continue to listen, learn, and be allies for a healing future.