Brave Foundation

All parents face many challenges from the day their babies arrive. But young parents often face special challenges. They face higher risks of health issues for themselves and their children. They often feel judged or unaccepted by family, friends and the community. They are also less likely to finish school, which can lead to long-term unemployment or insecure, low-wage jobs.

In response to these risks and other challenges, Brave Foundation works with expecting and parenting teens, providing them with support, resources, referral and opportunities to facilitate happy, healthy and skilled families.

Brave was founded, designed and is led by women with lived experience. Together with the Brave staff, board and supporters, they share a vision to see future generations thrive.

Brave’s focus is on unlocking the boundless potential that exists within young parents. The organisation provides regular and ongoing mentoring to expecting and parenting teens, connects with service providers across the country to provide advice and referrals, influences public policy through partnerships and political engagement, and delivers an accessible online service delivery.

The project

Brave successfully developed and piloted its Supporting Expecting & Parenting Teens (SEPT) mentoring program prior to significant funding disruption linked to the arrival of Covid-19 in early 2020. With the support of a philanthropic donor and a ‘no stone unturned’ outreach approach, Brave continued to improve operations while looking to an ambitious, long-term and sustainable future.

SVA Consulting worked with Brave to consider its strategic priorities and options for scaling and sustainability. This project considered program, partnership, funding and organisational restructuring possibilities to identify the most compelling opportunities to realise Brave’s financial, operational and impact objectives over the next 3–5 years.

The objective

To support Brave to identify and plan for the most important steps to grow Brave’s impact, scale and sustainability.

The role we played

Working with Brave, we:

Engaged Brave’s leaders, board and stakeholders to understand the organisation’s aspirations, guardrails and opportunities for growth and sustainability.
Conducted desktop research and analysis of demonstrated scaling, funding and sustainability models across Australia.
Drew on both SVA and Brave’s networks to consult with sector experts, government representatives, appointed commissioners and leaders of successful social impact organisations to determine the most compelling opportunities for Brave.

Next, we recommended, analysed and socialised with Brave’s board three key approaches for Brave to pursue:

an enhancement and partnerships strategy for Brave’s core SEPT mentoring program
a long-term funding approach focussed on building measurement and evaluation capabilities and pursuing new revenue models, including ‘cost on outcomes’
an ambitious systems change agenda as a ‘Social Economic Empowerment Division’ of Brave.

Finally, we developed detailed budgets, implementation plans, supporting templates and risk management plans for the three initiatives to support Brave’s future activities and fundraising.

Relationships are the lifeblood of Brave’s work and the team from SVA were a rare example of relationally based expertise, consultative capacity, and encouragement. They immersed themselves in their work with us, shared their knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm for seeing Brave develop the building blocks for a sustainable future. Their work continues to inform what we are doing each day and they have certainly become part of our Brave village.” Jill Roche • CEO, Brave Foundation

Project impact

The project equipped Brave with a robust understanding of three fundamental building blocks on which the organisation could build its sustainability and future.

The project recommendations have formed key components of Brave’s operational and strategic planning and have supported Brave to secure significant government and non-government funding and support. This funding has been used to enhance and expand Brave’s services, as well as appoint a Social Economic Empowerment Ambassador and launch an associated systemic advocacy division of Brave.

Meet the team

Principal, Consulting Jack Coghlan