Community Compass sets a new direction for leaders

Posted on 06 Aug 2024

By Matthew Schulz, journalist, Institute of Community Directors Australia

Crowd aerial shot i Stock 936156028 — The Community Compass study is aimed at helping the community sector understand public attitudes.

A poll of Australian not-for-profit leaders shows they have a strong appetite for better understanding their biggest stakeholders.

Diversity Melbourne Crowd i Stock 1086630220 Landscape crop

The snap poll follows the release of the groundbreaking Community Compass study, which shows a split in public attitudes to the community sector.

The attitudinal study by leading researcher Rebecca Huntley mapped major differences in perceptions of not-for-profits and charities, based on in-depth questioning of more than 3000 people.

Community Compass report — Tap to access the full report

Her strategic policy research firm 89 Degrees East – which also produced the Climate Compass and Gender Compass reports – found Australians could be divided into six attitudinal segments based on their views of the community sector, summarised as:

Enthusiastic Engaged (20%): The strongest, most active supporters of the sector
Positive Preoccupied (16%): Supporters who lack the time and energy to be more involved because of competing demands
Isolated Believers (16%): See the sector as filling service gaps left by government and the private sector, and believe services should be prioritised over advocacy
Active Traditionalists (17%): Strong contributors to community organisations who believe the community sector should care for those in need and avoid politics
Indifferent Uninvolved (20%): Are neutral or have no opinion about the community sector
Begrudging Bygones (10%): Conservative community contributors who are nostalgic for a time when people were more connected.

Speaking at the launch, Dr Huntley said the report had been jointly commissioned by Our Community and the Community Council for Australia (CCA), the sector peak body, “to gain an in-depth understanding of how different groups of Australians might not only engage with the community sector, but their attitudes to the sector, and what impact they think the sector has on Australia”.

Nearly 500 community leaders – representing advocates, fundraisers, philanthropists and service providers – signed up for the online launch last month. When Our Community asked them how they would employ the study:

68% said they would use it to “better understand our cohort”
48% aimed to improve volunteer and member engagement
43% planned to use the study to inform their advocacy work
34% said they would use the information on segmentation to improve their media relations
31% would focus their attention and effort on “more engaged segments”
26% would use the findings to better target fundraising
22% would tailor emails to stakeholders
17% would seek to recruit new members
18% would use the data to push for additional funding.

Notably, none said it wouldn’t change the way they worked.

“Yes, it's about attitudes. But it is also about the level of engagement, the actual behaviour."

Research author Dr Rebecca Huntley

Community Compass segments breakdown — The report found Australians attitudes could be represented by six segments.

Dr Huntley said the study, unlike her previous work, provided greater understanding of how people interacted with the sector.

“Yes, it's about attitudes. But it is also about the level of engagement, the actual behaviour,” Dr Huntley said.

“What all of this segmentation really does present is quite a complex and nuanced picture about the diversity of public relationships with the community sector, both in terms of behaviour and in terms of attitudes.”

She said her researchers “really sweated” in choosing the right kinds of names for each groups, with the terms indicating both the level of engagement and the prevailing attitude.

The study held “heartening insights” but also highlighted “red flags” for sector leaders, including confusion about what actually constituted a community organisation, with many thinking local councils and schools were part of the community sector.

Dr Huntley said the challenge for the sector was to be able to work with different attitudes and levels of engagement in different ways.

Organisations needed to interrogate the study to extract actions and strategies, she said, and questions would include: “What are the values? What are the concerns? What are the barriers? How do we think about these audiences? And where is the potential to engage, potential to give, potential to care? How do we hold their attention?”

She said the alternative to inaction was a splintering of the community through a loss of social cohesion, and a slow decline in support for the sector.

The threat was that “We lose our sense of ourselves as a strong, fair, connected, collaborative society, a little bit every day, and suddenly all at once.”

The countering action was to maintain and build that community “a little bit every time” and with a “laser-like focus on who we talk to, how do we talk to them and what do we need to understand about them?”

At its heart, the Community Compass was a tool to help organisations to “reinvigorate our value to all of those audiences as much as we possibly can,” she said.

One of the ways the sector could do this, she said, was to work with the different segments to attempt to ensure the “Indifferent Uninvolved” did not grow, and that the “Enthusiastic Engaged” segment attracted younger and younger people.

Ageing was a critical part of the changing equation, Dr Huntley said, and she suggested community organisations would be well served by highlighting their relevance to the younger age bracket.

“A very small percentage increase can mean a lot … and I know with the kinds of people doing the kind of work listening today we can get there.”

Attitudes on the role of the community sector infographic — Each segment displayed a slightly different understanding of the sector.

Settlement Services Australia (SSI) CEO Violet Roumeliotis – whose organisation provides services including refugee resettlement – said in a LinkedIn post soon after the Community Compass launch that the study offered “a crucial snapshot of attitudes towards our sector and it’s a picture that demands our attention.”

SSI had already begun shifting its approach as a result of increasing social polarisation, she said.

Among the “Indifferent Uninvolved” grouping, “the motivators of morality and shared humanity don’t resonate with them”, and as a result, “it's easy for our sweeping, idealistic statements to lose their appeal,” Ms Roumeliotis said

“Our value as a sector needs to be proved based on the impact delivered, not promises made.”