Institute of Community Directors Australia: Impact Report 2023

Not-for-profit governance has never been more important, and the work of the Institute of Community Directors Australia has evolved to meet the growing need. Across the board, 2023 was a year of growth for ICDA, with 24% more people trained in 2023 than in 2022, over 10% more sessions. The year saw ICDA’s reach expand, and the Institute delivered training to over 20,000 participants for the first time.

ICDA has also deepened its training schedule to include multi-session programs such as the Advanced Leadership for Chairs course. These new resources help the not-for-profit (NFP) sector to build capacity at a higher level and to tackle the governance and leadership dilemmas of our times, such as cyber security and artificial intelligence. ICDA has undertaken a full-scale review of the Diploma course to streamline the content and delivery and commenced running monthly student drop-in sessions.

As a national organisation, ICDA believes that all types of NFPs and social enterprises should be able to access high quality training. ICDA’s resources and articles cover topics important to NFPs in cities, rural and regional areas, and all states and territories in Australia. ICDA significantly broadened its reach in both NSW and Queensland this year.

A unique aspect of ICDA’s programming is its focus on ethics. In addition to its published articles about ethical issues and the strong focus on ethics in the Diploma of Governance, ICDA ran five training sessions specifically focused on ethics in the boardroom in 2023.

In response to changes in the philanthropic landscape regarding the need for NFPs to demonstrate their impact, in 2023 ICDA:

ran two sessions on evaluation
published a help sheet for board directors about evaluation
published a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework template.

In response to the popularisation of artificial intelligence (AI), ICDA delivered:

Special issue of Community Directors Intelligence focused on AI
Help sheet: Understanding AI
Help sheet and template: AI Governance Framework
Training session: Using AI for Marketing
Information session: Cyber update for schools
Information session: Cyber update for the public
Information session: Cyber safety

On behalf of the ICDA team, I would like to thank our partners and participants for making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Adele Stowe-Lindner

General Manager, Institute of Community Directors Australia