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Our plan to 2030: setting a clear direction for NCOSS and our sector.
Our strength comes from the sector around us. Our job is not to speak over members or communities, but to connect people, bring evidence together, amplify experience and build collective influence. You should be able to see yourselves in our plan, because you helped shape it. Over the past year we asked members, government, partner peaks, people with lived and living experience of poverty, and our own staff and Board what NCOSS should focus on and what we should stop doing. We had 175 survey responses. Many more people gave up time for an interview, a focus group or a workshop. Thank you. You were generous with your time and frank with your views. The plan is better for it.
You told us plainly what the next four years look like from where you stand. Demand is rising faster than funding. Short contracts, and funding that does not reflect the true cost of delivering services, make it hard to plan and harder to keep good staff. Smaller and regional organisations are carrying the most risk and feel furthest from decisions made in Sydney, including ours. And too many people still believe poverty is a personal failing rather than the result of systems that can be changed.
Your feedback changed the plan. You asked us to do fewer things, better, so the plan is built around three pillars rather than everything we could possibly do. You asked us to be louder in public and clearer about what we stand for. One of you told us to ‘knock louder on government’s door’. You will hear from us more often and more plainly.
At its core is a clear ambition: a fair, inclusive and resilient NSW where everyone is safe, respected and able to thrive. Our role is to be an independent voice for a fair and just NSW, working with social service organisations and communities to change the systems that create poverty and inequality.
The plan focuses our work in three areas.
First, we will drive social equity. That means using advocacy, trusted research and evidence to push for systemic change. It also means keeping people affected by poverty and disadvantage at the centre of policy development and program design, and continuing to support First Nations self-determination and efforts to Close the Gap. You will see this first in our Voices of Poverty research and in the case we take to every party ahead of the 2027 state election.
Second, we will support sector excellence, connecting the sector, building capability and helping organisations prepare for what is ahead. We will work to improve the operating environment for social services, share what works, and test better ways of delivering outcomes for communities across NSW. The sector consultation we are running on Thriving Kids is an early example: making sure the workforce plan reflects what organisations on the ground already know.
Third, we will strengthen NCOSS itself. If we want to be useful to our members and effective in our advocacy, we need to be a strong organisation. That means improving our financial sustainability, investing in our people and systems, and making membership more useful and more connected, so that more organisations join and stay.
The plan is also clear about how we want to work.
Courage, tenacity, connection, solidarity and integrity are not side notes. They should shape how we show up, how we build partnerships and how we use our voice.
Over the next four years, this plan sets our direction and tells us where to put our effort. The work now is to put it into practice, together.