What is an Impact Community? CFAus Lead Mari De Liseo explains
In late 2025, Community Foundations Australia began formally recognising something that had already been building across the network – community foundations coming together around shared challenges, opportunities and practice.
The Impact Communities initiative is our way of supporting that momentum. Mari De Liseo joined CFAus to help steward this emerging work. With a background in community development and capability building from Mexico to Melbourne/Narrm, they bring experience in designing collaborative approaches that strengthen local leadership.
In this Q&A, Mari shares the thinking behind Impact Communities and how the model is evolving.
1. What are Impact Communities and what is your role?
When we use the phrase impact communities, we’re describing something we’ve seen emerging organically within the community foundation network over recent years.
The team at Community Foundations Australia (CFAus) began noticing strong momentum gathering around particular issues – community foundations organising themselves around shared challenges like the renewable energy transition, gender equity, and affordable housing. These interest groups weren’t centrally directed; it was energy coming from the field.
Our emerging impact communities model is our way of recognising and supporting that momentum. It’s also a core part of our field catalyst approach, which is grounded in the belief that the field already holds the wisdom and knowledge needed for transformative change. CFAus’s role is to enable those forces – providing infrastructure and connective tissue where needed.
My role was created to help steward this work – not to “run a program”, but to create the enabling conditions for meaningful collaboration, shared learning and systems-level thinking across the network. The aim is to amplify what’s already working, not duplicate effort. This can include connecting local organisations with national partners and sector leaders, and creating learning loops that inform investment, surface advocacy opportunities and strengthen the broader network. These are opportunities community foundations don’t always have access to when working alone.
Some of our thinking takes inspiration from The Australian Centre for Social Innovation whitepaper Building Networks for Systemic Impact, which describes how well-supported networks can create the conditions for durable systems change. But our model will be shaped by the Australian community foundation context, and importantly, by the energy of our members. More and more, we’re simply observing momentum in certain areas and asking: how do we support this well?
2. What impact communities are you currently working on and at what stage are they?
Right now I’m focusing on designing an impact community centred around ‘ageing well’, sparked by interest from the Wicking Trust, who care deeply about older people having a sense of belonging, inclusion and purpose – particularly in rural and remote areas. Many foundations in our network engage with older community members and that’s an important issue for them, so my work involves designing methods for this group to learn and drive impact together. These methods will include understanding issues, involving people with lived experience, setting a shared ambition, mobilising local resources and testing ideas. It could be about designing a program that will work across community foundations – it depends on what members of the impact community come up with.
We’re still in the early stages of design, and there’s still a lot to test, especially with community foundations. It will be important to involve them, and the CFAus team, in shaping small but significant elements, like whether we use the term “impact communities” or “impact networks” or another term. These choices might seem minor, but building a shared language and clear understanding is essential. This phase is exploratory, and I’m keen for more people to collaborate – not to get everything right immediately, but to ensure alignment and clarity.
A defining feature of our ageing well initiative is its staged structure. We’re hoping the work will unfold over three cohorts. I’m excited by that longer arc, because it gives us room to test, learn and adapt the model. Ideally, over time, community foundation members will take the lead, and I hope it becomes something they’re genuinely excited to jump in on as well.
3. Why did you join CFAus?
I wanted to move upstream from my previous community development work, which had predominantly been within philanthropically funded programs. I knew I wanted to focus on genuine local effort. In a time of overlapping crises, decentralised decision-making and community-led action feel more important than ever.
That commitment to shifting power locally has always mattered to me, and I wanted to work somewhere that approached it authentically and with integrity. The idea of joining and contributing to a growing movement like community foundations was exciting.
4. What does community philanthropy mean for you and how do you see it driving social change in Australia?
I’m still learning about community philanthropy every day, which has been one of the most energising parts of this role. I wish more people – especially young people – knew about it. Having worked with 18-25-year-olds for years, I know how much they care about genuine participation. With CFAus championing meaningful engagement and strong community governance, the model has real integrity.
I often think that if young people knew there were local, independent organisations investing in their communities – organisations that value community leadership and shared decision-making – they’d be excited to get involved. One program I worked alongside, funded by the South West Community Foundation, supported youth mentoring and helped young people build meaningful relationships they wouldn’t otherwise have had. It showed me the incredible potential of community philanthropy to strengthen social and community capital in meaningful and tangible ways.
5. What are the key challenges and opportunities ahead for your role?
The term impact communities is new, and my role is still taking shape within our rapidly growing network. I don’t want impact communities to feel exclusive or separate; they should benefit everyone, whether they’re directly involved or not.
We’re also thinking about how we enable knowledge and insight to move laterally across the network, not stay contained within topic-based clusters. The issues we want to engage with are not siloed: housing intersects with ageing; gender equity intersects with economic participation and housing; renewable transitions intersect with regional employment and community wealth – it goes on. If we aren’t intentional, structuring our work around single issues could inadvertently reinforce fragmentation. So we’re designing porousness between impact communities. This could look like shared data, convenings and learning loops. The goal is a healthier ecosystem overall, not a collection of disconnected initiatives.
Another focus right now is building strong connections leading into the National Community Foundations Forum in May (register here!), providing regular updates at network meetings, and ensuring this work strengthens our overall connectivity. My first network meeting with the members showed me how trusting, open and engaged the relationships in our network are. The strength of those connections is such a strong foundation for the movement.
Ideally, this work will land smoothly and spark genuine excitement. I imagine a space with multiple levels of participation: some foundations may access funding to support local projects, while others join to stay close to the issue. It should be open, diverse and community-centred. Over time, our ‘impact communities’ model could become a pathway for community foundations to keep building on their awesome skills in leadership, collaboration and codesign.