Social Impact

smarter strategies for the future

At Nova, we believe

At Nova, we believe that shaping a better perspective of what lies ahead is a great idea to achieve big goals. We identify and estimate future consequences that social policies and programs bring to communities. One of our passions is to assess performance to help our clients understand, manage and improve their social programs.

Our core focus is designing Social Impact Assessments to provide your organisation with evidence-based grounds to support and demonstrate the social value your policies and programs generate.

Our Focus

Our Headquarters

Our team of social impact-indicator-seekers is set in Adelaide, the world’s 5th most liveable city (out of 140 cities, not bad at all!), responsible for over half of Australia’s wine production and the first Australian city where women were granted the right to vote.

Our Work

We support organisations redirecting resources to achieve social impact,
improve their programs and change lives. For more information flick us
an email at contact@novasmartsolutions.com.au

The Family Centre Approach

Client: The Salvation Army
Year: 2019
The Salvation Army has commissioned Nova Smart Solutions to redevelop an existing analysis around the impact that Ingle Farm Family Centre is trying to achieve, into a visually attractive and easy-to-digest report, with clear and transparent language.

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Communities for Children - Data Collection Strategy

Client: UnitingSA
Year: 2018
UnitingSA has commissioned Nova Smart Solutions to understand its current data collection process, and to identify strengths and gaps to set the basis for a sound data collection strategy.

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Social Return on Play2Learn

Client: Save the children
Year: 2018
Nova Smart Solutions investigated how Play2Learn programs were benefiting communities. This work was performed through a Social Return on Investment forecast analysis.

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Boarding House Program Assessment

Client: UnityHousing
Year: 2018
Unity Housing has commissioned Nova Smart Solutions to perform an assessment of the entry of data for the Boarding House Program into the Australian Social Value Bank calculator and its resulting final statement.

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Data Collection Strategy - Stage 1

Client: Second Chances SA
Year: 2018
This report represented the first stage of a long-term plan to develop Second Chances SA’s (SCSA) data collection strategy. It also assisted SCSA to provide top quality, evidence and outcome-based programs in its community. The ultimate goal of this stage was to create SCSA’s Theory of Change. At Nova Smart Solutions (Nova), we are confident this will help SCSA to become a beacon in South Australia for data collection, service delivery and program evaluation.

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Social Return on Investment
for the Communities for Children Program

Client: UnitingSA
Year: 2017
Nova Smart Solutions worked on a six month Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis with UCWPA The program evaluated was Communities for Children (CfC), a program designed by the Department of Social Services (DSS) for which UCWPA manages funds and plays a facilitator role for a group of eleven organisations known as Community Partners. The main purpose of this analysis was to measure CfC’s social impact in the north west region of Adelaide and to determine the return from investing in outcome-focused activities delivered by diverse community partners.

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Strategic Planning
Field Projects Management

Client: Carnegie Mellon University Australia - Strategic Planning course
Year: 2017
As part of the Masters’ degree curricula from CMUA in Adelaide, we were engaged to lead 70 students within 10 projects for the Strategic Planning course. The main objective of this project was to liaise between groups of students and clients from diverse Government agencies and Not-for-profit organisations.

Our delivery comprised of the following activities:
+ Supporting CMUA with signing off projects
+ Liaising between clients and students.
+ Arranging a system for final report submission and assuring quality of final delivery.

This project involved working with several Government agencies from the Environment Protection Authority, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Department of Treasury and Finance and not-for-profit organisations like Arunga 3Ball and Stretton Centre.



Prisoners Kids in South Australia

Client: Second Chances SA
Year: 2016
Our team was commissioned with the task of addressing the current situation of Prisoners Kids in South Australia. The report highlights the work of the only agency in South Australia working with this cohort (Second Chances SA). We explored the importance of addressing an intergenerational cycle of imprisonment and how Second Chances program’s help reduce the probability of the children of prisoners ending up in prison.

Our report has won national awards and is currently listed as preferred material for issue-related consultation on multiple Australian institutions including the Australian Institute of Family Studies.

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Government Expenditure on South Australian Children

Client: TogetherSA
Year: 2016
For this project, we were asked to estimate Government Expenditure in development programs for South Australian Children. We focused on children between zero and eight years old. Our calculation indicates that the Australian Government (in its three levels) spends annually almost fourteen thousand dollars per South Australian child.

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Data Readiness 101

Client: Diverse NGOs and Government Agencies
Year: 2016
Our team was commissioned to create a simple yet powerful workshop to build NGO teams data capabilities. Government funding is channelled into the non for profit sector using different criteria and during the last few years accountability and data savviness became a key factor and so, our training sessions are highly valued by many NGO team members.

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What our
clients say

The Team

News


Carnegie Mellon students are at the forefront of building a bridge between data and public policy

Founded by 4 former Master of Science in Public Policy and Management students...

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Prisoners and their families

The latest material added to the Australian Institute of Family Studies library database is displayed, up to a maximum of 30 items.

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Awards


Our report Prisoners Kids:

The Invisible Victims of Crime was recognised with a gold award in the community-led category of the 2017 Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards (ACVPA).

Read the full press release +

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