The Australian Community Organising Foundation
ACOF
The Australian Community Organising Foundation is a DGR-eligible charity that supports the growth of broad-based community organising across Australia and our region.
​​​​We support alliances to realise our objectives.
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Our organisation is non-partisan and committed to Voice, Treaty and Truth with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The Foundation has no permanent grants programs for external application.
Broad-based community organising is the art and practice of bringing together diverse people and civil society organisations to listen, discern and act on the pressures that impact themselves, their families and communities.
our objectives
Through ACOF, foundations and philanthropists multiply the impact of their money by resourcing people facing disadvantage to meet their needs and address the causes of inequality.
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Our partner alliances bring together diverse voluntary associations, charities, unions, religious institutions, social services and NGOs to organise.
what we do for the community
Your money, invested through ACOF, funds:
1. The training and development of people facing disadvantage to organise their communities to address their needs
2. Strategic efforts to build thriving, non-partisan, membership-based civil society institutions that protect and embolden our democracy and serve as vehicles for (1)
No matter the level of government or their ideological persuasion, we support alliances to get to the table, make the deal and keep the deal. We operate with the golden rule ‘do unto others’ and the iron rule ‘do not do for others what they can do for themselves’.
Our relationship with alliances is relational, long-term, respectful and permanent.
Ways you can support Alliances
The first step in building an Alliance is an Alliance-building institute. Funding 2-day or 5-day trainings develop the common language, understanding and connection between diverse groups.
“If you give me a fish, you have fed me for a day. If you teach me how to fish then you have fed me until the river is contaminated or the shoreline seized for development. But if you teach me how to organise, then whatever the challenge, I can join together with mypeers and we will fashion our own solution.”
Ricardo Levins Morales