Our 2026 annual impact report, “Regions in Transition”, is now live! Our second Ready Communities Impact Report and Action Plan covers three years of place-based work across Kempsey, Grafton, and now Stanthorpe.
With an emphasis on ‘investment readiness’, the report is written for funders, policymakers, and practitioners working in regional Australia. Insights include:
- Systemic Drivers of Change: Eight underlying drivers of change with over 240 factors contributing to what is experienced in regions.
- Gap in the Map: Five conditions that contribute to a ‘gap in the map’, where it can seem like investment consistently passes over or around certain regions.
- Readiness + Action: The relationship between the enabling conditions of readiness and initiatives – how clarity, connection, capability and capacity, collaboration, and advocacy and promotion are as necessary as actionable and funded projects to produce sustainable impact.
- Ready Grafton Outcomes: Insights from Ready Grafton in 2025, including what worked and lessons learned, with insights from the baseline Readiness Index, case studies, and mapping insights over the three years of Social Impact in the Regions and Ready Communities.
- Social Impact in the Regions Outcomes: Program overview and results from pre- and post-surveys highlighting how delegate experiences may be different based on their prior engagement with Ready Communities and their distance from the conference host community.
- Ready Stanthorpe: Introduction to 2026 flagship Ready Stanthorpe and the Social Impact in the Regions host, Stanthorpe, Queensland.
- National Challenges: The launch of the six new national challenges, informed by the local community with national application, seeking national case studies, informed by deep mapping of related policies and roles, and targets set at the Social Impact in the Regions conference.
Read more in the full report here: https://www.readycommunities.com.au/ready-communities-impact-report-and-action-plan/
