The Wyatt Trust: How we embedded lived experience into funding practice to change outcomes

The Wyatt Trust has released a report on its learnings from the first four years of its journey to embed lived and living experience of financial hardship in its grantmaking, program design and beyond. Going deeper than advisory input, the intention was to challenge the grantmaking status quo by truly co-designing a program and sharing power with their lived and living experience colleagues. In this Q&A, CEO Stacey Thomas shares key reflections to inspire and encourage others to explore this work more widely.

Read the report Valuing and Embedding Lived and Living Experience at The Wyatt Trust.

Giving News: The Wyatt Trust has worked to alleviate poverty and disadvantage in South Australia for nearly 140 years and this work is the result of interrogating its impact in light of unshifting statistics. How did you land on embedding lived and living experience as a lever for addressing this?

Stacey Thomas: It came down to a values-based discussion. It was a natural evolution of working in this space for so long. We didn’t know what embedding lived and living experience in our work would look like, but we had a willingness at the staff and board level that we wanted to do this.

We captured these learnings for our own continued development, but then realised others might be interested too. It’s different for every organisation, but in our experience, this approach is absolutely worth exploring. As the report shows, there were ways that we could operate that would have an impact on an individual level, while also aiming to challenge broader systems impacting people in financial hardship. By sharing our journey, we hope other funders might be inspired to challenge their own assumptions and think more broadly about new partnerships that create space for shared decision-making.

GN: What’s the difference between advisory input from lived and living experience colleagues to the work you’ve undertaken? Does embedding this experience create more positive outcomes?

ST: Previously our work in lived and living experience was via our grant partners, but at the end of the day, it’s about power-sharing. As an endowed foundation, Wyatt is sitting on an amazing resource and we wanted to be able to share the power that this brings. That meant that if we envisaged co-designing a program with our lived and living experience colleagues, the board would agree to deliver what was designed.

By the board agreeing that whatever was designed would be implemented rather than having the final say of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, it was genuine power-sharing. This was a shift for the board and staff, but that decision enabled a different kind of conversation and style of work with our lived and living experience colleagues.

This work has pushed us out of our comfort zone repeatedly and it’s taken a lot of practice to be comfortable sitting in discomfort. The ultimate success of this approach is uncertain, but we know that waiting for the perfect conditions or absolute certainty wasn’t an option either.

GN: One of your lived and living experience colleagues is quoted in the report as saying it was ‘absolutely unheard of’ to be asked what they actually needed. Why do you think that is?

ST: It’s probably a number of things. One is resourcing. We had no idea that the work we undertook with the co-design would take two years. Part of it is expertise. Many grantmakers are trying to fly under the radar too, so having an open-contact opportunity via social media where you’re putting yourself out in the public and seeking feedback and participation is probably not common. There are some foundations with amazing connections to community and co-designing programs. The Fay Fuller Foundation is a great example with Our Town, and we’re seeing other examples in place-based work.

Our lived and living experience colleagues, who were sole carers and parents and women over 50 in this case, said that what they needed was a service to navigate the system, which became the Linker Network. This was a departure from our work as traditional grantmakers, but we went on to do prototyping with service delivery organisations to honour our commitment to our lived and living experience colleagues. Now the service is ongoing in delivery, the trust has funded this for five years and there’s an continuing evaluation under way.

GN: The report is an extensive body of work. What were the key learnings?

ST: In the end, there were pressure points that were things of our own creation. For example, the co-design process took longer than we wanted, but we’d created the timeline. We were frustrated about not getting money out more quickly – but we’d created the budget. So, we changed the challenges we could.

The impact felt by the individuals, being heard and seeing their suggestions acted upon, was an amazing experience. The work is harder than you think it’s going to be, especially work that’s trauma-informed when you’re honouring the generosity and difficulty of the people sharing their stories. On a personal level, it has been incredibly challenging yet satisfying to know that the work is hopefully going to make a difference longer-term. Seeing people move towards being able to thrive instead of just survive would be the absolute gold star outcome.

GN: How do you make people with lived and living experience feel empowered and a true partner in the process?

ST: It’s that age-old saying, actions speak louder than words and building trust with our lived and living experience colleagues has been about that. There’s payment for their time, reimbursement of expenses and there’s reducing all the barriers for people to participate. But the tipping point has been people seeing that what they’ve contributed has been acted out down the track.

Trust is a massive theme running through the work. It’s the building block – without trust, the work doesn’t feel genuine and people don’t engage. It takes time to build trust, of course, and a part of it was being willing as staff and individuals to be vulnerable too and show up where people were at.

Read the report Valuing and Embedding Lived and Living Experience at The Wyatt Trust on their website.