The Social Innovation Lab 

Social Lab logo

What is the Social Innovation Lab?

The Social Innovation Lab is an initiative of the Give Where You Live Foundation, designed to address the most difficult social and economic challenges facing our community.   

Through the Social Innovation Lab, we seek to shift the conditions that hold complex challenges in place across our region. By bringing together people with different ideas and perspectives to collaborate, experiment and learn, we aim to uncover new insights, design and test place-based solutions with the potential to create meaningful social and economic change.  

The Social Innovation Lab also provides the opportunity for volunteer Design Teams to learn innovation skills and for funding and support for targeted experiments, through the Foundation’s Innovation Fund. 

Our Role: 

  • Define priority challenges based on local research, evidence and community need 
  • Assemble diverse design teams using innovation and systems-thinking 
  • Fund and support targeted experiments through the Foundation’s Innovation Fund 
  • Share learnings to drive long-term, sustainable change 

THERE IS A NEED TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY. TO WORK

STRATEGICALLY

TO BUILD THE ART AND SCIENCE OF MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

Social Innovation Lab focus 2025–26: Homelessness challenges

Following the release of the Home Truths research report in August 2025, our first Social Innovation Lab will focus on homelessness challenges, taking forward the findings and recommendations from the report.  

Of the five ‘Home Truths’ identified in the report, the Social Innovation Lab will focus on progressing three key research insights, challenges and opportunities: 

  1. Prevention & Early intervention 
  2. Flexible Service Models  and  
  3. Collaboration & information sharing 

Get involved:

To support our first Social Innovation Lab: homelessness challenges, we’re inviting members of the community to volunteer to be part of our first Innovation Lab Design Team across February and March 2026. 

What’s Involved: 

  • Participate in six workshops across February and March 2026. 
  • Collaborate on addressing homelessness challenges with people with lived experience, people with First Nations knowledge, sector and innovation specialists, and community members. 
  • Learn innovation, design, and systems-thinking skills. 
  • Co-design bold, evidence-based solutions. 
  • Contribute to shaping the next stage of homelessness focused innovation experiments for potential funding from the Foundation’s Innovation Fund.  

Who we’re looking for:

We welcome EOIs from people with diverse skills and experiences, including:

  • People with lived experience of homelessness or housing insecurity 
  • Sector professionals (housing, health, justice, employment, education, community services) 
  • Community connectors and cultural navigators (First Nations, people from multicultural backgrounds, LGBTQIA+) 
  • People with design, innovation, research, tech and/or project delivery skills. 

Apply now:

Expressions of Interest are now open until 9am, 24 November, 2025. 
Join us in addressing complex social issues and help create a fairer more equitable community. 

Please submit your Expression of Interest here.