Australia’s most underutilised policy resources don’t sit in a Think Tank

They’re packing boxes of food for hungry children in a Geelong warehouse, pursuing charitable partnerships for women’s health or collecting food and toiletries for women’s shelters.

Women across Australia are relearning, responding, and resourcing irreplaceable on-the-ground solutions to social failure. In addition to everything they already have on their plates, women are creating charities, volunteering, or building social enterprises.

With each act of service, these women are responding and identifying needs that are invisible to so many.  

They have become the resource when decisions have been made without us, when support has diminished, and when policy and government commitments no longer reflect personal and community needs.

Dee Cropley, who runs the charity Pass the Snacks Geelong, is one of these women. Dee Cropley identified a school-holiday hunger gap in regional Victoria, and, along with a handful of volunteers, provides food relief to kids and families in need during the school holidays, when the safety net of school food programs is unavailable.

Pass the Snacks Geelong is one of over 15,000 charities – the largest share of Australia’s charity sector[1] – operating on less than $50,000 revenue yet achieving extraordinary results.

Pass the Snacks Geelong commenced in Term 1 2024, and this past weekend, hit a milestone, packing and delivering over 1,000 boxes to families, conservatively feeding 2,500+ individuals.

Women dominate the volunteer and community sector, but as Dee Cropley shares with me, “I’ve not been thinking big enough, I’m stuck in the doing.” 

And the doing should be enough.

Yet the knowledge services like Pass the Snacks Geelong have is invaluable to Australian policy. Every family turned away, every school that flags a need, every person supported is evidence that government policy has missed something.

Dee Cropley is one of many women I have spoken to who want to achieve structural change. So many women are working to fix a problem that they aren’t responsible for and shouldn’t have to solve alone.

Women already carry around 32 hours of unpaid domestic work a week. On top of that, many are building charities and social enterprises, gaining knowledge that the government should rely on.

Australian public policy consultation practices are designed for organisations with policy teams, not for charity founders on the ground. Until that changes, Australia’s most valuable policy resources will remain unheard.