Convened by the Menzies Leadership Foundation
Connecting Australia's work on civility.
Civility is listening respectfully, speaking honestly, and staying engaged across our differences, even when it's hard. Organisations across the country already build it, in neighbourhoods, newsrooms, classrooms and councils.
In 2026 the Menzies Leadership Foundation brought thirteen of those organisations together as the Civility Coalition, to map that work and find where connecting it would make it stronger. This site shares what the Coalition produced in its first phase, and what comes next.
Why now
Social cohesion is on the national agenda.
A Royal Commission with strengthening social cohesion in its remit is under way. The national measure of social cohesion sits at its lowest level since the Scanlon surveys began in 2007. And effort is gathering across policy, philanthropy and community, mostly project by project, place by place.
The response so far has leaned on security and services. What builds cohesion is slower and more local: the conditions that let people live well across difference. Building those is a whole-of-society task, and it is what the Coalition set out to map. Civility is one part of that work: it helps people stay engaged across difference, including in conflicts about justice and exclusion that a calm tone alone won't resolve.
of Australians trust the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time, down from 53 per cent two decades ago. Scanlon Institute, Mapping Social Cohesion 2025.
First phase13 organisations5 working sessionsFebruary to June 2026
The map
Four conditions, at four levels.
Across the Coalition's first-phase interviews and sessions, the same four conditions kept surfacing: capacity, capability, trust and belonging, each showing up from the personal to the systemic. Together they make a working map: a way for very different organisations to see their work, and each other's, in one frame.
How the pieces on this page fit together. The map below describes what civility needs and where. The organisation roles suggest what you could contribute. The shared infrastructure connects that work between organisations. The investment framework explains how to fund it.
- Conditions map: what needs to be in place
- Your part: what your organisation can contribute
- Shared infrastructure: what connects the work
- Investment framework: how to fund it
Select any cell to read what it holds. Capacity is time and resources; capability is skills and confidence; trust is good faith between people and institutions; belonging is being part of the place and the conversation.
Community level
Civic trust
Trust: the confidence that people and institutions will act in good faith.
Faith in local institutions, such as councils, media, schools and clubs, to act fairly and in good faith.
Your part
Every organisation can make a difference.
Social cohesion is a whole-of-society task, and every kind of organisation holds part of it. Choose your organisation type for a practical starting point, and a question to take back to your team.
Join projects up and share what you're learning. Community organisations hold the relationships, credibility and day-to-day settings where civility is practised. Welcoming Australia, Collaboration for Impact, FECCA and PLACE Australia are already part of the Coalition.
What could we offer someone else's work, and what do we need from theirs?
Wherever you sit, there's a layer of shared infrastructure that needs you.
Shared infrastructure
The shared infrastructure the work needs.
Australia has no shortage of research, pilots, advocates and practitioners working on social cohesion. What's scarce is the architecture that connects and accelerates them. The Coalition named four kinds of shared infrastructure that hang together as one structure, each resting on the one below it. They are the backbone of the investment framework. Members' energy was spread across all four. Most already have some activity in shared data and knowledge and want a better way to do it, and when asked to pick one area to work on together, most chose coordination.
Amplification
Helping effective work spread, and making the case to governments and the public so that support grows for everything below. How might we make this work multiply?
Project pillars
in trusted settingsHow might the work in one place strengthen the work in another?
Communities setting and delivering their own agendas in the places people already trust: schools, clubs, newsrooms, neighbourhood houses, online spaces. The projects build capability, dialogue, participation and connection. These four kinds of work are different from the four conditions on the map above: the conditions describe what civility needs, the pillars describe the work that builds it.
Coordination
governance and capitalHow might we structure capital flows so organisations contribute to the same picture rather than compete for the same pool?
Pooled funds, shared governance and intermediaries that hold the work between organisations: who decides, who's accountable, and on what terms.
Shared data and knowledge
the foundationHow might we make the civility work happening across Australia visible to itself, without it becoming a new reporting burden?
Shared measurement and a live picture of who is doing what, where, and to what effect, so the field can see itself and tell its story. Most member organisations already collect something here, and told us they want a better way to make the work visible without adding to the reporting they carry.
One structure, not four separate themes. Each layer carries a question the Coalition is still working on, and the investment framework sets out five ways to fund the whole of it.
Outputs
What the Coalition produced.
An investment framework for civility and social cohesion
For funders and for any organisation deciding where its effort lands. It uses the conditions map to show what kind of work an investment supports, and whose existing work it sits beside.
- Five ways to fund systemically: back a place, grow a cohort's capability, build the connective tissue between organisations, fund shared data, or fund advocacy.
- What good funding looks like here: multi-year, readiness-aware, collaborative by design, lighter on reporting, with participation costed in.
A collective contribution to strengthening Australia's social cohesion
A joint submission to the Royal Commission, whose remit includes strengthening social cohesion. It sets out how organisations across the field can contribute together, rather than project by project.
Read the joint submissionMembers
The Civility Coalition's first-phase members.
Thirteen organisations took part, working at every level of the system: community foundations, national networks, federal policy, local government, media, research and practice.
Ellen Jackson, Chair. Ballarat pilot lead.
Anna Powell, CEO. Tasmania pilot lead.
Mary Ann Baquero Geronimo, CEO. Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia.
Claire Stuchbery, Executive Director. Local and Independent News Association.
Liz Gillies, CEO; Rohan Martyres, Director, Strategy and Partnerships. Convener.
John Huigen, Executive Director.
Bonnie Shaw, Chief Innovator in Residence.
Tess Gordon, Director, Strategy and Governance.
Tim Rosenlund-O'Brien, Evaluation Lead.
Russel Howcroft, Broadcaster.
John Neil, Director of Innovation and Education.
Aleem Ali, CEO.
Facilitation and sense-making by Paper Giant.
Help shape the Coalition's next phase.
The first phase built the map and the relationships behind it. The Menzies Leadership Foundation is now shaping the next stage: online workshops following the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute's Australian Social Cohesion Summit, opening the conversation to a wider group of organisations, before the Coalition reconvenes.
If your organisation works on social cohesion, civility or belonging, tell us you're interested. You'll hear about the workshops and the next phase as they take shape.
Register your interestThoughts on what's here? Email chris@papergiant.net. Register link destination to be confirmed with MLF; currently the MLF homepage.