GORDON DUFF
General Manager at National Disability Services (NDS)
Awarded a Fulbright Professional Scholarship in Non-Profit Leadership, 2018
What sort of work does your organisation do?
NDS is the peak body for disability services. It engages in systemic advocacy for disability service providers and advice to governments to ensure the optimum policy and operational environment for service provision - promoting quality services that support people with disability, their families and carers; and provides information, resources and advice to build capacity and capability of disability service providers.
Describe a typical day's work.
On any given day I could engage in a wide range of activities associated with providing specialist subject matter expert advice to Governments, disability service providers, and other sector stakeholders. There is also a general management aspect of the role involving managing projects, people, budgets, processes such as report writing associated with sector development initiatives, and working with colleagues and the Board to develop strategy. Since returning from the Fulbright in mid-2019 I have been closely involved with the establishment of the National Disability Research Partnership, which has involved consideration of appropriate governance arrangements for this new entity, thinking and planning about how to develop a national disability research agenda, mapping capacity and capability of the Australian disability research community to deliver that research agenda, and how to engage potential international partners (including Fulbright Scholarship hosts).
Please describe the project / research you undertook in the US as part of your Fulbright scholarship.
I spent time with two host organisations. The first was the National Institute for Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, part of the US Federal Government. They orchestrate a national disability research agenda and fund programs of work that generate new knowledge and then mobilise research findings to support progressive policy settings and contemporary best practice. The second was the Human Services Research Institute, a leading US research organisation, consultancy and think tank working with Federal, State and other agencies to improve services for a range of beneficiaries. In particular, HSRI runs a national outcomes measurement program for people with disability, on behalf of State Departments of Developmental Disability. I gathered insights from these main hosts and other US agencies that demonstrate thought leadership and global best practice in the facilitation of research-based innovation in disability services. These relationships will assist in future information exchanges. The learning from those engagements is particularly informing the establishment of the National Disability Research Partnership (NDRP) in Australia, and more broadly, innovation policy that will support better life opportunities for all Australians living with disability, their families and carers.
What were you able achieve as a result / how did (or will) your organisation or community benefit?
The NDRP was formed by a consortium of universities, service providers, advocacy and peak bodies and government departments. The NDRP will capitalise on Australia’s leadership in innovative disability policy and service reform to build an innovation hub in Disability Research and Policy. It will facilitate a collaborative, translational research program through deep engagement between academics, government, service providers and advocacy groups to conduct cutting-edge applied social policy research to guide reform. The Partnership will be inclusive and will ensure that top researchers from around Australia and internationally work closely with government and the sector to conduct high quality research that provides evidence that can be applied to solve pressing and emerging disability policy and practice challenges.
How did you come to be working in the not-for-profit sector?
My career started as a junior researcher / academic in NZ but I quickly realised I wanted to have a more direct impact within health and human services. I have 25 years’ experience in human services policy research, organisational development, service improvement and advocacy in a career now spanning New Zealand, Canada, the UK and Australia, across academia, government, non-government and business sectors. The NFP sector tries to respond to ‘wicked’, complex issues and that’s what makes the work so rewarding. I firmly believe that ‘the care economy is the core economy’ and that some of our best work is when cross sector partnerships for social results, such as area/place based initiatives, experiment with new ways of working.
What do you feel is most needed to sustain and build the impact of the not-for-profit sector?
Obviously I’m interested in the nature and scale of innovation and how that can be supported. What are its impediments and enablers, particularly in the context of quasi or public sector markets as the dominant form of governments pursuing social policy objectives? The NFP sector needs to better understand the value it creates in the economy so that it can advocate for an appropriate share of resources to advance its purpose / mission. To do that NFP organisations need to develop the capabilities to measure and demonstrate value, or impact, and advocate for funding (pricing) regimes that reward those service providers for the demonstrable difference they are making to peoples’ lives and to the broader human service system. This requires developing a new set of capabilities more consistent with a market logic whilst retaining the ‘care logic’ that is the basis of their public and government support. Reconciling these competing institutional logics is the biggest challenges the leadership of the NFP sector faces. It will require new forms of collaboration, literacy with big data, and an approach to innovation that put the beneficiaries of services right at the centre of everything an organisation does.
What is something interesting / unique / unusual about you?
Most interesting day at work - I once had to brief a London Metropolitan Police SWAT team to take back a day centre for people with learning disabilities in North London that had been occupied by squatters. The squatters lost. Just another day in social policy administration!
Click here to read about other ASF scholars.
Click here to read more about the Fulbright Professional Scholarship in Non-Profit Leadership.
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