We started as a directory people searched on their own. We're becoming something that helps them find their way through it. That only works because we built it with the community sector, not around it — and it's what sits behind three pressures Australians are dealing with every month.
“Connected, coordinated pathways that matter — infrastructure that reaches the most vulnerable first.”
The case for change
What we're up against, every Australian, every month
~3.64M
Loneliness
Australians agreed they "often feel very lonely" in the most recent wave — the connection community information is meant to provide is missing the door in.
ABS/HILDA rate × population estimate, 2023 (most recent published wave)
~1.0M
Underemployment
Australians employed but wanting more hours — a 6.4% underemployment rate in July 2026, and climbing.
ABS, Labour Force Australia, Jul 2026
~4.7M
Housing and Financial Stress
Australians combined — 122,494 counted experiencing homelessness at the 2021 Census, plus 4.6M who couldn't raise $2,000 in a week for something important in 2025, the highest share on record and still climbing.
ABS, Estimating Homelessness (Census), 2021; ABS General Social Survey, 2025, applied to ABS resident population estimates
Fifteen years of the same trend, and where we're aiming to catch up
These three pressures have been climbing since 2009, projected out to 2032. Overlaid on that is My Community's own reach over the same period — the goal is to close that gap completely by 2032.
Hover or tap the chart to see the numbers behind it, year by year.
Loneliness
Underemployment
Housing & financial stress
My Community's reach
Source: Australia Pressure Indicators dashboard (ABS Census, ABS Labour Force, ABS/HILDA-derived estimates) for 2009–2026. 2027–2032 extends each series' recent annual trend (2021–26 for loneliness and housing & financial stress; 2022–26 for underemployment) in a straight line — a projection, not published data. The stacked total is illustrative, not an epidemiological count (the same person can appear in more than one band). My Community's reach is drawn as two straight segments — 0 to today's 2.5 million, then an ambition line from today to full parity with the projected total by 2032 — not a year-by-year historical count or a funded forecast.
| Year | Loneliness | Underemployment | Housing & financial stress | Combined total | My Community's reach |
|---|
Today
2.5 million people
already find their way through My Community Directory every year, on a platform built together with the community organisations doing the work on the ground.
The ambition
Every Australian.
Every month.
Every month.
One connected pathway into support, no matter which door someone tries first.
Core activities
How we work
-
Councils, government, projects (Membership)
Funded by contracts and time-limited grants we have to keep winning, project by project.
-
Integrated Technology Team
We build it once, the whole sector uses it — so councils and projects stop paying to build the same tools over and over.
-
My Activity Network (Software as a Service)
A clinician referral platform councils and health providers pay to use directly, so the revenue keeps coming rather than resetting with every new project.
-
My Community Plus (Partnership Income)
Member benefits and virtual care delivered with partners, who pass on a share of what their members generate.
From the Foundation Membership pitch · page 2
537Local directories & diaries covering every LGA
National capability, made local.
One platform, set up around the identity, priorities and pathways of each local government area — without rebuilding it from scratch every time.
The community connection ecosystem
One platform holding the data, insights and tools every place needs.
LGA data
Service providers
Event data
Volunteer data
Statistics & insights
Communication & surveys
Disaster response
Traditional Owner information
Community organisation register
2M+
Visitors in the past 12 months
52,719
Services available nationally
602,818
Community events published
38,104
Organisations represented
The infrastructure's already there. Now's the moment to help shape what it becomes next.
Connected local infrastructure · National scale
Three platforms, every LGA, one connected community — can people actually find your services?
My Community already connects services, events, volunteering and local giving through one national platform, delivered locally in every Australian community.
My Community Directory
Helps people find trusted local health, community and support services when and where they need them.
Discover services · Build referral pathways · Connect people to support
My Community Diary
Makes local events, activities and opportunities visible, so people can find ways to get involved and stay connected.
Publish events · Promote participation · Strengthen local connection
My Give Local
Turns local goodwill into action by connecting people with volunteering, giving and community-led opportunities.
Mobilise volunteers · Enable local giving · Grow community capacity
New revenue strategy
From council-funded to community-powered
Everything we've built rests on shared data — one national dataset behind 537 local directories, which is how 2.5 million people a year find their way through it. The next chapter uses that same infrastructure differently: helping our members achieve their own impact, not just listing services.
Where we've grown from
The past strategy: our four markets
Local Government, Primary Health Networks, Projects and the Community Information Exchange — from 53 councils today to a 2028 ambition of 180, with $15m+ in combined potential value.
Today
$444K
2028 focus
$2.0M
$0$500K$1.0M$1.5M$2.0M
Councils, government & projects (Membership)
Integrated Technology Team
My Activity Network
My Community Plus
Both bars are ordered the same way — councils, government & projects (membership) first, then Integrated Technology Team, then the newer products — so the segments line up as columns: the blue block sits in the exact same place in both bars (councils, government & projects (membership) funding holds steady at roughly $400K), and the cyan block starts from that same line in both, just growing much taller by 2028. What changes is everything built around that base — total revenue grows from an estimated $444K today to a $2.0m target by 2028, so that same $400K drops from 90% of the pie to 20% of it. The new investment is in the products with the widest reach: an Integrated Technology Team building shared infrastructure for the whole sector (an estimated $1.0m), alongside My Activity Network and My Community Plus (an estimated $300K each) — the path to every Australian, every month. Today's $444K total and the $44K/$300K/$300K estimates are derived by holding the $400K government figure fixed and back-solving the shares shown above — not independently confirmed figures.
How we'll make this happen
Method and commitment
Turning that ambition into delivery means more than a target — it's three milestones, what each one depends on, and the numbers we'll check every quarter to know we're on track.
Councils, government & projects
20%
of the 2028 mix, down from 90% today
Integrated Technology Team
50%
of the 2028 mix — the largest single share
My Activity Network
15%
of the 2028 mix — SaaS subscription & session revenue
My Community Plus
15%
of the 2028 mix — partnership income
2026
Consolidate the current base
53 councils on membership, $444K in revenue, 2.5 million people reached a year through My Community Directory — the base this plan builds from.
2028
Scale impact
Focus on using the Integrated Technology Team to partner with large-scale impact programs, growing membership and revenue across the sector.
2032
Key pathways being used by vulnerable people
Every Australian, every month — My Community's reach growing from 2.5 million to parity with the projected 10.9 million people facing these pressures.
Depends on: continued council and PHN membership renewal, the Integrated Technology Team's build capacity, and sector take-up of the Australian Community Data Standard. Watched against: member retention, product adoption across My Activity Network and My Community Plus, and the pace of the housing, underemployment and loneliness pressures this exists to answer.
Supporting Documents
Foundation opportunities
The pitch material and evidence behind two live conversations: inviting large organisations to become Foundation Members, and inviting Queensland into a co-designed Foundation Partnership.
Invitation only · Large organisations
Foundation Membership
A pitch for large, complex-delivery organisations to help shape the shared navigation layer. My Community builds the infrastructure; Foundation Members help decide what it does next.
Queensland Community Navigation Initiative
Foundation Partnership
An invitation to Queensland to co-design shared community navigation infrastructure and a Civic Technology Institute — not a request to fund My Community.
Evidence brief
Australia's Community Navigation Crisis
Supporting citations from the Royal Commission, the Inspector-General of Aged Care and independent research — the evidence base behind the Southern Cross Care Queensland Foundation Opportunity.
Back to the future strategy
Core Activity · How We Work
Councils, government & projects (Membership)
Funded by contracts and time-limited grants we have to keep winning, project by project. It's the base CISS was built on, and the line everything else in this strategy is designed to take pressure off.
Maintain
$400K
held steady, today and in the 2028 focus mix
Reduce exposure
90% → 20%
share of total revenue, as the other three lines grow around it
What this line covers
This is the traditional CISS funding model: local councils, Primary Health Networks and state government projects paying for delivery under contract, membership or grant, each renewed and re-won on its own cycle rather than earned once and kept. It's what CISS has run on for most of its history, and it's the base the newer, more scalable lines below are built to take pressure off.
The dollar figure stays close to flat through 2028 on purpose. We're not trying to grow this line — we're growing everything else around it, so the same $400K ends up as a smaller share of a much bigger total.
Inside the membership base
-
Local government & PHN membershipCouncils and Primary Health Networks subscribing to My Community Directory and related tools for their area — the largest and longest-running part of this line.
-
State government & other projectsTime-limited project and API work commissioned by state government and other partners.
-
Elected representative & candidate membershipA two-tier model — paid membership for elected representatives, a free baseline for candidates — built to a strict bipartisan design principle so it works the same way for every party and independent.
Where it's headed
The council-by-council, market-by-market breakdown behind the 53→180 target, and the other markets this line draws on, is tracked separately.
Related
The past strategy: our four markets
Local Government, Primary Health Networks, Projects and the Community Information Exchange — the full market-by-market view this line is built on.
The $400K today figure and the 90%→20% revenue-mix share are estimates used to model the shift in the overall strategy, not independently confirmed financial figures. See the revenue chart on the main strategy page for the assumptions behind them.
Other core activities
Back to the future strategy
Core Activity · How We Work
Integrated Technology Team
We build it once, the whole sector uses it, so councils and projects stop paying to build the same tools over and over. This is the line the rest of the strategy is betting on — smallest today, biggest by 2028.
$44K → $1.0M
estimated, today to the 2028 focus mix
Largest
single line in the 2028 revenue mix, by estimated dollar value
537
local directories running on the one national dataset this team maintains
What the team builds
Instead of a council, PHN or project commissioning its own version of the same tool, the Integrated Technology Team builds it once, centrally, and every member reuses it. That's the economic case for this line in a sentence: a cost that used to scale with the number of contracts now doesn't.
It's also the team behind the shift the rest of the strategy is built around — from a directory people search on their own, to an exchange that helps them find their way through it.
What it maintains today
-
My Community DirectoryThe core platform — one national dataset behind 537 local directories, the foundation everything else in the "My Community" ecosystem sits on.
-
My Community Diary, My Give Local & My Community InfoThe companion platforms built on the same shared data and infrastructure.
-
Access My HealthcareThe healthcare access product built and maintained on the same shared infrastructure.
-
The Community Information Exchange (in build)The next foundation — shared, consented data infrastructure connecting the services vulnerable Australians already rely on, built to the Australian Community Data Standard.
Why the jump to $1.0M
The 2028 estimate for this line is the biggest single move in the whole revenue mix — from an estimated $44K today to roughly $1.0M, more than the other two growth lines combined. That's deliberate. Every council, health provider and partner touches this line indirectly through the products they use, so it's where shared infrastructure work should convert most directly into revenue as membership scales toward the 180-council target.
These figures are estimates derived from the overall revenue-mix model on the main strategy page (the $400K government figure held fixed, with the remaining shares back-solved) — not independently confirmed financial figures.
Other core activities
Back to the future strategy
Core Activity · How We Work
My Activity Network (Software as a Service)
A clinician referral platform councils and health providers pay to use directly, so revenue keeps coming in instead of resetting with every new project.
$300K
estimated 2028 contribution to the org-wide revenue mix
6
active South East Queensland territories today
Recurring
subscription & per-session revenue, not one-off project fees
How it earns
My Activity Network is a clinician referral platform. Councils and health providers subscribe directly, and clinicians pay per session for referrals made through it — two revenue streams running side by side: a flat platform subscription, and a small fee on each session booked.
Platform fee
$65/month
Split 60/40 between CISS and My Community Directory.
Session fee
$6/session
Split 20/80 between CISS and the referring health provider.
It's live across six South East Queensland territories right now, and we're actively restructuring territory boundaries as the network expands into new suburbs.
Two different numbers, two different scopes
It's worth being precise about which figure applies where. The $300K on the main strategy page is this line's estimated share of the org-wide 2028 revenue mix — one part of a $2.0m total across all four core activities, and, like the other new-product estimates, back-solved rather than independently confirmed.
Separately, the detailed South East Queensland territory financial model — built from the fee structure above, across the six active territories — projects roughly $3.2M in its first year, rising to about $5.1M at full maturity. That's a longer-range, regional build-out model. It isn't the same figure or timeframe as the $300K 2028 org-wide estimate above, so don't add the two together or treat them as the same forecast.
In short: $300K is this line's placeholder share of the near-term, org-wide 2028 mix; $3.2M–$5.1M is the separate, longer-run revenue potential of the SEQ territory model once it's built out. Treat the two as different questions with different time horizons, not a contradiction.
Other core activities
Back to the future strategy
Core Activity · How We Work
My Community Plus (Partnership Income)
Member benefits and virtual care delivered with partners, who pass on a share of what their members generate.
$300K
estimated 2028 contribution to the org-wide revenue mix
10,000
Virtual Care member target by December 2026 (paced scenario)
$5–$10
wholesale margin per employee, per month
How it works
My Community Plus bundles member benefits with Virtual Care, a telehealth subscription delivered in partnership with Hola Health. Providers and partner organisations pass on a share of what their members generate, rather than CISS carrying the full cost of delivery itself. Virtual Care launched on 12 June 2026.
Growth ambition
-
Paced scenario — 10,000 members by December 2026The baseline growth-forecast target used for planning.
-
Full-speed scenario — roughly 25,900 membersThe upper-bound scenario in the same growth forecast, if uptake runs ahead of the paced plan.
-
Small orgs & large orgs/councilsSales and onboarding materials are built around this split, since the two buyer types need different pitches.
Brand note
Virtual Care is the only product in the My Community family with its own dedicated colour — petrol green — reserved for it alone in the general brand palette. It also uses "Virtual Health" rather than "Telehealth" in all member-facing language.
The $300K 2028 estimate is one part of the org-wide revenue-mix model on the main strategy page (the $400K government figure held fixed, with the remaining shares back-solved) — not an independently confirmed financial figure, and separate from the Virtual Care member-growth targets above.
Other core activities
Back to the future strategy
Community Information Support Services · Where We've Grown From
The past strategy: our four markets
Everything the new revenue strategy builds on: national infrastructure we grew market by market, in partnership with local government, health networks and state projects, plus the still-untapped Community Information Exchange. Each bar below shows how far we've come within that market's own ceiling.
Local Government Market
We know what local governments need, and we've built the platform around that.
53 current · 180 2028 target · 430 potential · 537 total councils
Potential market value: $4.3m
Primary Health Networks & Health/Community Service Commissioners
We've built tools that make it easier for commissioners to manage data and service access.
5 current · 20 2028 target · 30 potential · 33 total nationally
Potential market value: $2.3m
Projects (State Government & Other)
APIs are shaping up as a key market, and it's one we're well placed to keep serving.
2 current · 5 2028 target · 100 potential & total
Potential market value: $5m+
Community Information Exchange
Data sharing via APIs is a market we haven't tapped yet, but it matters for where our long-term growth comes from.
-- not yet launched · 25 2028 target · 350 potential & total
Potential market value: $3.5m
Each bar is scaled to its own total addressable market (Current → 2028 Target → Potential → Total), not to a shared axis across markets — so bar length shows penetration within a market, not market size relative to the others.
Related
Councils, government & projects (Membership)
How these four markets roll up into the membership line of the current strategy's revenue mix.
Back to the future strategy
Supporting Document · Invitation Only
Foundation Membership
A pitch for large organisations with complex service delivery — aged care, health, disability, carers, mental health, veterans, housing, youth and place-based support — to help shape the shared navigation layer everyone else will later rely on.
537
local directories & diaries, covering every LGA
2M+
visitors in the past 12 months
52,719
services available nationally
38,104
organisations represented
The pitch
AI is making it harder to find the right information, not easier. It can generate an answer in seconds, but it can't guarantee that answer is local, current, trusted or right for the person asking. For people navigating health, aged care and community support, getting it wrong can cost a lot.
If your organisation is not shaping the navigation layer, it will be adapting to one shaped by others.
The offer is simple: My Community provides the shared infrastructure — trusted data, platform and ecosystem — and the Foundation Member builds their own pathway on top of it, aligned to their brand, referral partners, programs, communities and model of care.
What a Foundation Member gets
-
Lead the marketBe recognised among the organisations redefining how communities find support.
-
Shape what others adoptInfluence the capability, standards and future direction of community navigation.
-
Innovate with purposeCreate branded pathways around your people, priorities and model of care.
-
Support earlier actionHelp people connect sooner, improving independence and reducing pressure.
-
Be up to date, be found locallyKeep service information current and visible wherever people search for support.
-
Mapping tools for large NGOsSee services, coverage, gaps and community needs across every location, program and region.
The ecosystem behind the offer
Three connected platforms, delivered locally for every Australian community: My Community Directory (discover services, build referral pathways, connect people to support), My Community Diary (publish events, promote participation, strengthen local connection), and My Give Local (mobilise volunteers, enable local giving, grow community capacity) — plus My Community Plus for member benefits and partnership income.
Figures on this page (537 directories, 2M+ visitors, 52,719 services, 602,818 community events published, 38,104 organisations) are drawn directly from the Foundation Membership pitch document. This is invitation-only sales collateral for large, complex-delivery organisations — not the org-wide revenue model on the main strategy page.
Related documents
Back to the future strategy
Supporting Document · Queensland Community Navigation Initiative
Foundation Partnership
An invitation to Queensland to help co-design a practical, shared solution that makes health and community support easier to find across the state — not a request to fund My Community.
12 years
operational expertise
65,000+
listings nationally
$10M+
investment in capability
2M+
platform visits
The problem
Queensland has thousands of health, wellbeing and community services. Even so, many people still do not know where to start, who to trust or which service is right for them.
The gap isn't services. It's navigation.
AI is changing how people search for help, and if the information behind those answers is incomplete or out of date, it can send people in the wrong direction. Between AI and digital health, an ageing population, workforce and system pressure, and more information but less certainty, there's a real opportunity to get the foundations right now.
What this could change
-
Help people find the right serviceGive Queenslanders a clearer way through a complicated system.
-
Improve the information AI usesGive digital tools access to reliable, current and locally relevant service data.
-
Build something that lastsCreate shared infrastructure and capability that can keep improving over time.
What we want to build
The Queensland Community Navigation Initiative would bring reliable service information, local knowledge and clear pathways together in one shared approach. It has two parts: community navigation infrastructure — a practical statewide foundation that helps people understand their options and connect with the right support, wherever they live — and a Civic Technology Institute, a home for research, testing, workforce development and ongoing improvement, so the work stays useful and trusted.
The Foundation Partner would be part of the workplan and co-design from the beginning — helping set priorities, stages, pathways and measures of success.
This pitch is explicitly framed as a co-design invitation, not a funding request: "This is not a request to fund My Community. It is an invitation to help design a practical, shared solution." Figures on this page are drawn directly from the Foundation Partnership pitch document.
Related documents
Back to the future strategy
Supporting Document · Evidence Brief
Australia's Community Navigation Crisis
Supporting citations for the Southern Cross Care Queensland Foundation Opportunity. Australia isn't short on aged and community support services — it's short on ways to find them. The five findings below, drawn from government reviews, regulators and independent research, show that the "navigation crisis" framing isn't just a pitch line.
-
1
The system has been formally diagnosed as fragmented
The 2021 Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, spanning 148 recommendations for fundamental reform, found the aged care system "fragmented, under-resourced, and insufficiently accountable," concluding it had never been designed around the needs of older Australians and that older people faced real difficulty simply entering and navigating it. The Commission also found at least one in three people accessing residential or home care had experienced substandard care — a downstream consequence, in many cases, of people being matched too late, or to the wrong service.[1]
-
2
It is still broken today, per the government's own 2025 review
The Inspector-General of Aged Care's inaugural review of My Aged Care (November 2025) concluded that for many older people, "the experience is more akin to navigating a maze," with success determined largely by factors beyond their control. It found the system "remains onerously complex to navigate" and "is not well known, is poorly understood and is insufficiently promoted." The review's own Recommendation 5 calls for expanded, better-resourced navigational and face-to-face support services, including care finders and system navigator programs — effectively, official recognition that the market for trusted navigation is currently underserved.[2]
-
3
People are reaching crisis point before finding support
Average wait times between referral and a comprehensive aged care assessment blew out to over 22 days for more than half of applicants in 2023–24 (up from 17 days the year prior), with roughly 10% waiting more than 138 days. Hospital-side pressure tells the same story: nationally, about 3,000 people were stranded in hospital beds awaiting appropriate care as of December 2025, with stranded-patient numbers in NSW alone up 46% in a single year. Queensland recorded the highest count of any state, 1,072 people, in February 2026 — direct evidence that discovery is happening too late, inside a hospital bed rather than in the community.[3]
-
4
Discharge teams, carers and GPs are struggling to connect people to services
Frontline accounts gathered through the IGAC review describe referrers bypassing the formal system altogether, clients bounced between multiple disconnected providers for a single need, and waits of 30–60 minutes on hold just to make one referral. This is not a complaint about older people's digital literacy — it is evidence that even trained professionals, acting on someone else's behalf, cannot reliably find and connect the right local service in the time they have available.[4]
-
5
Digital exclusion compounds the problem
The 2025 Australian Digital Inclusion Index found 66.5% of Australians aged 75+, and a substantial share of those aged 65–74, are digitally excluded, with affordability a live barrier for over 10% of this group. The cohort most likely to need care is also the least able to search for it online unassisted — reinforcing why GPs, discharge planners and family carers, not older people themselves, need a simple, reliable way to find services on someone else's behalf.[5]
Taken together, this is the case for community navigation as essential infrastructure, not a nice-to-have directory.
Every organisation named above — the Royal Commission, the Inspector-General, and the state health systems recording record bed-block — has independently landed on the same conclusion: the barrier left to solve in aged and community care is discovery and connection, not supply. That's the gap a connected navigation network, and Foundation Members within it, are positioned to close.
References
- Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, Final Report (2021). Summary: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_Aged_Care_Quality_and_Safety; full report via apo.org.au/node/311218
- Inspector-General of Aged Care, Final Report: Review of My Aged Care (November 2025). igac.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-11/my-aged-care-review-final-report.pdf
- Report on Government Services 2025 (assessment wait times, cited in IGAC review above); hospital bed-block data: theweeklysource.com.au – "Hospital patients waiting for aged care up 35% in six months"; agedcareinsite.com.au – "NSW acts on growing hospital bed block" (June 2026)
- Inspector-General of Aged Care, Final Report: Review of My Aged Care (November 2025), frontline consultation findings — as above
- Australian Digital Inclusion Index, The 2025 Findings. digitalinclusionindex.org.au/the-2025-findings; COTA Australia commentary: cota.org.au
This brief was prepared to support the Southern Cross Care Queensland Foundation Opportunity. Every figure and quote above is drawn directly from the source evidence brief and its cited reports — treat this page as a faithful transcription, not a restatement, and verify against the original sources before external use.
