An evaluation of National Women’s Alliances (NWA) – one of two streams in the Women’s Leadership and Development Program (WLDP) that funds engagement with the women’s sector and other activities to improve social and economic outcomes for women in Australia.

The primary purpose of the evaluation was to assess the suitability of the NWA model as a vehicle for bringing women’s voices to the Australian Government to inform policy development. 

The evaluation involved a desktop review and interviews with selected stakeholders of the program.

This report is structured around three evaluation outcome requirements.

1. Assessment of how well suited the NWA model is to delivering the objectives of the Women’s Leadership and Development Program.
2. Analysis of whether (and if so, how) changes to the model in 2020-21 and 2021-22 have improved NWAs’ focus and delivery of the specified outcomes and activities.
3. Analysis of whether (and if so, how) the model has been adapted by grantees to their particular contexts, including NWA focus area, organisational governance and culture, and what impact any adaptations have had on meeting the model’s objectives.

Recommendations

• Establish options to increase and extend grant funding for the Alliances, to ensure they are adequately resourced to fulfil performance expectations, and to future-proof the model’s ability to deliver women’s voices to Government.
• Establish options to increase resourcing to ensure the program has adequate capability and capacity for effective implementation.
• Undertake consultation with Alliances about grant management processes.
• Establish options to further improve the inclusiveness and representativeness of the model.
• Support the development of more collaborative and inclusive policy making to better enable the contribution of the NWA program to the objectives of the WLDP.
• Undertake an impact evaluation of the NWA program that concentrates on women and the women’s sector to better understand barriers and enablers to flow on benefits from NWA activity to WLDP objectives.
• Support inter-Alliance collaboration to ensure policy problems and solutions are interpreted and addressed through an intersectional lens.