This report looks at how the creative and social economies can offer solutions to some of society's biggest challenges, spur innovation and help us overcome the challenges of tomorrow.

Governments make expenditure decisions on a diverse range of items yet there is no common “language” for evaluating the social return of these different expenditures. This report provides a method – Social Return Accounting – for evaluating all government expenditures on a level playing field.

This research investigated social impact investment (SII), which aims to generate and actively measure social and financial returns. There are several promising SII models—including housing supply bonds, property funds, funding social enterprises, social impact bonds and social impact loans.

There is optimism about the future of philanthropy in Australia and a genuine desire to continue to develop best practice approaches to social impact by both grant makers and grant seekers. All those interviewed for this report were united in their commitment to address serious social problems and work collaboratively to support social change.

The purpose of this report is to provide a descriptive account of the findings from the first round of interviews conducted through the Policy Lab in October-December 2017. These interviews focused on three critical areas: health inequities experienced by working-age Australians with disability; current effectiveness of policy in this area; proposed policy objectives to address...