Date
May 2023 — September 2023
The challenge
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s (the Authority) has a National Education Centre in Townsville, which is also known as the Aquarium. It represents a significant physical asset delivering public value to Australia and the global community through its role in education and raising awareness about tropical reefs. It was closed in 2021 for refurbishments and is scheduled to be rebuilt and operational by late 2026.
The scale of the costs associated with transforming the Aquarium to fully realise this public value, as well as to meet ongoing operational costs, presented a challenge for the Authority and the decision was made to explore opportunities for developing mutually beneficial financial partnerships.
The Authority engaged Proximity to develop policy and procedural guidance documents, including a governance framework and engagement strategy, to support this endeavour and allow the Authority to engage with new funding opportunities in a mature way that reduced risks appropriately.
Approach
To develop a framework that would support the Authority to develop and sustain high quality financial relationships that allow it to continue delivering its mission, Proximity worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the client as one team, ensuring we were fully across finer nuances and bringing them across all steps to build internal capability.
Proximity first reviewed of the Authority’s key documentation, including their prior development of similar policies and procedures. We cross referenced these strategies with national and international best-practice guidelines for partnership frameworks to find ways to optimise and improve performance.
We then undertook consultation with internal stakeholders who would be involved in the implementation of a future partnership strategy to understand the current perspectives on future partnering processes.
Finally, we embarked on consultation activities with external stakeholders with aligned interests to the Aquarium or similar functions, including the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and National Science and Technology Centre – Questacon, to identify transferable practices from their own partnership frameworks and processes.
Value delivered
Proximity’s project team delivered a comprehensive framework that included policies, procedures, engagement strategy and governance setting to support the partnering and donor engagement activities of the Authority and the team at the Aquarium. This provided a principles-based approach to managing the entire lifecycle of the partnership process.
The framework’s policies and procedures provide overarching guidance to the partnering process, with specific tools developed to support decision making at all levels of the partnerships team and Authority leadership. The proposed governance settings and engagement strategy provide assurance that partnership objectives would be considered strategically, implemented effectively, and deliver the value required by the Aquarium in a timely and risk-informed way.
