There is a particular kind of relief in being helped by people who already understand. No need to explain who you are first, no need to brace for a system that doesn’t quite get your life. For LGBTQIA+SB Queenslanders, that relief is rarer than it should be, and it is exactly what Diverse Voices exists to offer. As the state’s only peer-led, community-controlled LGBTQIA+SB wellbeing and safety organisation, Diverse Voices is built by and for the community it serves, a place where people are met as they are.
When Diverse Voices set out to secure its future, its sense of purpose was never in question. What it needed was the strategic architecture to match that purpose. CoLab Strategy partnered with Diverse Voices to build it: a sustainable business model, a clear strategic direction and an investor-ready pitch, shaped hand in hand with its leadership and Committee. Together we helped the organisation make deliberate choices about the road ahead and turn those choices into funding materials capable of opening real doors. What emerged was a cohesive strategic package Diverse Voices could genuinely own, use and build on, well beyond the life of the project.
The Ask
Diverse Voices exists for LGBTQIA+SB Queenslanders who are too often let down by the very systems meant to support them: people navigating psychological distress, domestic and family violence, isolation and discrimination, frequently all at once. Through a layered, peer-led model, Diverse Voices offers digital mental health support, subsidised counselling, DFV response, community connection events and cultural safety training for the aged care sector. It is a genuinely rare thing in the Queensland landscape, a service built by and for its community, where people don’t have to explain themselves before they can be helped.
At the time of the engagement, Diverse Voices had strong clarity of purpose and deep community trust. What it lacked was the strategic architecture to carry that purpose further. Heavy reliance on short-term government contracts had created funding volatility, workforce insecurity and limited room to plan for growth. Its services were genuinely impactful, but they lacked a unified narrative to help funders and partners see how they fit together. The organisation was ready to make deliberate choices about its direction and to build a credible investment case for non-government funders.
Diverse Voices engaged CoLab Strategy to help it do three interconnected things: settle on a strategic direction it could commit to, develop a sustainable business model to support growth and financial resilience, and produce an investor pitch capable of opening doors to philanthropic and non-government investment.
The Challenge: Strong Foundations, Shifting Ground
Diverse Voices’ strategic challenges were the kind that come from doing genuinely good, hard work in an underfunded corner of the sector. The real issues were:
- a funding base weighted toward short-term government contracts, creating an opportunity to build a more diversified and stable mix of revenue over time
- a number of valuable programs that had each grown out of separate funding streams, with an opportunity to bring them together under one connected wellbeing offer
- an opportunity to sharpen Diverse Voices’ brand and narrative, so the full breadth of its work and impact is clearly understood by funders, partners and the wider community
- an opportunity to build stronger referral partnerships with mainstream services, supported by greater sector-wide understanding of LGBTQIA+SB domestic and family violence
- important strategic choices ahead, particularly around balancing statewide reach with depth of impact, and growing in a way that stays true to Diverse Voices’ community-led roots
- a dedicated leadership team ready to step back from day-to-day delivery to plan deliberately for the organisation’s next chapter.
Our Approach: Listening, Aligning and Building Forward Momentum
CoLab Strategy worked alongside Diverse Voices’ leadership and Committee in a sequenced, decision-focused way so that every conversation built on the last and nothing was done twice. The intent throughout was to build genuine confidence, first within Diverse Voices itself, and only then in front of funders and partners.
1) Getting the foundations right
We began by listening closely. Through consultation with Committee members and leadership, document review and a scan of the wider sector, we built a shared, evidence-based picture of who Diverse Voices is, what it’s up against, and the choices it genuinely needed to make. This wasn’t about telling Diverse Voices what its problems were; it was about reflecting, clearly and honestly, what Diverse Voices’ own people were already sensing.
2) Surfacing and testing strategic options
Working closely with Diverse Voices’ team, we facilitated a structured process to surface the organisation’s real strategic options and pressure-test them properly, focusing on direction and positioning rather than getting lost in operational detail. The tensions Diverse Voices’ had been quietly carrying — between scale and depth, between identity and ambition — were named plainly, discussed openly, and tested by the Committee before a direction was agreed. That alignment gave Diverse Voices’ Committee and leadership to move forward as one.
3) Building the strategic architecture
With a clear direction in hand, we worked alongside Diverse Voices to shape a short-form strategy, a sustainable business model and the early foundations of an investor pitch. Every artefact was built together and refined across working sessions, so that what landed at the end belonged to Diverse Voices, not to a folder of consultant deliverables.
4) Crafting the investor pitch
The final phase turned the business model into a funder-ready investor pitch with real heart and rigour behind it. Together, we shaped a narrative that does justice to the problem, the people Diverse Voices serves, the evidence behind the work and the case for investment. What emerged was a concise pitch pack, ready to be tailored for grants, philanthropy or impact investment conversations.
“xxx”
— Jason Hurst, Executive Director, Diverse Voices.
What We Delivered?
- an Insights Report synthesising stakeholder consultation findings, environmental scan and a clear articulation of Diverse Voices strategic challenges and opportunities
- a Strategic Options Paper presenting viable pathways and a recommended direction for Committee endorsement
- a short-form strategy including a Scorecard of Success, a Strategy on a Page and a 12–24 month implementation roadmap
- a sustainable business model addressing value proposition, service delivery model, funding and revenue assumptions, cost model and key risks
The Outcome: A Strategy That Belongs to Everyone
As a result of the engagement, Diverse Voices achieved:
- a clear, Committee-endorsed strategic direction that resolved the key tensions the organisation had been navigating, including geographic focus, service integration and organisational identity
- a unified strategic narrative that brought Diverse Voices’ distinct service offer to life in language that resonates with funders, partners and community alike
- a sustainable business model that mapped a realistic pathway from Diverse Voices’ current revenue base to a diversified, multi-stream funding model over three to five years
- a funder-ready investor pitch, structured and evidence-based, giving the organisation the tools to approach non-government funders with confidence
- greater Committee alignment on Diverse Voices’ purpose, focus and priorities, supporting more consistent decision-making going forward
- a strategy, business model and pitch that the Diverse Voices team understood, owned and could act on without ongoing consultant support.
“xxx”
— Jason Hurst, Executive Director, Diverse Voices.
Why This Work Mattered?
LGBTQIA+SB Australians experience significantly higher rates of psychological distress, domestic and family violence, suicide risk and social isolation than the general population. For many, mainstream services are not culturally safe, and the experience of repeatedly telling their story to systems that do not understand their lives causes harm rather than support. Organisations like Diverse Voices exist precisely because mainstream systems haven’t caught up, and because care that is led by people with lived experience produces a fundamentally different, often lifesaving, kind of outcome.
What Diverse Voices needed wasn’t more conviction about its mission. It needed the practical scaffolding to carry that mission further, in a funding environment that rarely makes things easy for organisations doing this kind of work. Helping Diverse Voices build a strategy, a business model and an investor pitch it could believe in is not just good organisational housekeeping. It’s an investment in the safety and dignity of a community that has too often been asked to make do with less. When organisations like Diverse Voices are stable and resourced to grow, the people they serve are genuinely safer.
Why This Matters for Organisations Like Yours?
Many purpose-driven organisations working in LGBTQIA+SB health, community safety and mental health will recognise themselves in Diverse Voices’ story: deep community trust, a service that genuinely matters, and the kind of funding pressures that make it hard to tell that story in a way funders can act on.
This kind of work matters if your organisation:
- relies heavily on short-term government contracts and is ready to build a more diversified revenue model
- has a clear sense of its mission but is struggling to articulate it in a way that resonates with non-government investors
- is navigating strategic tensions between scale and depth, between community-led identity and the governance expected by larger funders
- needs its Board or Committee to align on a clear direction before the organisation can move with confidence
- wants to approach philanthropic or impact investment conversations with a compelling, evidence-based case
- is ready to make deliberate, informed choices about its future rather than simply responding to the next funding opportunity.
If you are interested in how CoLab Strategy supports LGBTQIA+SB, mental health and community safety organisations, visit our Strategic Planning and Not-for-Profit service pages to learn more about our approach.
How Can CoLab Strategy Help?
CoLab Strategy works alongside not-for-profit, peak body and purpose-driven organisations at pivotal moments in their journey. Whether you are navigating funding uncertainty, working through a strategic transition or building your investment case, we bring the experience, structure and collaborative approach to help you get there.
Book a free 30-minute strategy session to get clarity about your next steps.
“xxx”
— Jason Hurst, Executive Director, Diverse Voices.
Let’s Chat!
Reach out to CoLab Strategy today to discuss how we can help you grow your organisation for greater impact.