Our Approach

Guided by respect, grounded in relationships.

Our work is grounded in respect, collaboration, and practical action. Every project is shaped by community priorities, guided by relationships, and designed to leave people and organisations stronger than when we began.

How We Work

We work alongside communities and organisations to make sense of complexity, align around shared goals, and move ideas into action.

  • Built on trust, time, and showing up

  • Responsive to local context and lived realities

  • Focused on decisions, delivery, and learning

  • Shaped by relationships, reflection, and feedback

We start with listening, work at the pace of the relationship, and co-create ways of working that are shaped by place, purpose, and people.

Multiple hands with red paint on them, reaching towards the center to form a heart shape.

Our Position

Grounded Impact is not Aboriginal-owned. We work as allies, walking alongside communities and never ahead of them.

We are explicit about privilege and responsibility, and we centre Elders’ and community authority in how work is scoped, paced, and delivered.

Ethics & Cultural Safety

We approach every project with humility, responsibility, and reciprocity.

Our work is guided by:

  • The AIATSIS Code of Ethics

  • Manuhiritanga — working respectfully as guests on Country, with care for relationships, obligations, and conduct

  • Local cultural protocols and community governance

We do not undertake work that falls outside these principles. When we decline work, we explain why.

Diagram showing community priorities at the center, surrounded by governance and leadership, strategy and planning, project design and management, and evaluation and learning, with outer layers of cultural safety, accountability, trust, reciprocity, and invitation.

“We bring our toolkits, share our tools, and help communities to build their own - so capability and authority remain in community hands.”

Single eucalyptus branch with green leaves against a white background.

What This Looks Like in Practice

  • We only work by invitation, and communities set the pace.

  • We prioritise relationships over transactions.

  • We share tools, use plain language, and build local capability.

  • We are accountable to community governance, not external agendas.

  • We aim to leave people and organisations stronger than when we began.

  • We love what we do. Having fun is seriously important to us. We reckon you'll have fun working with us, too.

Let’s Yarn

We’d love to hear from you. Whether you’re interested in working together, have a question about one of our projects, or just want to start a conversation, reach out and say hello.


Fran Haintz – Co-founder

fran@groundedimpact.com.au

Dr. Rose Whitau – Co-founder

rose@groundedimpact.com.au

Contact Us