Impact Culture Australia (ICA) works alongside Social Outcomes to help for-purpose organisations strengthen how impact is embedded, delivered, and sustained. Together, our work supports organisations to move beyond intent by building the internal conditions required for impact to perform and grow over time.
ICA’s Impact Culture Assessment, development planning, and supporting resources are designed to embed impact into everyday systems, processes, and ways of working. This approach supports clearer decision-making, stronger organisational alignment, and greater confidence in how impact is demonstrated to funders, partners, and prospective staff.
Impact Culture Australia was established in early 2025 by Sandy Blackburn, drawing on decades of experience in social change, organisational development, capacity building, and culture change in Australia and internationally.
The assessment platform is hosted in partnership with Seer Data, a long-standing collaborator of Social Outcomes. Seer provides a secure environment for the assessment and supports the effective use of data generated through impact frameworks, extending an established working relationship into the Impact Culture Australia platform.
Impact Culture Australia takes an evidence-informed, practical approach to strengthening impact culture. Our work is focused on what helps impact become part of everyday decision-making through systems and processes, rather than relying on individual effort. We support reflection and improvement where it leads to stronger capability, avoiding compliance or comparison for their own sake, and prioritising approaches that are proportionate, transparent, and useful over time.
Who we are
Sandy Blackburn
Founder and CEO
Sandy Blackburn is the founder and CEO of Impact Culture Australia and Social Outcomes, with more than four decades of experience working at the intersection of social change, organisational development and culture. Her work focuses on helping for-purpose organisations strengthen their internal capability so that impact is not just articulated, but consistently delivered.
Sandy previously held senior leadership roles at Westpac, including Head of Social Innovation and Head of Learning and Culture. During this time, she created the Organisational Mentoring Program, bringing together hundreds of employees across the bank to support for-purpose organisations to build their organisational capacity over a sustained two-year period. This work addressed an area that is widely recognised as critical, yet historically underfunded.
Earlier in her career, Sandy undertook organisational culture and change work with government in South Africa following the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, contributing to large-scale institutional transformation in complex and high-stakes environments.
Through this work, and through Social Outcomes, Sandy has worked closely with hundreds of for-purpose organisations, developing a deep understanding of the sector’s strengths, challenges and development needs.
Drawing on this experience, Sandy developed the Impact Culture Assessment to provide organisations with a practical, evidence-informed way to strengthen their impact culture and support long-term impact.
Nick Blackburn
Project Lead
Nick Blackburn is the Project Lead, responsible for all operational aspects of the work, joining Impact Culture Australia after a career in emergency medicine to pursue his other interests in people and organisational culture.
Nick’s years in emergency medicine demonstrated the ability to operate reliably under pressure, follow complex protocols, manage risk, and deliver outcomes in high-stakes settings. He has experience working within multidisciplinary systems, including coordination with multiple stakeholders, accurate information handling, and adherence to safety, quality and reporting standards.
He brings a practical, delivery-focused approach to project coordination, system implementation and issue resolution, supporting disciplined execution of project milestones.
FAQs
Common questions about our impact assessment approach
Go to https://seerdata.ai and log in using the same email used for the assessment
In the top right corner, click on the square of dots and then ‘Impact Culture Assessment’
If you scroll down you’ll be able to access all of the assessments you’ve completed and download those results
The Snapshot assessment takes around 10 minutes to complete.
The Comprehensive Deep Dive takes around one hour, including time to watch the short explanatory videos.
Both assessments can be completed in one sitting, and progress can be saved if you need to step away.
Yes. You can save your progress and return to complete the assessment at any time.
To ensure your responses are retained, assessments need to be completed and submitted before the end of the calendar year.
Yes you can, the links to access the videos are in the resources spreadsheet that you can download once you’ve completed your assessment.
Silver and gold badges are awarded through the independent verification process, following completion of the Comprehensive Deep Dive assessment.
After you complete the assessment, your results are reviewed through the verification process. If your verified score confirms that your organisation is building an impact culture, you will receive a silver badge. If your verified score confirms an established impact culture, you will receive a gold badge.
Badges reflect the outcome of the verified assessment and recognise how impact is embedded in organisational practice.
The verification process is designed to confirm your self-assessment based on a review of evidence and conversations with your team. In some cases, this may result in a score being adjusted.
If this happens, we will explain how the verified score was reached and what it reflects about how impact is currently embedded in practice. The verified score, rather than the initial self-assessment score, is used to determine the outcome of the verification and any badge awarded.
Where appropriate, insights from the verification process can also inform future development priorities.
Your verification badge can be used to signal a credible commitment to building an impact culture. Organisations commonly use the badge in funding proposals and tenders, on their website, and as part of recruitment to demonstrate their approach to impact and attract aligned staff.
Where helpful, the Impact Culture Australia team can also speak with prospective funders to explain the verification process and what it indicates about an organisation’s approach to impact, supporting a shared understanding during funding assessment.
The verification badge reflects how impact is embedded within an organisation’s culture and systems at the time of review. It is not an assessment of program effectiveness or impact outcomes.
Yes. All documents and information provided through the assessment and verification process are stored securely by Seer Data, using their platform and data protection arrangements. Details of Seer Data’s security and privacy practices are available on their website.
Your information is not shared with third parties. Access to assessment responses and uploaded documentation is limited to authorised Impact Culture Australia personnel for the purpose of completing the verification process.
Assessment responses are also stored securely on the Seer Data platform.
The Impact Culture Assessment is not a certification or compliance framework. It focuses specifically on organisational culture as a key determinant of how impact is delivered in practice.
The assessment is designed to help organisations understand how impact is embedded across everyday systems, processes and ways of working, and to identify practical opportunities for strengthening impact culture over time. It combines diagnosis, benchmarking and development in a way that is context-sensitive and scalable.
Some organisations may use the Impact Culture Assessment alongside other frameworks or certifications. It is intended to complement, rather than replace, approaches that focus on standards, disclosure or external accountability.
