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Lendlease

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Lendlease

Project Overview

Client
Lendlease
National

Key Services
Social Valuation

Ten years of RAP commitments and learnings have shaped the direction, actions and priorities of Lendlease’s second Elevate Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP): Country, Truth and Our Shared Story 2020-2023.

The objective of this project was to undertake an independent evaluation to measure and understand, the social value created by key RAP initiatives and determine how much value created for different stakeholders can be attributed back to Lendlease’s funding and investment.

This understanding of social value will assist Lendlease to report progress towards its stated target of creating $250 million of global social value by 2025. Insights also support Lendlease to make continuous improvements to its shared value approach to increase how social value is created in the future.

The selected RAP initiatives reviewed were:

  1. RAP-funded partnership with the National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy (NASCA)
  2. RAP-funded partnership with Bangarra Dance Theatre
  3. Investment Management (IM) Portfolio partnerships with:
  • APY Arts Centre Collective
  • ID. Know Yourself
  • Cairns Indigenous Arts Fair (CIAF) Fashion show



Understanding the social value of initiatives that seek to create outcomes for First Nations people and communities is deeply complex. The project was carried out with the support of Kowa Collaboration, a First Nations consultancy.

To carry out this project we needed to:

  • Develop new ways of listening and articulating what Cultural and interpersonal change can mean to First Nations people.
  • Consider the cultural appropriateness of applying Western thinking to measure the social value of First Nations Cultural outcomes in units of financial dollars. This involved balancing the importance of translating Cultural outcomes into units of financial dollars to ensure value is not lost, missing or failed to be understood by intended audiences alongside identifying what was considered by stakeholders as too priceless to apply financial modelling to.
  • Explore practices of First Nations Data Sovereignty that support how data is informed through the wisdom of people’s lived experience and connection to Culture and their right to regulate, collect, use and own the information they share.

The social value attributed to Lendlease is reported in the Lendlease Annual Report.

The level of care you all have given to this report is incredible and will be instrumental in allowing us to understand the best way to continue our reconciliation journey going forward
Edmund McCombs, Head of Social Impact, Social Sustainability, Lendlease

Our collaborators in impact