By COO Awerangi Tamihere
For twelve years I have been part of the Whānau Ora commissioning journey across Te Ika-a-Māui.
Over this time, I have seen whānau pursue their aspirations, Kaiārahi walk alongside whānau, partners come together as collectives, and communities create solutions shaped by their own strengths and aspirations.
Much has been written about social investment, commissioning, and public sector reform. Twelve years of Whānau Ora commissioning point to one lesson above all others: Social value is not created by organisations acting alone. It is created by ecosystems.
Complex Problems Require Collective Solutions
For decades, governments have invested in programmes, contracts, and services with the expectation that social outcomes will follow. Many of those investments have made a difference. Yet the challenges facing our communities continue to become more complex and interconnected.
Poverty is linked to housing. Housing is linked to health. Health is linked to education. Education is linked to employment. Employment is linked to wellbeing. Complex challenges do not fit neatly within organisational boundaries. Yet many funding and procurement systems continue to treat them as if they do.
More than a decade ago, Whānau Ora offered a different proposition.
Instead of starting with services, it started with whānau aspirations.
Instead of focusing on organisational outputs, it focused on outcomes.
Instead of assuming a single organisation could solve complex challenges, it recognised that lasting change would require collective action.
Commissioning An Ecosystem
As the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency for Te Ika-a-Māui, Te Pou Matakana helped bring that to life through a commissioning model designed around relationships, trust and collective capability.
Central to this approach were Kaiārahi, trusted practitioners who walked alongside whānau and supported them to identify and pursue their own aspirations.
Over time, an ecosystem of partners was established across Te Ika-a-Māui. These partners formed collectives around shared communities, shared challenges, and shared aspirations for whānau wellbeing. Within each collective, a backbone partner was identified to provide leadership, coordination, stewardship and accountability for collective outcomes.
Importantly, this was not a model built around a single provider, a single programme, or even a single collective.
Te Pou Matakana invested in an ecosystem of partners that formed multiple collectives across Te Ika-a-Māui. Each collective reflected the needs, aspirations and realities of its communities while remaining connected through a broader commissioning framework.
The objective was never to create a marketplace of competitors. The objective was to create an ecosystem capable of improving wellbeing.
Rather than relying solely on procurement models built around requests for proposals, competitive funding rounds, and organisational performance measures, the model sought to strengthen relationships between organisations and align effort around shared outcomes.
The role of commissioning became more than allocating funding. It became the work of building and sustaining an operating model capable of generating long-term social value.
Social Value and Collective Impact
Over the years, Te Pou Matakana invested significantly in social value measurement and social return on Investment analysis to better understand the difference Whānau Ora was making in the lives of whānau and communities.
The evidence demonstrated significant social value veing created through the Whānau Ora approach. Importantly, that value was not measured solely in financial terms.
It included strengthened whānau confidence and resilience, stronger cultural identity and connection, improved wellbeing, enhanced education and employment outcomes, stronger social connections, increased community capability and reduced reliance on crisis responses. Many of these outcomes reinforced one another.
As whānau aspirations were realised, confidence grew. As confidence grew, participation increased. As participation increased, opportunities expanded.
The value created was cumulative, extending beyond individual whānau to communities and future generations.
The Collective Dividend
Perhaps the most important insight is not simply that value was created. It is how that value was created. In many respects, the outcomes identified through social value measurement were not accidental.
The commissioning model was deliberately designed to invest in many of the drivers of wellbeing that traditional funding approached often overlook.
Alongside supporting whānau aspirations, the model invested in trusted relationships, Kaiārahi support, collective leadership, cultural connection, community capability, and local innovation. It recognised that these factors were not simply by-products of successful programmes. They were themselves important contributors to long-term wellbeing.
Years later, when social value analysis was undertaken, many of these same elements emerged as significant sources of value creation.
What the evidence ultimately confirmed was what the commissioning model had assumed from the outset: that investing in people, relationships, and collective capability creates benefits that extend far beyond the immediate delivery of services.
The value was not generated by a single programme, organisation or intervention. It was generated by the ecosystem.
Time and again, the evidence pointed towards the ecosystem itself as the source of value creation. The trust built between whānau and Kaiārahi. The collective capability of partners working together. The leadership of backbone organisations. The ability of communities to mobilise around shared aspirations.
This raises an important question. if individual organisations create value, what additional value is created when organisations work collectively?
The answer is what I describe as the Collective Dividend.
The Collective Dividend is the additonal social, cultural and economic value created through collective action that would not be achieved through individual effort alone.
It is the value generated when organisations share knowledge, capability, relationships, infrastructure, leadership, innovation and learning in pursuit of common outcomes.
It is the value that emerges from the ecosystem itself. The commissioning model enabled it. The collectives amplified it. Whānau realised it.
Beyond Localised Commissioning
Today New Zealand is placing renewed emphasis on social investment. These conversations are important. Yet the Whānau Ora experience suggests that the opportunity extends beyond simply moving decision-making closer to communities.
More than a decade ago, Whānau Ora was already demonstrating a form of devolved commissioning in practice.
Rather than concentrating decisions within central institutions, Te Pou Matakana invested in an ecosystem of partners across Te Ika-a-Māui. Those partners formed collectives around local knowledge, local leadership, and shared aspirations, while backbone partners coordinated collective effort and accountability.
The result was not simply localised decision-making.
It was distributed leadership.
It was collective accountability.
It was community capability.
And ultimately, it was an ecosystem designed to create value for whānau.
The Question For The Future
Perhaps the most challenging insight emerging from twelve years of Whānau Ora commissioning is this:
While social value is often created collectively, it is still frequently funded, measured, governed, and accounted for at the level of individual organisations.
This creates a disconnect.
We acknowledge that complex challenges require collaboration, yet many investment and accountability systems continue to focus primarily on organisational performance rather than ecosystem performance.
The Whānau Ora experience suggests that some of the greatest value is generated not within organisations themselves, but within the relationships between them. If that is true, then one of the most important questions for the future is how we better recognise, support, and invest in the ecosystems that create value collectively.
For more than a decade, Whānau Ora Commissioning has invested in whānau outcomes. less visible but equally significant has been the collective dividend generated through collaboration, shared learning, mutual support, innovation and collective leadership.
The Whānau Ora experience suggests that some of the greates social value is created not by organisations working alone but by ecosystems working together.
Understanding how that value is created, sustained and amplified maybe one of the most important lessons emerging from twelve years of commissioning practice.
