Nominations have opened for the 2019 Third Sector Awards, a special occasion to celebrate and recognise best NFP practice around Australia.

Third Sector is looking for Australia’s most notable executive leaders and organisations that have influenced and made a difference to the sector.

This year’s awards, themed “Avantgarde – Celebrating the sector’s most extraordinaire”, will highlight innovative and progressive sector leaders and organisations. This is an opportunity to showcase themselves or colleagues for leadership and innovation demonstrated within their organisation and the wider community.

The Awards is put together in partnership with the Centre for Social Impact for unbiased and objective point of reference, and nominees will be judged based on their social impact, outcomes measurement, social innovation, collaboration, leadership and systems thinking.

Categories for the Awards include emerging leader of the year, CEO of the year, young leader of the year and social entrepreneur of the year. There are two more categories this year which are emerging NFP of the year and small charity of the year.

A team of judges will score hundreds of entries across these multiple categories to decide the finalists, of which the public will get a chance to vote on their favourite.

The awards night is set to happen on the 24th September and will be part of Third Sector Live, a 3-day conference that will bring together the main players of the NFP sector in a unique opportunity for Australia’s sector leaders.

The conference will focus on talks about providing tools for organisations to develop strategies to stand out in a saturated market and adapt to a constantly evolving not-for-profit sector.

There will also be topics on managing resources and how to succeed on a shoestring budget, and creating workplace culture that attracts, encourages and inspires employees to work towards their organisation’s shared mission and values.

A session on utilizing technology to advance organisations’ capabilities and capacities is also in place.

Attendees will hear from industry leaders about the role of the third sector, including Ronni Kahn AO of OzHarvest, Claire Rogers of World Vision Australia, James Fowles of Hello Sunday Morning and Katherine Raskob of Fundraising Institute of Australia.

Award nominations close on 17th of July and finalists will be announced on 9th of August.