PR Strategy and Campaigns / Stakeholder Relations
VCOSS is the peak body for Victoria’s social and community sector, working towards the total elimination of poverty.
As a member-based organisation, a key function of VCOSS is to deliver political intelligence, increased advocacy reach, networking and collaboration opportunities.
The social and community services sector is one of Victoria’s most significant industries, with more than 185,000 paid workers and over 427,000 volunteers. It’s expected to deliver almost twice as many new jobs over the next decade as construction, and five times more than manufacturing. When the sector stands together, it becomes one of the most powerful forces in the state and a strong voice for change.
In late May 2026, ahead of the Victorian election, VCOSS engaged Truth Agency to design and facilitate a highly strategic, sector-wide workshop that would bring together up to 80 of its key members to develop a strong, election-ready messaging framework, topline narrative and campaign tagline for a sector-wide advocacy campaign.
Truth was engaged 10 days before the workshop. Given the tight timeline, we immediately conducted a deep dive into VCOSS and its key strategic priorities and documents (e.g. Community Sector Summit outcomes) to build a clear understanding of what the campaign needed to achieve.
We devised a clear workshop framework to keep participants on track and engaged throughout the session, including detailed speaking notes for the Chief Executive Officer.
As the workshop was hybrid, we developed dynamic activities to capture discussion and feedback from both in-person and online participants – using breakout rooms and Miro Boards for shared workspaces.
The workshop was held 9 June 2026. There were 32 in-person attendees and 12 online attendees (excluding VCOSS staff).
Sentiment following the workshop was outstanding, with attendees noting the value of coming together to share insights and ideas as a collective.
The workshop demonstrated the value of inclusive, sector-wide facilitation. VCOSS noted that Truth’s approach positioned VCOSS as leading the sector with confidence, while also ensuring its membership was genuinely included.
The session validated the campaign’s strategic four pillars and through a live Miro activity, a campaign tagline was chosen. Participants also reached broad agreement on key narrative framing principles, including the need for bipartisan, strength-based language capable of landing across political lines.
Truth delivered a clear post-workshop report translating workshop discussion into actionable insights and a next-steps plan, enabling VCOSS to move quickly from workshop to campaign development.