Leading Change: Good Return’s Strategy 2025-2028
Leading Change: Good Return’s Strategy 2025-2028
By Shane Nichols, Good Return CEO
The international development sector is shifting dramatically. Funding cuts, fractured multilateralism and global instability are putting pressure on traditional models of aid and development. Many organisations are struggling to adapt.
Good Return has always done things differently. From our earliest days, we’ve worked through local partnerships and used financial innovation to build long-term solutions—not quick fixes. Today, we’re taking that approach further with a bold new strategy that brings innovative finance, climate resilience and digital inclusion into the heart of our mission.
Over the next three years, our strategy will sharpen our priorities, ensure we maximise impact with our resources, and keep us accountable to the communities we serve.
We’re focusing on two pillars:
Financial Empowerment – building people’s skills, confidence and decision-making capacity with money.
Inclusive Finance – breaking down barriers within the financial system to make it more accessible and equitable.
Together, these pillars will help more people—particularly women entrepreneurs—confidently access financial services and grow their livelihoods. We’re also piloting support for people with disabilities, young people and migrant workers, groups too often excluded from financial systems, yet full of potential.
Our approach is deeply localised. Across Northern Australia and nine Asia-Pacific countries, our projects are tailored to the specific cultural and economic context of the communities we work with.
We’re building on our expertise and experience while expanding into vital new areas. We’re embedding climate resilience into our programs, helping financial service providers design products that protect people from climate-related shocks. We’re investing in digital financial literacy, scaling locally relevant tools that meet people where they’re at in their digital journey. At the heart of our work is our flagship initiative — the Good Return Impact Investment Fund. We will build on the success and learnings of our first fund to grow in scale, scope and impact.
In a sector full of uncertainty, Good Return isn’t just staying the course—we’re leading it. By empowering people with the tools to make confident financial choices, we’re transforming futures and building more resilient communities.