One in three Australians are lonely. It costs the country $2.7 billion a year, and the risk to health is the same as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. The programs that address this exist, and the people delivering them are often exceptional. What is missing is everything behind them: the finance, fundraising, governance and systems that turn a good program into a lasting one. Picnic exists to provide that missing layer.

This is not a theory. In youth mental health, the Youth Impact Foundation has spent five years running a group of charities in exactly this way, with results that speak for themselves. They have encouraged Picnic to bring the same approach to loneliness.

This is seed funding in the truest sense: it builds the foundations the whole group stands on. Philanthropy stays central to the model, it just goes further.

When charities share their systems instead of each building their own, a donated dollar stops being divided and starts being multiplied.

• Costs shared, not repeated. Running costs are spread across the group, and every charity that joins lowers them for everyone.
• Leaders freed to lead. When charity leaders are not buried in administration, their time goes to their communities, their programs and their donors.
• A model that pays its own way. Over time, the charities in the group pay for their shared services out of their own income. Donations are no longer swallowed by overheads, and philanthropy is free to fund what it does best: new ground.

Loneliness is now recognised as a public health crisis, and governments, health systems and philanthropists are all looking for answers that can grow. The approach has been proven, and the people who proved it are lending their support. Picnic also starts from strength: thirteen years of Flying Fox, an organisation that is professionally governed, financially stable and deeply trusted by its community.

Each step will be taken carefully, but Picnic will be built quickly. The need is present now, and so is the team.

Most charities doing important work already have what matters: a trusted name, real relationships, programs that work and people who care. What holds them back is everything around it. Picnic provides the head office, which means the finance, the people support, the fundraising, the governance and the systems, built once and shared by every organisation in the group.

• You keep your brand, your community relationships, your programs, your team and your mission.

• You gain the capabilities of a large organisation, stronger fundraising, room to invest in growth, succession planning, and partners across the group who share rather than compete.

Every organisation in the group contributes to the whole, and when that is the shared focus, the group becomes far greater than the sum of its parts. We look for two kinds of fit.

Culture: a mission close to ours, leaders who want to work as part of a group, and a youthful energy running through the organisation.

Structure: active programs with genuine community impact, capabilities that add something to the group, income of your own and an established donor base, child protection policies in place, and a good reputation in your community.

Flying Fox went first. Thirteen years of camps and social activities for young people with and without disability, more than a thousand volunteers a year, and the systems that now support the wider group. The first charity in the portfolio is proof that the model is real.