Innovation & Advocacy

CRSA is continually exploring the power of community-led welcome. We learn from global best practice, test new ideas, and partner with others to improve and expand Australia’s contribution to solutions for refugees. We then advocate for the policies, programs and resources to bring them to life.

New sponsored pathways for refugees

Research, policy and advocacy work to develop new sponsorship streams including “named” sponsorship and crisis response models.

Leading innovation and cross-fertilisation

Convening and leading sector initiatives to leverage the community sponsorship model to develop and scale new complementary pathways. These include refugee education and labour mobility schemes. Learn more by reading about the other program’s we help to deliver: ‘Student Pathway’ and ‘Work + Welcome’.

Demonstrating success

Showing how community-led welcome benefits refugee newcomers, local communities and others with aligned goals.

Structurally additional
1. Making community sponsorship structurally additional

Advocating for CRISP and complementary pathways to become structurally additional to the humanitarian intake quota.

The CRISP currently draws on visas from within Australia's humanitarian intake. Since the program was launched in 2022, the Albanese government in 2023 increased the humanitarian intake to 20,000 places per annum (previously 13,750 places per annum plus the special Afghan intake of 4,000 places per year for 4 years), partly aided by the new CRISP model. The commitment to maintaining the 20,000 intake was re-affirmed during the 2026 ALP National Conference and again by Prime Minister Albanese in August 2026.

CRSA is proud that the CRISP is contributing to an enlarged, government-backed Australian resettlement effort. We continue to advocate for the CRISP and other community sponsorship programs to become structurally additional to the humanitarian intake quota.
A better 'named' program
2. A better 'named' community sponsorship program

Designing and advocating for a better program for Australians to sponsor refugees they know or identify.

CRSA is leading civil society efforts to design and advocate for a new 'named' or 'linked' community sponsorship model, in place of Australia's current approach. This model would enable greater involvement of the broader Australian community, drawing on a wider range of connections and motivations to sponsor - including family reunion, affinity-based sponsorship, and education/skills-based sponsorship.

Current pathways of this kind in Australia, including the Community Support Program (introduced in 2017, which CRSA has long advocated to reform) have restrictive criteria and other features that exclude many would-be sponsors.

A well-designed named community sponsorship model would deliver real benefits: strong settlement outcomes, meaningful opportunities for Australians to support newcomers, communities and causes important to them, greater national capacity to respond to the global refugee challenge, strengthened social cohesion, and a sustained social license for government investment in humanitarian migration.
The Jamshidi family smiling together
3. Community sponsorship in emergencies

Harnessing everyday Australian's compassion and resources in times of crisis, from Afghanistan to Ukraine to Gaza.

CRSA is working with colleagues to highlight the potential power of community sponsorship during crises, such as when people and families were evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021, and those who arrived from Ukraine in 2022 and Gaza in 2024. Community sponsorship offers a robust, flexible way to channel public compassion and resources when it matters most.
Ana smiling and holding a Vegemite apron
4. Education and Labour Mobility Pathways

Demonstrating how community sponsorship can support people and families arriving under different pathways.

Visit 'Student Pathway' and 'Work + Welcome' to learn more about our work.