From Fellowship to Forward Momentum: The Power of Staying Connected
If you’ve been part of the Social Impact Fellowship, this feeling might be familiar.
That moment when the program wraps up. The networking platform quiets down. The sessions end. You’re left with sharper thinking, stronger language for your work, and a renewed sense of possibility...
But you're also left with a big question: What now?
For some Fellows, the Fellowship is a turning point.
For others, it’s the beginning of something that continues to unfold long after graduation.
Caitlin Reid's journey sits firmly in the second camp.
From navigating uncertainty as a consultant, to stepping into a Director role and helping deliver a multi-million-dollar social enterprise, Angry Bull Trails, her story shows what can happen when Fellows stay connected to the ecosystem that supported them early on and return for structure, clarity, and support when the stakes get higher.
For alumni, it’s a reminder: you don’t have to do the next stage alone.
For future Fellows, it’s a glimpse of what’s possible when learning is paired with long-term support.
Recently, she shared with us how her path evolved from Fellowship participant to social enterprise leader, and why staying connected made all the difference.
The Social Impact Fellowship: Laying the Foundations
What was your situation before joining the Fellowship?
I was running my own marketing consultancy, juggling a mix of small-business clients. Angry Bull Trails was my core client, and I was supporting them across community engagement, project management, and communications. I’d been involved in the project since 2020 and had helped secure the first major infrastructure grant during my time as Tourism Manager at Tenterfield Shire Council.
What obstacles or challenges were you facing at that time?
Personally, I was trying to figure out the direction to go with my business and felt like I needed to say yes to every client. With Angry Bull Trails, we had a strong sense of what we wanted to create, but we weren’t clear on how to get there.
We were also struggling with operational funding. Our grants covered capital works, but we needed operational resources to develop a detailed business plan and set up the social enterprise.
What new insights did the Fellowship provide, and what outcomes followed?
The Fellowship gave me a much greater understanding of the social impact space and what we needed to consider while setting up our social enterprise. It broadened our thinking, gave us practical tools, and opened up new possibilities.
One of the most valuable aspects was the peer learning — being able to draw on the experience of the cohort running successful social enterprises and test ideas in a supportive environment.
Since then, I’ve stepped into a Director role at Angry Bull Trails. We secured a further $8.2 million in infrastructure funding, taking our total to $12.3 million, and we are now delivering exactly what we set out to do.
Our business planning process is underway with Social Impact Hub. We’ve strengthened relationships with our social impact collective, partners, stakeholders, and education providers, and we’re now able to employ our first cohort of youth trail builders, alongside our first First Nations trail builder, who joined the team a few months ago.
Social Impact Hub Advisory Services: Strengthening the Foundations
What was your situation before engaging with our advisory services?
We were well underway with the construction and delivery of our infrastructure project — the MTB trails and Trail Centre — and moving steadily towards opening.
We had held information sessions and interviews for youth trail builders and were finalising land-access agreements before bringing anyone on board. The project was progressing, but we knew we were approaching the stage where the social-enterprise components needed much more clarity and structure.
What obstacles or challenges were you encountering?
We had heaps of ideas but no real roadmap. Our financial numbers were more “best guesses” than solid planning, and our early partnership proposals weren’t clear enough to spark interest.
We were also trying to build out the social-enterprise pillar and the youth employment program while working on grant applications, without a clear framework. We kept looping around the same challenges without gaining clarity.
What new insights came from our advisory services, and what outcomes followed?
The advisory support with our Business Plan has helped us gain real clarity — on our goals, intended outcomes, what our projects look like, and what resources it will take to reach our vision.
We now have a robust financial plan that shows exactly what we need to raise and a clearer strategy for how to get there. We also have a far more realistic and confident picture of what opening day will look like, how we’ll operate, and how we’ll measure our impact.
We’re excited to finalise the Business Plan, set ourselves up as a sustainable social enterprise, and start attracting the funding we need to bring it all to life.
Conclusion: Staying Connected Changes What’s Possible
Caitlin’s story is a powerful reminder that the Fellowship is not a finish line. It’s part of a broader ecosystem designed to support people as their work grows in complexity, scale, and responsibility.
For alumni, her journey shows that coming back for advisory support isn’t a step backwards. It’s a strategic move forward. One that brings structure to ambition, confidence to decision-making, and momentum to moments that matter.
And for those considering the Fellowship, this is what sits beyond the program itself: a community that stays with you, support that evolves as your work does, and the chance to keep building alongside people who understand the kind of change you’re trying to make.
If you’re a Fellow wondering what the next stage could look like — or feeling the pull to revisit questions you didn’t have answers to back then — you don’t have to work it out alone.
Staying connected can change everything.