Sally McGeoch On Work Integrated Social Enterprises Creating Sustainable Systems Change

Sally McGeoch is an experienced social impact professional with a passion for supporting work integration social enterprises (WISE) to scale through capacity building, strategic investment and collaborative partnerships.

She is a Senior Advisor at Westpac Foundation, a philanthropic organisation with a mission to help WISE create 10,000 jobs for vulnerable Australians by 2030. At the Foundation, Sally has a strong focus on building the collaborative capacity and evidence base of the WISE sector to address systems barriers to scale.

She is also currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at the Centre for Social Impact Swinburne on the role of cross-sector collaboration in supporting WISE to scale. Prior to joining the Foundation, she spent seven years working with start-up social enterprises at Australia’s former School for Social Entrepreneurs. She also has first-hand experience of establishing a successful WISE as a founding member of The Bread & Butter Project.

Sally discusses lessons she has learned from helping grow impact-led start-ups and how Work Integrated Social Enterprises are providing equitable employment outcomes for disadvantaged Australians.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your passion in supporting purpose driven social enterprises?

[Sally McGeoch] - I've always been fascinated by the power of business for good. I grew up in a small family business - a wholesale plant nursery in Brisbane. My parents created an inclusive workplace at the nursery, by always employing people with disability. My dad also set up a social venture with the Brisbane Women's Jail, where he established a nursery inside the jail and gave the women plants to grow which he then bought back from them. It was a great way to help the women develop horticultural and business skills. Despite kicking off my career in the more traditional business communications space, it wasn't long before I was drawn back to the for-purpose space. I began working on partnerships with for purpose organisations in my corporate roles, but then wanted to better understand the sector by studying the field and jumping into roles with not for profits and social enterprises. This included a youth social enterprise program at Oxfam. We didn't use the term social enterprise at the time (this was back in 2001), and when you think about it, social enterprise is still quite a new term in Australia. I remember when I was involved in setting up the School for Social Entrepreneurs in Sydney in 2008. It was totally new territory, and much of the work I was doing was communicating what social enterprise was and helping identify social enterprises across Australia. I worked in that partnerships role for seven years and saw at least 300 social entrepreneurs develop across the many accelerator programs we offered. I gained amazing networks and relationships with these social entrepreneurs and a deep understanding of their needs and how to support them. It was great to bring those insights to the Westpac Foundation, where I've now been for over eight years.

Since these organisations were not referred to as social enterprises back then, what were they known as instead?

The Oxfam program was called Oxfam Youth Parliament, and the term 'parliament' was used because it was about bringing young people together. We called them ‘change agents’ or something to that effect, and the purpose of them coming together was to learn from each other and develop an action plan for the movement. The language was different, but concept was the same. It was about trying to catalyse a global network of young change agents.

As Senior Advisor at the Westpac Foundation, how are you supporting the social enterprise sector and purpose driven business leaders?

Fundamentally at the foundation, we believe meaningful employment is a powerful pathway out of disadvantage for vulnerable Australians.

We've set a goal of helping our partners to create 10,000 jobs by 2030, and how we do that is through funding programs specifically for these social enterprises creating jobs and employment pathways for Australians facing barriers to mainstream employment.

These communities include First Nations Australians, refugees and asylum seekers, youth at risk and people living with a disability. We have three main strategic pillars, and the first is what we call investing for job creation. These are multiyear grants for earlier stage social enterprises, and these are focused on helping them build financial sustainability, increase investment readiness, and access to finance to collaborate and scale. Our second focus area are programs to drive impact, where we leverage the skills and capabilities of Westpac to provide capacity building, as well as develop and connect our social enterprise leaders as well. Our third focus area is collaboration for change, and it's all about building the profile of social enterprises across the sector more broadly. We are building networks and contributing to the evidence base to help advocate for social enterprises. Ultimately what we're trying to achieve is a more inclusive economy supporting all Australians to access meaningful work; one which values a diverse workforce and ultimately sees social enterprise as business as usual.

Given you're researching collaborative approaches to scaling employment focused social enterprises, what key observations and learnings have you made to date?

The focus is on how cross sector collaboration supports Work Integration Social Enterprises to scale. But an important theme to touch on first is this concept of scale and scaling strategies, because often we default to thinking about scale in terms of only organisational growth. Typically, we are just investing in individual social enterprises so they can serve a greater number of beneficiaries.

Scaling impact to tackle complex social issues requires a much broader approach and mindset. Scaling through collaboration with other social enterprises and cross sector partnerships holds greater potential to lead systemic change than just an organisational growth approach.

There was a great article in this podcast by a New Zealand based academic talking about ecosystem growth as a strategy to scaling impact. He defines it as indirectly addressing social problems on a large scale by growing or sustaining a supportive social enterprise ecosystem. It's the concept of a rising tide lifting all boats. I've been fortunate in my research to work with three fantastic case studies, STREAT, White Box Enterprises and Jigsaw. These organisations are all leading a range of activities we consider to be part of that ecosystem growth strategy. I'm finding a common theme across these approaches is that they are systems oriented social enterprises stepping up to lead collaborations and coalitions. This is to drive and build the sector on a larger scale. To give a couple of examples of ecosystem growth, one way is through infrastructure work and the Purpose Precinct, which is a new retail marketplace for social enterprises at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. It's been brought together by leading social enterprises STREAT and Good Cycles, and it’s concerned with building the Victorian social enterprise ecosystem. It's creating a physical as well as online marketplace. It's drawn in over 40 small and regional social enterprises so far, and it's giving them access to new markets as well as opportunities to connect and learn from others. Through this Precinct, they are estimating by 2024 to have sold products from over a hundred social enterprises and created jobs for 75 people. It’s more scale than you could possibly achieve just through one organisation alone.

Another great example is the coalition work White Box Enterprises have been leading with their Payment by Outcomes trial. This involves 16 Work Integration Social Enterprises coming together and being paid for the job outcomes they create by the government. It's an exciting initiative designed to demonstrate and recognise the effectiveness of social enterprise in delivering long term employment outcomes compared to traditional employment services. It's building a fantastic evidence base, and they've just released a couple of reports this year already on the trial. That's another example of how we can scale at a larger rate, and they're supporting up to 150 people across that trial now. If it's expanded, it could support tens of thousands of individuals. Taking the lead in these ecosystem growth strategies, it's important to note those organisations are doing so much invisible work that often isn't recognised or funded. I have written about this in some LinkedIn posts which I'd love you to share if people are interested in understanding this issue from a funders perspective and how to better support these collaborative activities (see links at end of article).

Things like flexibility in funding is important because collaboration is not linear, it's emergent, iterative and requires funders to hold that lightly and fund at different layers of the collaborative process.

We also need to think about capacity building as a step towards and precondition of collaboration. This includes thinking about how we can support organisations working in that space and pooling funding. At the Westpac Foundation, we were involved in an exciting initiative this year where we pooled funding together with seven foundations to fund Work Integration Social Enterprises. If you're doing things on that scale by collaborating, you're also reducing risk. There are lots of ways I've observed we can better support systems initiatives and collaborations. I've loved working alongside these various social enterprises to gain these insights and share them more broadly.

What traits have you observed which impact leaders and social entrepreneurs possess and have in common?

I’ve been thinking about what unique qualities leaders in this space have, and I’ve come up with a little acronym linked to the term WISE. I think this term is a good way to think about the unique value they bring to the sector. The ‘W’ in WISE represents how it is critical you have deep local knowledge and understand complex barriers to the social challenge you're dealing with. In my case, I'm understanding the barriers to meaningful work for vulnerable people. The ‘I’ is for Innovation, and what I see across the board is a bold vision for change. These entrepreneurs aren't satisfied with the status quo, and it’s critical they're looking to create significant, not incremental change, through their initiatives. The ‘S’ is for Social; I find the impact entrepreneurs we work with are amazing at bringing diverse people together to share in their vision and collaborate on those shared goals. The ‘E’ is Entrepreneurial, this is the exciting part of social enterprises where they're very opportunistic, able to work across sectors and see opportunities where others might see barriers. They’re also open to changing their mindsets.

I have worked in lots of different sectors, and I feel that has brought me a greater understanding of different languages and ways to communicate across sectors. Successful impact entrepreneurs will have developed an understanding of language as well because we can't look to different sectors and see them as the problem.

We must see opportunities, bring them along on the journey and find champions. Being open to new conversations and being challenged across sectors is a critical trait I would emphasise now when collaboration across sectors is critical.

How can we grow this business for good movement, break down silos and make it mainstream?

You mentioned the Social Enterprise World Forum earlier, and I was fascinated to see it grappling with this issue. You would recall one of the big announcements at the World Forum was a new brand for the business for good sector. They are acknowledging that social enterprise doesn't always resonate as a term, especially with First Nations organisations. Now, they've got this new brand called People and Planet First. I thought that was interesting to galvanise all these different legal forms and entities which are essentially working towards the same goals of putting people and planet before profit. That's exciting, but it hasn't trickled into Australia yet as it's all quite new. It will be complimentary to the social enterprise certification programs we have through Social Traders, but I think it clearly shows what everyone is trying to achieve through these different forms. That's probably one way we can all start to speak the same language.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating positive social change?

I'll keep on the theme of systems initiatives, because we obviously support quite a lot of individual social enterprises which we all love. Just to emphasise the collaboration theme, one I mentioned earlier was the Purpose Precinct. I enjoyed seeing that develop, and it's just in its first stages. Now they've got a handful of leases at the Queen Victoria Market and some 40 odd social enterprises, but now it's visible after having its launch recently. I think people can see that collaboration and what that is now catalysing on a larger scale. There are plans for the Precinct’s concept to move beyond the Melbourne CBD and spark Precincts in regional areas and other cities. It would be amazing to see that network develop across the country, and I’m excited about the possibility of these demonstration projects leading to that larger scale initiative.

The other example is the work of our intermediaries and peak bodies, and I'd like to acknowledge the work of Social Enterprise Australia who just formed less than 18 months ago in Australia. They've had such a profound impact on our sector already through developing a clear roadmap both with and for the sector to realise our vision of social enterprise being business as usual. They've had such a strong focus on advocacy as the lever to unlock change in the sector and we've seen in the last few months amazing announcements come out through the federal government. These announcements were around funding packages, recommendations for policy change to our employment services system and the acknowledgement that the Commonwealth should develop a national strategy for social enterprise. I want to emphasise the power of these collective initiatives for change which excite me in the sector now.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

Keeping with the theme of collaboration, systems change, and complexity, one of my favourite reads is a simple text on systems change and networks called Impact Networks by David Ehlichman. It looks at how collaborations often fail because they attempt to navigate complexity through building traditional hierarchical networks and approaches. Rather than building those hubs and spoke models, we need to think more laterally in terms of thematic local networks and how we connect those with each other to reinforce their impact. There are some great visuals in this book, and it was fantastic for my research, but also it helped me think about how we can better support networks and intermediaries.

The second book I would recommend would be one I picked up earlier this week by a U.S. complexity leadership expert called Jennifer Garvey Berger. She's produced a couple of books, and the one I was given was called Unlocking Leadership Mind Traps: How to Thrive in Complexity. She distils the difference between complicated and complex worlds simply and talks about how we can work better with complexity as leaders by avoiding certain mind traps. One of the mind traps which resonated with me was this notion of control or fixation with control we can have. From a funders perspective, it is about reflecting on how we're supporting systems initiatives in the social enterprise sector.

We need to think about how we can support organisations and networks to create conditions for change and build trust rather than a prescriptive set of outcomes.

These often lead to too much rigidity and suffocating innovation because dealing with complexity is an emergent space. You want to have broad goals but having a lot of flexibility in that and not becoming too fixated on certain outcomes is important. That was an interesting, aligned piece I picked up this week which I would recommend as well.