SHOWING ENTERPRISE

STREAT offers training and pathways to employment to vulnerable youth facing issues including homelessness, drug or alcohol abuse, mental illness or a combination of the three enabling them to proceed into full-time jobs or apprenticeships. Image: STREAT.

Social enterprises are viable businesses that exist primarily to benefit the community rather than shareholders and owners, addressing social problems while blending entrepreneurship, business principles and the desire to achieve social good.

The Ian Potter Foundation has long been a strong supporter of social enterprises, at the start-up or pilot stage and at the capacity building stage for proven models. As early as 1982, the Foundation awarded a $500 grant for equipment to Kevin Heinze Garden Centre, a landscaping social enterprise that creates employment opportunities for people with disabilities. However, most of the Foundation’s social enterprise funding has occurred since 2010, with more than $7.3 million being awarded to a wide range of organisations adopting innovative models to address community needs. Recently, the Foundation has shown support for sector-wide initiatives such as Social Traders’ Vision 2030 (see page 23), designed to broaden the impact of social enterprise across Australia.

The social enterprises supported by the Foundation over the past two decades are strong examples of the diverse ways in which this type of organisation provides training, employment and empowerment opportunities to disadvantaged groups in our society.

Bread & Butter Project

Trainee baker Ma Du (right) with baker trainer Alex Alewood at work in The Bread & Butter Project kitchen. Ma was one of the first trainees and graduated in 2014.

Image: The Bread & Butter Project.

The Sydney-based Bread & Butter Project provides recently arrived migrants and refugees with TAFEaccredited baking traineeships. This gives new arrivals a place to start and skills that will help them gain employment and establish their lives in Australia. The Bread & Butter Project reinvests 100% of its profits into employment opportunities for people in need, making a difference far beyond the walls of its kitchens. The Foundation awarded an initial grant of $50,000 towards the social enterprise’s set-up costs in 2012, with another $50,000 in 2015 specifically for building its operating capacity.

Since 2010, STREAT has been offering training to young people in its Melbourne-based catering and coffeeroasting business and its three cafes. Starting with one street food cart at Federation Square, STREAT quickly developed a plan to open multiple permanent food outlets to offer training and hospitality work experience to more than 1,000 homeless young people every year. The Foundation showed faith in its expansion, operating model and approach, with a $150,000 grant in 2011.

In 2013, STREAT won a national award as Australia’s most innovative social enterprise. The Foundation’s Governors recognised STREAT’s achievements with one of the Foundation’s $500,000 50th anniversary commemorative grants, which funded a new youth training academy in Collingwood. This flagship site is home to STREAT’s seven interconnected businesses – four cafes, a catering company, an artisan bakery and coffee roastery.

Since 2010, STREAT has achieved:

• A total of 3114 young people supported

• 66% program participant completion rate

• 76%* STREAT graduates still in employment

• 97% of young people helped to improve or maintain suitable housing

*Compared to 27% under Federal Government national jobactive program

Awards

• 2020 Social Enterprise Champion

• 2019 Australian Human Rights Commission Award

• 2019 Australian Institute of Criminology Crime Prevention Award

• 2016 EY Social Entrepreneur of the Year

• 2015 Social Investment Award

2014 Most Innovative Social Enterprise.

Fruit2Work

Fruit2Work employees pack and deliver fruit boxes and milk to corporate customers.

Image: Fruit2Work.

People who encounter the justice system can face significant barriers to community re-integration and employment. Fruit2Work specifically addresses these barriers by creating realistic transitional employment for ex-offenders. It is designed to be a ‘launching pad’ into the warehousing and logistics industry.

In 2018, the Foundation awarded the social enterprise $130,500 to cover essential operational costs for three years. This allowed the organisation’s internal resources to focus on growing sales to a sustainable level.

In 2020, the Foundation granted an additional $75,000 to keep Fruit2Work staff employed while the organisation sought new business opportunities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fruit2Work joined STREAT and other social enterprises to form the Moving Feast collective, combining resources, facilities and distribution capacity to provide food security to a growing number of vulnerable people during the pandemic.

Five years since its inception, Fruit2work has transitioned 50 people to mainstream employment. Importantly, none of the participants have reoffended. This is an exceptional outcome given the current recidivism rate for ex-offenders is around 55% at two years.

White Box Enterprises

Hotel Housekeeping, which launched in July 2019, is the first social enterprise in the White Box family and receives funding, space and business support from White Box Enterprises.

White Box Enterprises was formed in the context of a youth unemployment rate in Australia that was three times the rate for people aged over 25 years (in 2019).

White Box Enterprises identified the need for personcentric employment models for these young Australians, with refugees, First Nations people, ex-offenders and those with disabilities or mental illness disproportionately

represented. It was inspired by successful projects like Vanguard Laundry (see page 9), which see employment as fundamental to altering the trajectory of an individual’s life and impacting the wider community.

In 2020, White Box Enterprises launched Project 5000, a mission to create 5,000 jobs for young, disadvantaged Australians by 2030. It does this by building social enterprises around clear market opportunities, replicating existing successful social enterprises to scale impact, advocating for access to funding to enable largescale systems change, and developing and championing social enterprise leaders to accelerate sector growth.

To support White Box Enterprise to grow and diversify its business income streams, the Foundation awarded the organisation a $2.5 million capacity-building grant over five years in 2021. White Box Enterprises aims to be financially self-sustaining with operations funded primarily through revenue-generating activities.

This grant sits on top of previous grants (totalling $480,000) from the Foundation in support of this leading social business incubator. The White Box Enterprises business model is centred around collaboration with government, philanthropy, the private sector and community.

Jigsaw Australia

Hayley, a trainee at Jigsaw Mount Gravatt.

Image: Jigsaw.

Social enterprise Jigsaw Australia (Jigsaw) trains and transitions people with disabilities into mainstream employment. A fast-growing document management business, Jigsaw provides high-quality business-to-business services to over 100 corporate and government clients, allowing people with disabilities to develop real work skills, and participate in the workforce for the first time, and use that experience as a springboard into mainstream roles. Since opening in 2014 in Sydney and Brisbane, Jigsaw has achieved significant impact. Expansion into Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne and Perth puts it in prime position to achieve its aim of creating 1,000 traineeships and 600 award-wage jobs for people with disability by the end of 2023.

In 2021, the Foundation awarded Jigsaw a $300,000 grant to establish the new interstate hubs and build the capacity of the Jigsaw Connect program to transition its graduates into mainstream employment – making Jigsaw the exemplar for the employment of people with disabilities across Australia. White Box Enterprises has also supported Jigsaw’s expansion.

In April 2022, Jigsaw received the award for ‘Most Innovative Employment Program’ at the inaugural Australia Disability Service Conference and Awards.

workRestart

WorkRestart's prison leavers in the carpentry team with Second Chance employer, Joii.

Image: Joii Ltd.

WorkRestart is a not-for-profit social enterprise that aims to empower people with experiences of incarceration to restart their lives and positively contribute to their communities, thereby reducing recidivism from 46% to 10–25%. Through its Second Chance Partners Project, workRestart collaborates with business and social enterprise partners to create opportunities for developing skills and gaining meaningful work experience on the ‘inside’. The project also establishes connections to business partners for employment opportunities to participants on the ‘outside’.

These opportunities are provided in three main areas:

• Skill development for prisoners in construction, manufacturing and horticulture

• Opportunities for prisoners to develop digital skills including design, virtual reality, coding and CAD

• Preparing selected prisoners for self-employment and running their own business.

In 2021, the Foundation contributed $200,000 towards the Second Chance Partners Project.