Nina Yousefpour On Reaching Underserved Markets Through Social Enterprise & Safeguarding Their Businesses On The Road To Recovery

Nina Yousefpour manages Social Traders national certification of social enterprises. ST certification is a globally leading social enterprise certification that offers independent verification of a social enterprise’s status. It has focussed on elevating social enterprise, as businesses that can responds to complex social issues, and in particular to the social procurement marketplace that is looking to increase positive social impact, through buying products and services from social enterprise.

Nina has a wealth of sector experience having worked in the Australian and Canadian social enterprise eco-systems over the last 10 years. She has worked to support social enterprises through business advisory & education, impact investing, leading sector research, and SROI evaluation. She has a deep understanding of - ‘what makes a social enterprise’ and their significant contribution to their beneficiaries, customers and policy makers; as well as the eco-systems that help them thrive.

Nina discusses her key observations and market opportunities for social enterprise in Australia, as well as ways to accelerate the sector’s recovery from Covid-19, whilst safeguarding the social capital that’s so heavily been invested in.

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

[Tom Allen] - Nina, to kick things off, I'm curious to hear a little bit more about your background and what led to your passion in social enterprise?

[Nina Yousefpour] - My family came to Australia when I was very young, basically leaving non-ideal circumstances in their home country. We always talked about social justice issues in the home, at the dinner table in front of the news, basically all the time. I guess I got to a point where I struggled to see myself doing anything that didn't [positively] contribute to those issues in some way. There was a period where I almost went to acting school before I decided to study business. This eventually led me to working with Jo Barraket on leading social enterprise research in Australia when she was still here in Brisbane. From there, I moved on to work in impact investing, still in Brisbane, which at the time was actually called social investments. There I met a team of people, who really transformed and shaped a lot of my thinking around the work that we do in relation to social enterprise.

After this, I embarked on a professional adventure to Canada, where I led on the evaluation for the Ontario Government's Social Enterprise Fund, which was part of their second social enterprise strategy actually. This was a great opportunity to get a bird's eye view of the ecosystem in a similar, but still different context. After this, I came back to Australia to Melbourne and reconnected with Social Traders, where I am now. I've undertaken a couple of roles here, with my focus currently being on certification. Throughout this time I've worked with many different social enterprises in different capacities and it's been really great to see the transformation of this space. Sometimes I find myself having old conversations, which I actually realised is a good thing because it means new people and organisations are entering into social enterprise. But then there's also conversations which have moved so far over the last decade.

Whereas in the past would have been talking about what is a social enterprise, we're now talking about how robust the sector is and things like what preferred procurement panel a social enterprise is now sitting on as the market looks to buy more from them.

Through all this I guess one of the things that I'm really keen on seeing is an even playing field for social enterprises. It's easy sometimes to have much higher and sometimes strange expectations of them. I think these are cultural and ideological challenges that are improving, but still exist and sometimes dictate the way that they're supported. Really, I think I'm lucky to have worked in places and with people that I feel have approached this work in a meaningful way for the sector.

Absolutely, and there's a wealth of experience there, Nina. It's great to hear about your work in Canada as well, which obviously had a large influence on where you are today. You mentioned your role as the Social Enterprise Certification Manager at Social Traders. Can you please tell us a little bit more about the work you do there and also to what criteria you certify social enterprises?

Social Traders certification is about elevating social enterprises in a marketplace that is now signalling it's taking social enterprise seriously. It's important to say that social enterprises seek certification for a variety of different reasons, but I guess our focus at Social Traders is to build the market of customers for social enterprises, in particular business and government customers.

Certification really serves as this third party verification of an organisation’s social enterprise status in the marketplace that we're building. What it does say is that, “Yes, this organisation is operating to deliberately and primarily solve a specific social or environmental issue through its commercial activity.”

On the one hand, I have this aspirational vision sometimes that one day everything will become a social enterprise. But then on the other hand, we know that there are these really complex social issues, including things like long-term unemployment, systemic exclusion of certain populations, the challenges facing our environment, and I could go on. These are all under-served areas of society that a lot of the time require tailored solutions, that are more than just a nice to have social or environmental activity on the side. As we move further into this age of information or the digital age, we know there'll be many opportunities, but we also know that tech can be a very extractive industry.

From this, I think there'll be new forms of exclusion and under-served populations as technology develops, and so social enterprise is recognised as one way to address some of these issues and target depleted areas of our society through using the tools of the market.

Now the following example isn't necessarily representative of all social enterprises because their missions are diverse, but there was a study done about three or four years ago on social enterprises that employ people with a disability. The study spoke to the people themselves and asked them about their various employment experiences, and so between mainstream businesses, a model that we call sheltered workshops and social enterprises, people said they most preferred to work in a social enterprise. That's where they had their most meaningful and sustainable work experiences. When we certify a social enterprise, these are some of the things that we take into consideration, but generally wrap up into three criteria.

The first is that the main reason the organisation exists is to solve a social cultural or environmental issue, there's primacy of purpose.
The second is that it trades to meet this mission. It does have a substantial business and commercial activity behind it.
The third is where the first two criteria really come to a head and that's that financially the organisation operates in a way so that public or community benefit outweighs private benefit.

The sector is very diverse, and made up of organisations of all different ownership models and legal forms. We've got group structures that we look at, even organisations that are transitioning from a mainstream business to a social enterprise, which is really great to see.

But because of this complexity, we're guided by our advisory group and that has representatives on it from Minter Ellison, Ernst & Young and also our sister organisation in New Zealand, the Ākina Foundation, which also certifies social enterprises.

There's some amazing work happening in that space, and it's been great to see Social Traders over the years in Australia really actively contribute to growing and supporting the movement. You've been a very important part here in Australia. We've previously spoken to Mark Daniels and David Brookes on the podcast too.

You've worked with a broad range of social enterprise at different stages of development, Nina. Where do you see inherent tensions lying in operating a social enterprise?

It's definitely a good question, and a lot of people that work in social enterprise, whatever specific model or legal form, they've got a unique skill set.

They're able to harmonise money and missions, but this is actually harder than we sometimes think. It's really the biggest overarching tension that those in the field experience on a regular basis.

Anyone who works in this space will also appreciate that there's a whole range of things that stem from this overarching money/mission challenge.

Things like thinking about your customers versus beneficiaries, social impact metrics, profitability metrics, competitors versus partners, social contributions that are broad versus those that are deep, ethical versus low cost supply chains.

Again, I could go on, and in some ways what results from managing these tensions is the social capital that social enterprises build through that work. But they're also some of the things that keep us all up at night. I'm sure you'd probably appreciate that as well, Tom. There's actually been a great piece in Pro Bono News recently crafted by Social Traders Head of Marketing, that really reminded me of these tensions and why we choose to support social enterprises in the way that we do. It very much influences how we approach certification as well.

Nina, we're talking in early June of 2020. We are starting to see government restrictions open up a little bit now in this time of COVID-19, and we've also seen a lot of social enterprises have had to pivot or pirouette as they may say. This has brought a whole heap of unique issues for social enterprises. The Government's provided these stimulus packages and seen a bunch of different support mechanisms come out over the past couple of months, but where have you seen social enterprises falling through the gaps? Where and how can we best support them moving forward?

This is really interesting because as a social enterprise, when you're balancing some of the tensions that I mentioned, there's a whole lot of gaps when it comes to what we're currently going through and some of the stimulus packages. I should say that JobKeeper has been a lifeline for a lot of businesses and social enterprises included. We ran a survey at the height of the lock down, and since we've also formally interviewed 20 social enterprises.

We'll actually be running another survey very soon, given that things have changed quite a bit with the various packages that have come online and restrictions being eased now as well.

I guess it's no mystery, but really there's a need to safeguard their businesses, safeguard being the key word, and to make sure that the social capital that they've invested so heavily in over years, if not decades, is there to actually play its part in catching the fallout from COVID.

They've got some interesting hurdles to get there. So for example, at the peak of all of this, a lot of social enterprises who were creating employment for people with a disability had to actually send their people home because of greater health risks associated with COVID. In a lot of these scenarios work couldn't be done at home. Even the concept of pivoting the business didn't make sense. Some social enterprises provide training and support to people under a period of 12 months because they're aiming to transition them into the mainstream employment market. So this "under 12 months" automatically doesn't meet the JobKeeper criteria. Similarly, refugees and migrants also don't qualify as well, so those working with those cohorts struggle in a different way. There's others who are working with people in the justice system, for example. They can't even connect with their cohort, and once they can, they'll need to start the process of work with them again, and this has got costs associated with it. I won't go into too much detail on arts organisations because I think that it's fairly self-explanatory the challenges that they've had, which are probably some of the longest challenges through this period. But for some who are dealing with vulnerable populations, I guess complete hibernation is actually really hard to do because they need and want to keep their beneficiary cohorts engaged in some way.

Something else we're actually seeing is social enterprises going back to community partnerships. For example, where they may have had a restaurant and catering business, they're now partnering with charities to provide meals to marginalised communities. I think this is actually a sign of their resilience and their ability to leverage the social capital that they build and their networks.

But the trick, I guess, is the transition back to their commercial activity and what the circumstances will allow. There's effort associated with this, but it's a resilient sector and there's so much impetus for them to keep innovating and moving forward.

Absolutely. I think that really leads us into looking at the movement as a whole, and where there's been significant momentum gathering in Australia, I'd argue particularly in the last few years.

Where do you see strong opportunities, Nina, for the social enterprise sector in Australia? What do you believe is needed to build on this current momentum that we're experiencing? I mean, even last week we heard of the official launch of the Alliance of Social Enterprise Networks of Australia, which is the formation of this Alliance between different state-based networks. So that itself was really exciting news…

Absolutely. Look, there are so many individuals now doing really amazing work in this space.

I think this is now the time to be loud about social enterprises, particularly in response to the fallout from COVID. It's really an opportunity to feature in the hearts and minds of decision makers in this country.

But our focus specifically is on building market opportunities for social enterprises and there are definitely some opportunities that are going to come out of this situation. We specifically work with business and government who are looking at giving procurement contracts to social enterprises, and very simplistically this is what we call social procurement.

We've had various catalysing policy developments in Australia, for example, the Victorian Government strategy and targets around social procurement. The Queensland Social Enterprise Strategy has emphasised social procurement within it. States like New South Wales and South Australia are thinking along similar lines, and this isn't going away. But, at the same time, it's important to keep in mind that no one, including business and government is going untouched through this, and different industries have been impacted in different ways. Compare higher education to the banking sector for example, but what we're still seeing is that a lot of our business and government members are genuinely concerned about social enterprises.

They're very aware of the struggle of businesses in their supply chains. They've been eager to understand how they can help and our message to them is buy from social enterprises now.

A lot of them have still identified that there is a need to keep creating value for multiple stakeholders through purchasing. In particular, the procurement practice itself has actually recognised that with so many people now unemployed through COVID, driving employment policy and social value through social procurement is an opportunity.

This is obviously an area where social enterprises can play. When business and government actually purchase from businesses, their first responsibility is actually to secure supply rather than simply get the best price. We've all heard the conversations about local supply issues and the needs of the countries, including Australia to be more self-sufficient. Again, this is value that social enterprises can deliver. We actually just ran a couple of events, providing insights into the market demand for social procurement. One of those was in partnership with the Westpac Foundation and the Social Impact Hub. We'll be looking to do more of this kind of thing as the opportunities do evolve. One last thing to mention is that over the coming years, we're going to see huge investment into infrastructure to boost the economy. Most States have already released a schedule of projects and we're really keen to continue seeing purchasing from social enterprises as a result of them.

It would feel like a lost opportunity not to be procuring socially in those big infrastructure projects that will undoubtedly unfold, right?

Absolutely.

So Nina, this is probably like asking a mother or a father who their favourite child is, considering you work with so many different social enterprises, but what inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently, which you believe are creating some really good, positive social impact?

This is always a hard one. The obvious one is the innovation social enterprises are undergoing. There's so much impetus to safeguard their communities and keep pieced that social capital that I've mentioned that they've invested so heavily in.

But I did want to mention a COVID free example, and that's of Green Fox Studio, which is a creative agency social enterprise in Queensland that provides work and training opportunities for people inside the justice system.

When they became certified, they attended one of our networking events where we connect social enterprises with our business and government members. From that, one of our members approached them to pitch for work, and they've now established this really strong business relationship. There was another member that also approached them and they're now a preferred agency for digital and creative work. But on top of this at one of the networking events, they also connected with a Victorian social enterprise Goodwill Wine, who sells wine to donate to a range of charities and help their causes. Goodwill Wine actually flew up to Brisbane and visited the studio where a lot of the creative work is carried out. There's actually a really interesting piece that Goodwill Wine has put together on the recount of this experience. Now, Goodwill Wine are a customer of Green Fox's, and they've just recently launched a new animation created by Green Fox's team. So I think this is just a really great example of the connections that can be made through the marketplace that we're building.

I'm really happy that you mentioned Green Fox Nina because they've been working so hard on our Elevate+ Accelerator Program over the last 20 odd weeks. Amanda and Kelly are both very inspirational founders and the audience actually has an opportunity to connect with them at our upcoming 2020 Showcase Event on July 14. So feel free to head to the website to get the details and register for that, but such a great and strong initiative there. A great example of the value of Social Traders and what you provide in there in the connections too.

They've put a lot of work into what they're doing and we're super excited about the Elevate+ event on July 14th.

Absolutely. To finish off then Nina, I’m keen to hear about some books that you'd recommend to our listeners.

Well I've actually just picked the one that I've just finished reading, and it's not directly related to everything we've been talking about, but it kind of provides a bigger picture, a bit of a philosophical perspective that always helps guide some thinking around the work that we do, but it's Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus, which looks at where humans are evolving to and what the priorities will be and what we're at risk of losing as we move to a more technology and data-driven world. He actually starts the book with a recount of the plague and looking at how humans have been able to better deal with disaster over time, and also raises concepts like nationalism versus globalism, which we're seeing being discussed in the mainstream at this point in time. He's just got some really interesting insights and I really enjoyed the book.