Kylie Hansen & Pat Ryan On The Unique Social Enterprise Landscape of Western Australia

Kylie Hansen is an Executive Director of Impact Seed, co-founding Impact Seed in 2015 as Western Australia’s (WA) only social enterprise and impact investment capacity builder. Since then she has worked with stakeholders across the community, social finance and government sector to develop frameworks, programs, policy and funding to support the development of an impact investment and measurement ecosystem in WA.

Kylie's experience traverses the government, corporate, not for profit and social finance sectors. Prior to founding Impact Seed, she was also Founding CEO and Director of import/export startup venture Empowering Communities, which focused on international development within and into Cambodia through a B2B and B2C retail social enterprise model. Kylie holds qualifications including: Juris Doctor (UWA, 2014-2018); Bachelor of Commerce (Human Resource Management/Management) (UWA); Bachelor of Arts (Political Science and International Relations) (UWA); Bachelor of Community Development (Murdoch); Graduate Certificate in Project Management (University of South Australia); Graduate Certificate in Social Impact (Centre for Social Impact, UWA, 2012).

Pat Ryan is CEO of Dismantle, a social enterprise creating employment opportunities for young people at-risk in Perth and regional WA.

Pat began his career in Department for Child Protection, after completing a degree in Behavioural Science. Following the experience at DCP, Pat developed Dismantle's flagship youth engagement program in 2012, to lead the organisation through a structural change and take on the CEO position in 2015. Dismantle now has a turnover of over $1.5m, with 18 staff members and sees 400 youth participants take part in the programming each year.

Pat is also a member of Westpac Foundation's 2020 Social Fellowship program, being recognised for his achievements in and contribution to the youth and social sector in WA.

Kylie and Pat discuss the establishment of the Western Australia Social Enterprise Council, (WASEC), share their experience in running social enterprises and how impact investment can effectively nurture market growth.

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

[Tom Allen] - It's good to have you both talking on the other side of Australia today. To kick off then Kylie, it'd be great to hear a bit about your background and what led to your passion in social enterprise and impact investing?

[Kylie Hansen] I've spent a little bit of time in the corporate sector; I started out in Deloitte in fact, and spent some time in local government as well. But I think my key starting point in social enterprise was running Empowering Communities in Cambodia.

It was a social enterprise where we worked with women and had them making different products and handmade carpets made of recycled materials, and then we sold those internationally. The purpose was actually to get kids into school, so it was a multifaceted social impact that we were trying to create there.

I think after Empowering Communities, I moved back to Perth and I started working with the WA Council of Social Services. That policy background and thinking about the community service sector and the requirements for that sector in building fee-for-service revenue generation and trying to be sustainable, all coalesced. I met Sven, my husband, and also the co-founder of Impact Seed, and we thought, "this market doesn't really exist here in WA. What can we do to try and create it?” Really from there, it's just been an evolution and then working with wonderful people like Pat and other social entrepreneurs in WA to try and move that market.

It's a really interesting background there Kylie. So what about yourself, Pat? You have a big passion in helping at-risk youth; tell us a little bit about your background, and what led to this passion?

[Pat Ryan] - Probably having a few experiences through university in the remote East Kimberley, which is in the top Northeast of WA. [I was] in Aboriginal Communities there working with young people and adults on community capacity building for about six months at different stints over three years. I grew up in the Western suburbs in Perth, in a pretty affluent area, and it really showed my eyes to different ways of being and also systemic power structures that we have in our society. Then after finishing university, I wanted to dedicate myself to trying to change the disempowerment that people in poverty experience, and so to get hands on and get a better feel for it I went to the Department of Child Protection. I thought, “where can I go so I can see when things have hit absolute rock bottom”, and that's young people in care.

That's where I focused my efforts. As I was there, I was working in an out of home care house that's for young people, with 12 full-time staff members on a rotating roster, looking after up to four young people at a time. It's extremely challenging, the young people have gone through horrific trauma, and so every single day there is an absolute crisis that as a small team, you need to deal with. I kind of felt during my experience there that I'd definitely burnt out and I was only there for about two and a half years. I was there and I'd think society shouldn't let these kinds of things happen. I was so frustrated with this revolving door of working with young people, having to call the police, a young person going to prison, coming out, being on a suspension order, coming back to the home, then getting into trouble again and going back into prison. It was this revolving door of police, prison, child protection. I was like, “look, I think this isn't where I want to be dedicating my efforts.”

I thought a couple of levels up the chain, maybe if I can work in an area that prevents this sort of stuff happening before it gets even worse, there might be a better use of my time.

From that experience, I just haven't looked back, and nine years later I'm still at Dismantle trying to work on prevention and intervention rather than corrective action.

It's really interesting and important work Pat. So give us a little bit more information about Dismantle then and ultimately, what is it that you're doing there?

Bait and switch! So we do this really fun bike program that gets young people that haven't been seen by a school in six months or more, are having a really tough time, or are maybe too anxious to leave their house. Basically it's just outreach and engagement using bike mechanics. So we have youth workers and OT's dressed as bike mechanics, and they work with schools and youth centres to capture the attention of young people that otherwise don't function well in those environments. Then after they've finished that initial program, we nominate some young people to then work for us.

We run a couple of social enterprises that provide employment opportunities for those young people after they've finished that program. So all up, for the initial engagement program, that's a three month experience and that's just getting people into education and training pathways.

Then the employment is an additional six months after that. Some young people live with us for over nine months employed. That's the organisation. That's what everyone does, is just get young people to become self sufficient, young adults.

It sounds like it's a great way to try and break that cycle that you were talking about a little bit earlier.

Kylie, I'm really keen to hear a little bit more from yourself as well. As an Executive Director at Impact Seed, what sort of projects are you involved in and ultimately why do you exist?

We set up primarily because there wasn't, I guess, a lot happening in WA. Probably for the listeners [who are] maybe not as familiar with the sector in WA, we're a lot more nascent here. Our population isn't as large, but that means we also don't have as many enterprises. We don't have as many investors, foundations, intermediaries, et cetera. Sven and I were actually looking ourselves to potentially make some impact investments, but there just wasn't anything we were comfortable with, anything at all really. So that's why we established [Impact Seed], we care about building the market. We kind of straddle an intermediary and field-builder kind of role, which is a bit unusual. A lot of the work that we do is impact measurement work. We can't have impact investment and social enterprise if we're not thinking about how we measure the impact of that. We work with a collective called Impact Collective, which is three large not-for-profits in WA and looking to support co-design and invest in enterprises. It's a collective with a bit of capacity building support there as well. We're a very proud partner of the WA Impact Fund, which is only a small fund, $20 million, but needed by WA, managed by IIG. It is one of the very first, at least that we know of, place-based funds in Australia, if not elsewhere. So a couple of other initiatives really are focused around the establishment of an Impact Investment Alliance with WA and the WA Social Enterprise Council.

It’s been really exciting hearing about the WA Social Enterprise Council. You're both key members of WASEC. So please tell us a little bit more about this new network, its purpose and why you formed…

[Pat] - I think more than anything, the reason we formed is almost ‘why didn't we form sooner?’ Impact Seed were doing some more work gathering data about what social enterprises [are] here in WA. Because of that, the network of social enterprises from start up to established just started to self-organise. That was partly contributed to by COVID-19 as well because everyone was just more used to using Zoom. It was easy to have this network of probably about a hundred different social enterprise representatives coming together.

because of that momentum, because of that progress and also the realisation that there wasn't some sort of peak body to represent the voice of social enterprises in WA, WASEC naturally formed as the natural next step.

Then I guess when you're talking about purpose and why WASEC, really it's a peak representative body. So as an example, I have been running Dismantle for five years and have been involved in this space for almost 10 years, and I was aware of maybe three or four social enterprises in WA. I've been in here for so long, but there just wasn't a platform where people were talking about social enterprise in Western Australia. It's really just about time that there's a representative body shining a light on the great work that enterprises in WA are doing.

That sounds like fantastic work and obviously a great time to be doing it.

Kylie, what are your thoughts on the new Social Enterprise Council, and more broadly, observations of the social enterprise sector in Western Australia?

The mapping project that Pat spoke about, we did that late last year, finding the time to actually pull together the results and analysis this year. We had about 173 responses to that.

That really indicated to us, (and we kind of knew), that there were people out there trading to fulfil a mission. WASEC takes a broader, broad church perspective to who's in the tent in terms of social enterprise.

I think we don't really have the luxury of being able to be quite exclusive and specific about definition. So we go with a little bit pushing the bounds of what's socially enterprising rather than what is a social enterprise. That in and of itself is quite a contentious discussion. But back to the point, we had about 173 responses, but the key thing that came out of that really was that the sector was small.

It's a very small social enterprise [sector] and often it started through a journey. [Dismantle] was actually one of the very few established. I know how Pat feels talking about established, and with how people describe Dismantle. But it’s one of the more established social enterprises and Pat would be one of the more experienced social entrepreneurs that we have here in WA. Echoing what Pat said, [there were] people who just didn't know that they would necessarily see what someone else is doing and describe that as social enterprise.

It sounds like it's growing quickly over there, and I'm sure bringing WASEC together will help bring that united front and ideally help influence policy and create a strong environment for the business for good movement to grow.

So, impact investment, you've spoken a little bit about it today Kylie, but do you see any opportunities over there in WA for better support for impact-led businesses?

Absolutely. I think in supporting the development of social enterprise and impact-led businesses, impact investment has to play a critical role within that.

We like to think of impact investment in terms of sharing power, right? The traditional financial relationship that we ordinarily have are really, the people with the money hold the power, right?

We like to think around impact investment being more collaborative, more sharing of that power rather than it being held by people that have the money. So I think a couple of key initiatives in terms of impact investment, have the opportunity to play a really important role in WA.

One is looking at the concept of blended finance and lay out some of that more patient capital alongside some of the maybe traditional impact investment or traditional finance mechanisms.

I think particularly for start-up impact-led businesses and social enterprises, that's really important. Increasingly with the COVID environment and looking to recovery, social procurement is something that is a great opportunity, even though that's not technically impact investment. It's one of those tools in their toolbox that can really support the development of social enterprise and impact led business.

Great points. I think both of you obviously have a pretty good feel for this social enterprise movement within Australia. So Pat, did you want to add where you may see any sort of strong opportunities to build on the current momentum of these different state-based networks and momentum that we're seeing in Australia right now?

That's a good question. I hope that WA can catch up very rapidly to what's already been happening in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland for a decade now, but I'm not sure.

I think that WA's a unique state in some ways, and that there is an opportunity for us to build something as a network, and as individual enterprises build something that's fit for purpose for why our state operates.

In particular, in the really remote regional areas, I'm excited about supporting growth and development in social enterprise in regional Western Australia. Look, I'm not sure. I think the thing that I'm focused on right now is building and catching up to the state of affairs that's in Victoria and New South Wales.

But then beyond that, I think in a couple of years we can start thinking about what's unique about Western Australia that we can harness and cultivate to get the best outcome for the state.

Kylie, you might want to add to that, but I was thinking as well, there's no doubt [that there are] a whole heap of really inspiring projects and initiatives that you've both come across. So Kylie, did you want to take a lead on that?

We're [currently] talking to I mentioned before one of WA's older social enterprises with Pat and Dismantle. There's also a wonderful employment based social enterprise here in WA called Loop, which actually creates different kinds of consumable skincare, [as well as] hygiene products and supports organisations with up-cycling of their uniforms and their work clothing into brand new items that they then use for their workers or put on sale. Loop is trying to engage with people with disabilities and others experiencing vulnerability and disadvantage from the employment perspective and create a centre of excellence to increase the manufacturing capacity of the state again. I think we have seen with COVID this is quite a significant challenge for Australia. I think in terms of making a quick link back to opportunities in the recovery of COVID, we work sometimes with a series of social enterprises run by the Yiriman Women.

Yiriman Women have a bunch of small social enterprise focused on country healing, on bush harvest, on art and as part of a broader inter-generational cultural program across four different language groups up in the Kimberley.

I think if we think about recovery from COVID, it has to be place-based and it has to be led by people with the great connection to the communities that they have.

I think Yiriman are a really great example of that.

Great, there's some beautiful examples there.

To finish off then, it would be to hear what books or resources you would you recommend to the people listening in?

Pat and I had a conversation about this. We don't have time to read sorry! I joke, I'm in the middle of two books. So it's taking me an extraordinary long time to get through them. But I think Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe and White Fragility are really important books. Particularly for this time that we find ourselves in, to make sure that social enterprises feel on this sharing power as is impact investment.

I think there's some of the most fundamental concepts around sharing power and our own approaches and challenging our own reflections and attitudes and beliefs. I think that's one of the most fundamental things that we can do.

We also at Impact Seed really enjoy the Team Human podcast.

Nice one. What about yourself Pat?

The one that came to mind actually after I saw Kylie's suggestions is a book called Wyndham Yella Fella by Reginald Birch. It was written a couple of decades ago and it's just the lived experience of a Stolen Generation Aboriginal man growing up on traditional owned land in the East Kimberly, and Reginald Birch is an absolute poet. [He's also] a man that I met when I was in Wyndham, and is living on a quarter acre block cause he says he can get more rights as an Aboriginal person on his quarter acre block that he's bought, than he could as a traditional owner of land. The other book that I was going to suggest was Living With ADHD. The reason I’ve brought that up is I've got some tendencies of sporadic kind of thinking, and reading something like that just really gave me a lot more comfort about harnessing talents based on personality rather than trying to fight against your weaknesses. For people that are doing social enterprise, just focusing on strengths and utilising strengths and having a diverse personality spreading organisation is just a really great thing. Reading a book like that, just solidified that for me. My podcasts are really generic, but I just love hearing individual stories of how they grew an idea into an enterprise. So the podcast, How I Built This is very entertaining every time.

Kylie and Pat, it has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you both today. We'll certainly look forward to following both of your journeys and the sector's journey over in Western Australia.