Jess Moore On National Social Enterprise Strategies And Community Led Innovation

Jess Moore is the Executive Director for the Social Enterprise National Strategy; an initiative to develop a long-term strategy for social enterprise in Australia so that it can unlock positive social, cultural and environmental impact.

She is also a Non Executive Director at peak body the Social Enterprise Council of NSW & ACT. Over the past 17 years Jess has worked in leadership positions in social enterprise and peak organisations. She was CEO at Community Resources, one of Australia's largest job focused social enterprises, and home of Soft Landing, Green Connect, Resource Recovery Australia and a range of community services. In her final year as CEO, Community Resources was a $35 million organisation employing over 650 people. Prior to this she led social enterprise Green Connect through startup and scaleup.

Jess came into social enterprise from a background working and teaching in advocacy, systems thinking and movement building, and has led collaborations that changed government policy and decisions.

Jess discusses her insights into the Social Enterprise National Strategy for Australia and the importance of community led innovation and sustainable change.

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

[Tom Allen] - Could you please share a little bit more about your background and what led to your interest and passion in social enterprise?

[Jess Moore] - I think my first step into social enterprise wasn't specifically with social enterprise itself. I had actually been working on a campaign to stop coal seam gas mining in the drinking water catchment for Greater Sydney and kept coming up against this enormous frustration where the government would say ‘it's jobs versus the environment. If the community wants jobs, this project has to go ahead.’ And it was so extraordinarily frustrating in terms of our campaign because of course there are rich alternatives to gas that don't destroy the environment. I then started a job at Green Connect. Green Connect was still just starting out, but I saw it as this extraordinary opportunity to show that you could create jobs (and in the case of Green Connect jobs in a high unemployment community and in groups particularly impacted by unemployment like refugees), that help the environment at the same time.

It was through the process of finding ways to make that work with the community that I realised what an important tool for social change social enterprise is.

I think through being an activist and as someone who learnt through doing, I learnt that the answer actually lies in the community itself. I think through those two things, I realised that there's a whole bunch of technical skills that have to be layered over the top to make the business work. It's such a liberating thing, the agency of community led innovation. Social enterprise is this tool that means you're not having to convince government overall as a starting point, you are driving the solution on the ground with community that is needed.

As the Executive Director of the Social Enterprise National Strategy (SENS), why is it that this work is so important and how will people be able to contribute into the future as this is further developed?

I think there's a specific problem to solve at the moment, and that is that as a sector we're pretty fragmented. We are under-resourced, so most people in this sector have only known operating in an environment of scarcity and one that often pits us against one another. We're competing for grants, competing for survival, and we're time poor. Rather than staying in that pattern, the opportunity available is to work together.

Rather than look at who gets what size piece of the pie, we can come together and say, "how do we collectively grow the pie overall?" When I say that, I don't just mean funding. Obviously, I think we need a much better government framework to support social enterprise, be that through procurement or rewarding enterprises for the public value they create.

I think the other enormous potential opportunity is that through collaboration, our sector can learn from each other and improve our practices. There is such a wealth of knowledge in our sector, but we're not necessarily sharing it.

I think there's the opportunity to speak with one voice, to get clear on what we need as a sector and to speak with one voice to government and try and shift the environment in which we operate so that it's more enabling, but also there's the potential to create a more enabling and collaborative environment for ourselves by working together and learning from one another.

Are there any other specific outcomes that you think this national strategy for social enterprise could lead to, and if so, why is now the right time for it?

We could have done it sooner, maybe now is the right time because it's happening! Maybe it's actually simple in terms of timing. I think the huge potential is we're going through a process right now which is looking at what the vision and mission for our sector nationally should be. That has really forced an examination of what particular contribution social enterprise is a good fit to make in terms of what the public needs, what business is a really good model for creating? It keeps boiling down to four things, which doesn't mean they're the only four things social enterprise do, it just means in terms of growth and large-scale potential these areas are the most open.

The first outcome is a stronger and more enabled sector that leads to decent work, creating jobs rich businesses that create opportunity for people who've historically been shut out of the labour market.

[The second opportunity is] for human services that put people at the centre, are dignified and commit to learning from people what they need in terms of creating care.

Next is obviously for environmental care and solutions.

Lastly, and this can span all of those things or stand alone, is the opportunity for community led innovation, so be that a particular regional or Aboriginal community can exist in a whole range of forms. But that community comes together and decides the solution it needs while driving it. I think social enterprise has amazing potential to make a difference on all four of those fronts.

You are a Non-Executive Director at the Social Enterprise Council of New South Wales and ACT, also known as SECNA. In these two states or territories, where do you see key opportunities for the sector and how have you seen it evolve over the last couple of years?

Interestingly, I think the first possibility is exactly as it sits at a national level, so that is that there is a huge opportunity at a state level to bring the sector together and to advocate with government in terms of the state frameworks that exist. I'd say the two really big things are firstly (in terms of what's evolved in the last two years) that New South Wales and the ACT are ahead of the national initiative. SECNA has been around a couple of years now, and that's really extraordinary.

There has been an extraordinary effort of people who otherwise have jobs recognising that we need to come together as a sector and advocate at a state level, and there's a couple of years of work and connection that's now been built.

That is a fundamental shift in the landscape. The second thing I'd say in New South Wales and the ACT specifically right now have got a key opportunity with government around social procurement. State government is a holder of such big contracts, and it's an opportunity for government to get greater public value for their spend if they work with social enterprise. In conversations with government, we're working to see a much stronger and widespread social procurement framework across those two states.

You were the CEO at Community Resources Ltd, and that turned into a large organisation when you were working in that role. What did you come to learn were some of the most important traits of a social entrepreneur, and what was one of the bigger lessons that you learnt while in that role?

Across my time at Community Resources (I was there for eight and a half years) it was a constant learning curve! To try and distil that period of time into one single reflection that is helpful to people listening, this is difficult, but I think the key thing I came away from that time recognising is you have to be in constant connection with community as a social entrepreneur. I think we've got lots of necessary frameworks and supports that exist in our sector around learning the technical skills of a business, such as business modelling and linking that to impact modelling.

What you can't lose sight of as a social entrepreneur is connection to community itself because that's a constantly evolving environment.

If we are going to run business for social and environmental good, then we have to continue to know it's the right solution or that it needs to change. I think too often that can be lost, sometimes it can be easy if you say you're doing something for social good to feel like you're saving people or saving the planet when actually I think it's the role of a social entrepreneur to work in community to actually understand the solutions that are needed and to implement them.

For the social entrepreneurs listening who are working to validate their business model, what advice would you give them?

I feel like I don't want to lean on the answer I just gave because as I said, there's a whole range of frameworks of support that exist for this exactly! But to give a pithy answer, know the name of your buyer. If it's about a business model, I think you can make it work on paper, but you need to know exactly who will buy your product. Different business plans are going to work, I'm not saying don't do the work on paper, that's critical.

You've got to have a connection with your customer and know who they are.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently that you believe are creating some brilliant positive social change?

This is a really hard question to answer, partly because of the role I'm in Tom and that I don’t want to name names because there's a whole bunch of amazing people doing work in this sector. But I will point to two that I think are playing an extraordinary role of connector and enabler. That is, they're starting to take more of a systems approach. The first one I'll name, and lots of people listening to this will know them, and it's Moving Feast. They have to be said and should be said in every forum.

That was really an initiative built out of the COVID crisis and finding a way to mobilise social enterprises across food to get food to people who needed it and at the same time ensure those businesses could continue to operate.

It's really turned into an initiative to connect and build the ecosystem that can be fair, regenerative and connected. Instead of trying to be all things, it's trying to connect the pieces of the puzzle and fill the gaps of the puzzle that creates the food system that looks after people and the planet. The other example I'd give is one that's actually quite new to me, and that's the Community Power Agency. It's probably best described as an intermediary, I don't know if they'd use that language themselves, but they work to support communities to develop and deliver their own clean energy projects, and it's such a great model, particularly in regional Australia where often people are leaving often local economies are quite depressed.

To actually have projects that create local jobs and local income that are also linked to decision-making and community ownership can mean energy access, affordability and energy security.

I think it's such a great model for community led innovation, particularly when we're in such a challenging environment in Australia now for transitioning our energy system. A way to deliver at a local level on starting to build that sustainable energy system is pretty amazing.

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

Part of me just wanted to rattle off the books sitting on my desk right now! I have read and continue to reread Impact Networks by David Ehrlichman, so really trying to understand how to bring people together in system change initiatives and learn from his experience doing that work on the ground. I read and reread a book called Power: A User's Guide by a woman named Julie Diamond. I think she really changed my understanding of power in that it's easy when you're often in an advocating role to see yourself as quite powerless and speaking to power. I think this book gave such a good grounding in knowing and understanding the power that you do have, and then using it in a way that is aligned with your values, because power can also be a pretty damaging force. But the book I think I'd love to plug the most is actually fiction. It's called 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World, and it's by a woman called Elif Shafak. I only read it recently and it took me by surprise. The premise of the story is a woman has just been murdered. She's a sex worker, her body has been dumped in a bin and 10 minutes and 38 seconds is the time it takes before she's gone, and she is remembering her life.

The reason I think everybody should read it is it's a book that reconnects you to your humanity.

It's this extraordinary story of this woman's life first told by her and then told by the people who loved her, and it's not the story of someone you'd often read. This is in terms of archetypes; this is not someone you would ordinarily read. She is this extraordinary woman who was so loved and loving, and I think it's such a beautiful reminder in terms of what matters. If you're doing this work, it's easier to get caught up in the world as things are in trying to fit into social norms and having conversations with all the right people in all the right places. Fundamental to this work is reconnecting to humanity. I just think this is a book that reminded me of what love is.