Helen Black On Creating Long-Term Change For Incarcerated People Through Social Enterprise

Helen Black is Managing Director of workRestart, an organisation that exists to assist people with an experience of incarceration restart their lives.

Helen is passionate about the Social Enterprise Sector and in 2018 was honoured to receive a Westpac Social Change Fellowship. Her core focus of that fellowship was to look at best practice Social Enterprises around the world and to see what innovation was happening in the justice space.

Helen discusses implementing the model of social enterprise internally in prisons and how this support for incarcerated people breaks the cycle of reoffending behaviour.

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

[Tom Allen] - To start off, please share a bit about your background and what led to your passion for social enterprise?

[Helen Black] - I started as an entrepreneur when I was 24. I started my first business and then founded three businesses on and off over the next 15 years. One thing that always got to me was I loved business, but I didn't like business for the sake of money. I loved business for the connections and impact you could actually have with people. I loved business for purpose, but I didn't really have a name for it. As life happened, doors opened and I found myself in the social enterprise sector, and I just thought, "oh, this is my tribe. This is what I've been interested in all my life.” I then went on from there into working on, founding and expanding social enterprises. I was also really honoured to be selected as a Westpac Social Change Fellow, which enabled me to explore the industry even more. I'm super passionate about social enterprise and the role it can take in Australia and across the world.

As the Managing Director at WorkRestart, tell us more about the projects you've been involved in?

We exist to help people with an experience of incarceration navigate their way forward.

The whole concept came from asking, “what happens if we put a social enterprise inside the prison system? What impact could that have?” We developed a model that can operate inside the prison and create an inside-outside focus of the people we are working with. Fundamentally what needed to happen is our model needed to fit into the everyday life of the prison system. Otherwise, it wasn't going to be sustainable, and it wasn't going to be big. We're working within the industry areas developing education, training, support, assistance and mentoring for the people working with us.

We are really connecting with outside industry as well. It's a value equation that looked at all people involved and asked, “how can we help? How can we assist and how can we make this sustainable; something that can keep on going?”

It's really topical at the moment, with all of the issues around youth crime and everything else. Ideally, not having people incarcerated in the first place is where we need to be, but we recognised that there was a large cohort of people that are incarcerated, and we didn't want to leave them behind. We wanted to help them move forward with their life. I can see it from both sides.

There has to be accountability, but fundamentally we need to be resolving that root cause putting people inside prison in the first place, and so that's what we were really focused on. How do we get to the root cause and make an impact there?

There's actually some really great examples overseas in San Francisco. One of the businesses I visited was called the DeLacey Street Foundation, and essentially, they have a system whereby rather than people being incarcerated, judges can recommend they go into this social enterprise organisation instead of being incarcerated. I think it would be fantastic to have something like that in the future.

What are some examples of initiatives you have run inside the Australian prison system?

We started Australia's first digital studio and were working with steel framing companies in the building sector, start-up businesses and social enterprise businesses, which was absolutely fantastic. I see it as being a situation where you can achieve double the amount of good. We were working with the TradeMutt team for example, so we are able to create products for the TradeMutt team so that they could do their good, and at the same time, we were able to achieve outcomes and impacts from that service to TradeMutt. There can be a positive double good ecosystem that can exist, where work inside is supporting positive social change outside, and that feels good for the people that are learning, training and developing as well. They feel like they're contributing back to society.

What have been some of the biggest challenges on this journey of founding WorkRestart, and what lessons have you learned as a result?

There have been a few lessons.

I'm a strong advocate for business models that can be self-sustaining. That must be where we're all aiming for and operating as much as possible.

That requires a dual focus, on not only creating impact, but essentially asking who is your customer and how are you enabling them to provide work for you so that you can create that impact in the first place?

It's that challenge of asking, “how do we really meet the market needs with what we can actually do?” This has been a bit of a challenge in some cases, and some of the things we've learned about that is through really working strongly with social partners, whether it's for example TradeMutt or another organisation with a strong focus. They're required to produce wonderful work done on time, but they also recognise some of the challenges you were facing in achieving that outcome for them as well. That was really important, to find those strategic partnerships.

The other lesson was learnt from working within an organisation, and this is very specific to our social enterprise which is inherently risk adverse. You have key people that are passionate about what you are trying to do, can see the vision and subscribe to it. But you also have a large amount of people, especially when you're in somebody else's domain, who are what I'd call ‘maliciously compliant’. They’re not going to obviously stand in your way, but if you walk past them, they might put their foot out!

Part of the thing we had to learn quickly is communicating to people who weren't advocates and building our own resilience around pushback.

We have a philosophy of courageous empathy which we thought we'd be applying to one cohort, and we realised we were applying it to probably more cohorts than we thought! That resilience and communication are so critical as well for this sector.

What is your current on the state of social entrepreneurship in Australia and where do you see opportunities for business for good to improve communities?

Recently, I was asked to present to the federal government's entrepreneur program on social enterprises. I think that actually indicates where I see the opportunities, the potential and where we've headed over the last 5-10 years. Now, there's 12,000 social enterprise businesses in Australia, and I'm just in love with that; the fact that it's becoming more mainstream. Some of the challenges presented by that are social washing, the same thing that was happening when business were going through the eco revolution with greenwashing.

The current opportunity is around being able to be really impactful, but also having that accreditation and openness about mission and purpose so that there isn't that level of potential social washing that can come in other areas, which actually downplays the amazing work the social enterprise sector is doing. Having said that, I see some of the opportunities are really in taking advantage of this shift in the marketplace towards wanting to work with social enterprises, and they can be across a number of different areas. Procurement has always been a strong focus. Often, we don't have organisations that are big enough to take on some of these major projects and other areas, and I see that as a critical opportunity to say, "why are we playing in the small pit when we can be playing in the big sand pit?" How can we do that? What are our mechanisms to be able to do that? Of course, it always must be buyer focused. Again, we are specifically talking about social enterprises that can be self-sustaining and are trade oriented. There are strategic partnerships and collaborations that can occur with larger organisations saying, "we really want to formalise corporate social responsibility, how can we do that?" I see that as a way to leverage into some of these bigger opportunities that exist that can actually help expand and make social enterprises more sustainable in the long run.

What advice would you give to other impact-led entrepreneurs working to create a positive impact?

There's one statement I've really learnt during my social enterprise journey, and it's,

‘don't take no for an answer, but also work out if your answer is no.’

When I'm saying don't take no for an answer, I mean be innovative and look for those solutions.

I love the creative thinking that comes from people who step back and say, "what can this look like? What are our problems and what could be a solution to that?" Enable yourself to be innovative. You're going to get nos, that's always going to happen, but don't stop there.

Keep on seeing if you can find that answer but be respectful to yourself. There's only so much head banging you can do, and you want to find the people that are willing to come on that journey with you, otherwise it can be quite hard. We do need to understand that often we are working in high pressure areas, and we just need time to be able to say no. Yes, we are here for social good, we are trying to do stuff, but others have got to come to the party as well, otherwise it's just not going to work. Ultimately, the market determines your financial stability. When you are looking at that business case model, it must be market focused, so make sure your business case stacks up.

Don't take no for an answer, but if it's not stacking up and you're not getting that response, then be respectful of yourself and learn to say no as well.

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

There's two I can think of. I really love the work of Ability Enterprises in Toowoomba. They started with a local government contract to do recycling waste management work which was very good. I think they were one of the first organisations to receive a Social Ventures grant, and they paid it back very quickly as well which is brilliant. They've always had that business model case in the back of their head, thinking of how they can make this self-sustaining model. The work of their current CEO is outstanding. She recognised they're at risk, because like any business with one sole main buyer, you put your business at risk.

She's spent the last three or four years diversifying their income source, and again looking at what's required within the marketplace and what fits within the cohort of people they are working with. On the same token, this choice provided them with the profit they need to be able to move forward. They’ve done a brilliant job of that, and they're just going from strength to strength in relation to that. That's a strong indicator of a good business.

The other business I would recommend looking into was a strategic partnership between Intura and Mandana, which is business out in Western Queensland. This is an example of the opportunities of larger (not necessarily hugely corporate organisations) organisations saying, "how do we really create impact not just at face value with Indigenous people within the energy and mining sectors?" They created a strategic partnership with the organisation Mandana to be able to be almost their social arm. I just love that, thinking big and about how they could make this really work and then create a self-sustaining organisation as well.

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

I'm a huge fan of Chip and Dan Heath. I love their books. They are two university professors, one's at Stanford and the other is at Duke in America. But they have this knack of being able to take hard concepts and communicate them in ways you can action in your business.

There are two books I would recommend, the first being Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. I think this book applies both to us as social enterprises and our sector, but also to a lot of the people we are here to serve. The other book of theirs I love is Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Fundamentally, it looks at what's happening in the world out there in business, and how do we condense that down into actionable steps for people achieve better outcomes.