Lucy Brotherton On Local Government Championing Growth For Impact-Led Ecosystems
Lucy Brotherton serves as the Community Capacity Building Officer for the City of Parramatta, where she plays a pivotal role in driving social investment initiatives across the Parramatta Local Government Area.
Through innovative strategies, she fosters sustainable social transformation, catering to the diverse communities of Western Sydney. Lucy’s role transcends traditional boundaries as she operates as a nexus within the social enterprise ecosystem. Leveraging her extensive connections in government and the social investment community, she excels at fostering relationships, bridging organisational gaps, and bolstering strength through strategic partnerships and collaboration.
Lucy discusses fuelling innovative partnerships between local government, business and impact organisations, and how this contributes to addressing complex systemic social issues.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Indio Myles] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in sustainable business and local government?
[Lucy Brotherton] - I've worked my entire 30-year career in government, so I take a public servant approach to things. My education background is in human geography, how people in places influence each other and systems create certain conditions. I went into State Government and worked on the Olympics in the government arm (The Olympic Coordination Authority) looking at the social impacts of the Olympics, which are quite large when you've got such an enormous event. There were negative impacts obviously, but some positive impacts came out of it, for example it nurtured and promoted volunteering. We even had a ticker tape parade for the volunteers at the end of the games. I then moved on to the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing, and there I was developing and implementing responsible gambling policies. It’s a tricky policy area, I did a lot of work with other states and territories looking at how government could influence the gambling environment to reduce risks and social harm. I then looked at alcohol related violence policies, another tricky policy area again.
What I found interesting was understanding how many of the problems we were trying to deal with stem from other parts of people's lives. It might have to do with upbringing, intergenerational unemployment, available resources, or education, and of course different parts of government need to resolve those issues at different points in people's lives.
You're looking at a broad systems issue when working against alcohol related violence, but it is also speaking to a much larger societal issue. I did some community work with Parents and Citizens Associations (P&C's). In one I created a network of P&Cs within Parramatta. Interestingly, a lot of P&C's generate a substantial about of money for schools, sometimes up to $100,000 a year if they have a uniform shop. People just think of P&C’s as bake sales, and people just think it's a volunteer who make cakes, but really it is running like a small business. The point of that group was to learn how we could manage and create better action plans amongst other things. That was where I met people from the City of Parramatta, who helped me create this group and teach me about capacity building. A role with that team opened, it was a contract to run an innovative program called Paramatch. This was a crowdfunding program I worked with the wonderful Tom Dawkins on, and I loved that. This was my first introduction to social impact and innovation, so when a full-time role came up within the Council, I grabbed it with both hands.
In your current role as Community Capacity Building Officer at the City of Parramatta Council, what activities are involved, and key social outcomes are you working towards?
It's a wonderful and unique role. Basically, I'm looking at exploring how to bring social investment to the Parramatta local government area. I broadly define social investment as innovative ways of creating positive social change, so it’s experimental and certainly was more so when I first got there. I developed action plans around what we can try in Parramatta that is maybe slightly left of centre of traditional community development work. For example, these are things like encouraging social enterprise or working on shared value partnerships? What are things we can try to create positive social change in different ways? There wasn't a template for that in Australia necessarily. I don't know of any other local governments which have my specific role.
I was looking around the world and seeing what ideas we could play with. Very deliberately we created an action plan rather than a strategy because it was about testing, trial and error, and accepting that if something didn't work this was actually a learning.
My role is as a facilitator, linker, and relationship builder. I'm not in the doing, I'm facilitating other people to do this social innovation work that's so important. That's an important role of government and the community capacity building team I'm in. We work to build other people's skills to do the great stuff they want to do. I run programs to support social enterprises, including skill building programs. For example, teaching people about impact measurement or how you can build your business model or tell your impact story. I run a social enterprise grants program designed to bring more social enterprises to Parramatta. I do awareness raising for social enterprises, so I run markets where they can have a stall. I have created a good gift guide, which lists all the places you can buy your presents so you're spending your money somewhere meaningful. I’ve created programs like Pitch for Good Parramatta, which again we worked with StartSomeGood on to run a crowdfunding program for social enterprises. This involves a live event where people come along, hear pitches, and then vote for their favourite social enterprise to start them off on their crowdfunding journey.
I also do things with not for profits, government and business; we've worked on shared value partnership programs where we were trying to introduce this concept to all players to see if they can come up with relationships that are not so one sided. It's not just businesses giving funding and the not for profits saying, “thank you very much for the $5,000," it's about how can you have a genuine partnership where both people benefit? I also love to try new ideas. If someone throws something interesting out there, I'm often the first one to try it. For instance, the bus tour to the Social Enterprise World Forum that StartSomeGood ran I helped seed fund so we could get it off the ground. That involved people in Sydney, social entrepreneurs, and other people within the ecosystem who all travelled up to the Social Enterprise World Forum in Brisbane, 2022. We were building relationships with each other on the way there, that was just one of those random ideas.
How might local government, social impact businesses and not for profits better collaborate to tackle the systemic social, cultural, and environmental issues we're facing today?
The very first step is getting to know each other. A lot of the work we can do we do better together, but a lot of people don't appreciate the role local government can play in building the ecosystem and social innovation activity. We're on the ground, we are not just rates, roads, and rubbish. We do community and cultural things, we do environmental conservation, and lots of other things. That’s vital to realising the potential of these relationships. Similarly, local government doesn't always know about innovative businesses, so again people like myself spend a lot of time talking to people internally. For example, our IT department is doing a refresh of laptops, so I suggested we give our old laptops to a social enterprise who will then give those to people in need. I'm building on those relationships by giving clear examples and showing people what they can do.
There are certainly not for profits which could learn about innovative mindsets, particularly for board members seeking to drive policy and change. Not for profits are often stretched for resources, but you can find at a board level the opportunity for new relationships being built and knowledge about innovative approaches being increased. This is reducing the perceived risk of some of those activities, because if you don't know it's hard to move forward. Engaging people within the local government, not-for-profit and social innovation sectors is crucial. That relationship building is how you would start to tackle better collaboration and create change. A lot of those organisations are going to be place-based as well, so that place-based approach to things is what I've found in Western Sydney and Parramatta specifically to be a useful lens for people to look through.
Are there any effective policies and frameworks which could be implemented to contribute towards stronger outcomes for communities in your region? What advice would you give to civil servants working to create change?
In terms of policies and frameworks, sustainable procurement is going to be one of my focuses which will create a big impact. You can look at that through the lens of government, corporates, and other small businesses. It is one of those policies that can be powerful. It's not to say it's the only one, but through sustainable procurement you get a financial impact but also then develop relationships. Businesses might connect with a social impact business and help them grow, because it's in their interest to have someone who can deliver even more of what they need. It helps governments understand the power of their spending and how that can be a real influence directly on their local government area and communities. It is important to recognise that sustainable procurement must come from the top. You need your decision makers, councillors, and executive team to push a sustainable procurement process, because procurement's all about risk, and public servants traditionally have a directive around financial sustainability and minimising risks. People don't know enough about sustainable procurement; it’s about talking to higher level officials to get policies and frameworks built from the top down so people are doing the doing. People get excited about this stuff, but unless you've got a mandate to do it, it can be hard to make it work. Needing a policy or framework is important to make that stuff work. For example, I work with a Social Investment Action Plan, which again is an operational document. It extends now because I've done some of the groundwork, and we now have this in some of our key strategy documents.
Having an actual document which illustrates what you're doing in this space is another way for (particularly government) workers to explain what they're doing to articulate it. It doesn't need to be a complicated document, it doesn't need to be signed off by councillors necessarily, but if it's a document people can see, it drives more engagement.
Engagement with peak bodies like SECNA, the Social Enterprise Council of New South Wales and ACT, is valuable. They bring together local government representatives (so people like me) who are doing similar work to learn and grow. That's another way to further develop your policies or frameworks is to look at what other people are doing. Every local government is different, but a lot of local governments like to do what other ones are doing. If you've already tried and tested something, people might be much more willing to engage with it.
What advice would you give to an aspiring changemaker seeking to tackle or address a complex social issue?
It’s important to work within the ecosystem. There are lots of others seeking to do meaningful, impactful work.
Ask questions, pool talent and resources, work together. Finding those connections is important to being able to progress the movement.
Make it happen because individuals themselves can't necessarily do a lot. Once you gather enough people who have placed various bits of the puzzle together, the change can be greater. Local government is essential to that, naturally it must be. I would advise people to get to know your local politicians and councillors; they really are there to do the best for their community. If you can demonstrate you're trying to deal with an issue, for example gambling in the Indigenous community in Mount Druitt, that's great. They're all up for tackling that, so they will be engaged in how to link you with people they know, such as similar state and federal government representatives. That's part of their job, they can be very influential in terms of funding, connections, and getting you in front of important people. Those connections are vital to doing any of the work we do. We cannot do it all on our own, so learning from others is the key piece of advice I would give.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?
My favourite most recently is an organisation just moving into Parramatta called Confit. Confit are an amazing bunch of ex-prisoners who have worked with young people in incarceration using fitness to change their mindset and drive change in that person to reduce recidivism by building their skills and confidence. This wonderful group of men are doing this work, and they're just about to open a gym in Parramatta. They're using this as their vehicle for the social enterprise and raising funds. Anyone can join the gym, but what they're doing is creating a pathway for these young people to become personal trainers and to learn how to engage with society once they've left the prison system. They've thought about building a community for these young people by building skills and career pathways, and these young people have so much potential which was obstructed by circumstances which pushed them into the juvenile justice system. This is an engaging way for them to move out from that and start again with a new mindset. I absolutely love the work they're doing; their gym is impressive.
To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?
I haven't got any book recommendations, but I have recently come across a resource from a contact. A friend of mine in Berlin, she's done some amazing work working for the Senate Department for economy, energy, and operations. She has worked on creating a document which is a catalogue of criteria for social enterprises. It’s expanding on the idea of a definition of social enterprise, because obviously we all know that's a complicated term and we've not quite nailed that definition.
This is looking at this question from the perspective of people who are wanting to fund or engage with social enterprise. They've developed this spectrum assessing how an organisation, whether it's an innovative business, social enterprise, or not for profit should be classified and what are their must haves.
If you ask what your desirables are, then people can put themselves on this spectrum. It's just fascinating, it's an interesting way of looking at things. if you look up the Senate department for economy, energy, and operations in Berlin, they've only got this document in German on the website, but I know they’re working on an English version. I happen to have the English version (linked in resources below), and its food for thought for everybody working in this sector thinking about how you define social enterprise? How do we get a common language? How do you know who's who in the zoo? Local government is an important element in the sector, so I hope this has helped people understand we're people who want to help this social enterprise sector grow. We're a resource to be utilised.
