Jahdon Quinlan On Powerful Philanthropic Structures For Social Enterprises To Maximise Impact

Jahdon’s professional journey is underscored by a wealth of broad-ranging experience, encompassing meaningful work with refugee communities, leadership roles in government programs, and his current position as the Sustainability Manager at Stone & Wood Brewing Company.

His diverse and expansive background gives him a unique perspective in thinking laterally and holistically-particularly in the realms of social and environmental impact. A whole- hearted supporter of localism, sustainability, and regenerative systems, Jahdon finds balance outside the professional arena by relishing slow moments in the Northern Rivers, where he enjoys time with family, friends, the ocean, literature, and music.

His educational background includes a Bachelor in Social Welfare and a Graduate Certificate in Business Philanthropy & Nonprofit Studies.

Jahdon discusses enterprises adopting innovative philanthropic frameworks to tackle complex systemic problems and how this is different from mainstream businesses meeting standard ESG outcomes.

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

[Tom Allen] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background and what led to your passion in regenerative business and sustainability?

[Jahdon Quinlan] - My impact story starts differently to most of the other people I've come across working in the sustainability space. I started off in the non-profit social work field, so for the first eight years of my career I was working with government contracted non-profits to help vulnerable community members. I started off doing youth work for a few years, and then I moved into case management with refugee and multicultural communities. It was a little bit of a different pathway into the sustainability space, but obviously it was still related to sustainability in terms of the social part. It was an enriching experience, I met so many people from various backgrounds with unique and sobering stories. It was super grounding, challenging, and an amazing time of growth in terms of my perspective, worldview, and my life philosophy.

I brought two main things into my sustainability career from that experience, the first being I had to put myself in the shoes of those who I was working with. As you can imagine, working face to face with clients you're often hearing traumatic stories. You're hearing stories from all walks of life, people who have gone through some crazy hardships.

To support the people I was working with, I had to think systematically and holistically in terms of how I was going to support them to foster the best outcomes for their community.

One of the main things I got out of working with vulnerable communities in the social workspace was through transitioning into a leadership position; I was managing a team of case managers and government programs as well. When you're working with government contracts (and people listening to this who have worked in the non-profit sector will understand), there’s a lot of bureaucracy, red tape, and box ticking. The government essentially sets the parameters, and you must apply as a non-profit to receive a grant or ongoing funding.

One of the key highlights for me was understanding the importance of softer outcomes, so essentially you have those harder outcomes tied to government contracts, and receiving ongoing funding requires fulfilling those requirements and contractual obligations. For me, when I was working one on one with clients and managing a team of case managers, it was about those softer outcomes I saw in the social space that were making a more meaningful impact.

Can you share more about the work you are doing with Stone & Wood Brewing Co. and how this certified B Corp is utilising better business practices?

It’s an amazing role to be working in. Transitioning from the social work field into the brewing space and industry has been in a sense a natural progression. It sounds odd to some people; I can imagine it sounds like I’m saying I was working with government contracts in the non-profit sector and now I’m working in the brewing industry. People think it’s a big change, and it is, but there's a lot that translates in terms of community. Particularly in the case of Stone & Wood, it was started back in 2008 by three founders. If you don't know the story, it's online and a cool story to read. Essentially, three founders left big beer companies at the time, and they wanted to start a small village style brewery with the whole idea of bringing back the village brew up.

In simpler times, you'd have the baker, the butcher, and the brewer. The brewer would serve as a valuable thread in the fabric of community life, and the brewery would serve as this important gathering place where locals would share stories and celebrate their milestones. The brewery fostered that sense of belonging for the community, and I guess the trajectory Stone & Wood has taken is of trying to embody that village brewer role. I've only been working with Stone & Wood for two years now, so it is still relatively early days, but I can say we've been continuing that legacy. A lot has changed from our humble beginnings, we are newly owned by Lion Nathan, so we are a subsidiary of a larger company. There's been a lot of evolution and change organisationally, but essentially the purpose driven component and ethos of the business has remained. We've gone on a bit of a journey, and we refined our purpose statement late last year.

Our current purpose statement is to brew connections in our communities and do better for the people and planet. Although there's been a lot of change and we've evolved over the years since 2008, we've essentially maintained our purpose led conscious business stakeholder approach at the front and centre of everything we do.

We use it as a governance mechanism in terms of our meetings, strategies, and organisational structure, so that's important to us. It nicely fits with our B Corp Certification, which we've had since 2016. We were the first brewery in Australia to attain the certification, and we continue to take the journey of sustainability seriously. We try and take an authentic grassroots approach with everything we do; we lead with action as opposed to just shouting things from the rooftop. We'd rather just do things and place action at the forefront, and sometimes we don't even share some of the stuff we do, which is a part of our legacy as well. Stone & Wood has always been generally a very humble brand in terms of the things we do with the community and environment. As the cliche goes, sustainability is a journey, not a destination.

As the Director of the Ingrained Foundation, can you tell us a more about this Foundation and how it’s tackling local social and environmental issues?

The Ingrained Foundation is a public ancillary fund. It's been running since 2018, it started as the philanthropic arm of the Stone & Wood Brewing Co., and it’s essentially how I got my foot in the door with the business, because of my degree in business philanthropy. The Foundation was how I made the transition, as well as some of my other skill sets which were able to translate. It is cool how the Ingrained Foundation has been set up, because traditionally with philanthropy and government funding there's a lot of (as I said before) box ticking, red tape, and bureaucracy.

The approach at Ingrained Foundation is quite different, we take a trust-based approach with our philanthropy meaning we don't apply any onerous, unnecessary processes and procedures on the non-profits that we work with. It's a lean and agile model, so we still have the essential accountabilities and due diligence processes. However, we prioritised the non-profits that we're working with as the experts; we don't think we are the experts. We don't tell the non-profits, “We think you guys should do it this way,” it's more of grassroots bottom-up approach where there's more bandwidth for trust. It's worked well, we've traditionally supported small to medium sized grassroots charities. The Ingrained Foundation is focused on the Northern Rivers region, and what we're trying to do is support small to medium non-profits with grants. We've been doing this on an annual basis since 2018, we've given over $2.1 million since 2018, which is amazing.

It's not just grants either, it's also through some of our partnerships we've moved into. We recently signed our first partnership agreement with Human Nature Adventure Therapy, a local adventure therapy program with qualified mental health practitioners, psychologists, and youth workers. They take a holistic approach with providing therapeutic care to young people, vulnerable young people going through mental health crises. They deliver all their services out in the wilderness, which they're discovering has some amazing benefits and outcomes. That's just one example of the amazing local non-profits we've been supporting since 2018, and even before then Stone & Wood has been running a community program since its inception. We've given away a lot of beer over the years, probably countless what we call Karma Kegs. We've also helped fundraise lots of different events, we run our Festival of the Stone and our Maryborough Open Day through philanthropic partnerships.

As part of the sale to Lion, there was $1 million written into the contract of sale that was transferred to scrub land environment care. Then, $5 million went to the Ingrained Foundation. The Ingrained Foundation is separately governed, we have our own board of directors which is separately governed. We've also been able to handle the transactions of other organisations and businesses who want to give locally. For instance, Bintani, an amazing maltster in the brewing industry, I believe last year gave us around $10-$15,000 for the flood relief. Having a public ancillary fund is a great mechanism and vehicle for change, we're placed to serve the community as a conduit for philanthropy.

Where do you see key opportunities to grow this purpose driven business movement and what is needed to take the movement mainstream?

When you sent this question through, it made me take a step back and scratch my head, because I've been thinking about this question for a while now. I've only been working in what can be called the sustainability, third, or social enterprise impact sector for a few years now. It's piqued my curiosity around how we can progress and grow this movement. How can we evolve? Lately what I've been thinking is that ESG and sustainability have become quite mainstream. For people working in the space, especially when we’re doing authentic grassroots work, it feels like we're isolated. If you look at the greater environment, a lot of these multinationals are producing sustainability and ESG reports because of the rise in ESG investment portfolios. This is a bit of an opinion by the way; I hope I don't rock the boat too much with what I’m about to say.

We need to draw a distinction between the ESG movement and regenerative holistic business design. Even the term ‘sustainability’ as it was originally intended to be used and the ESG framework as terminology has almost been misused and misplaced.

We chatted about this when we were catching up a few weeks ago, the likes of for instance Raytheon and Lockheed Martin (some of the world's largest weapons manufacturers) are producing ESG and sustainability reports! It doesn't necessarily sound like they have a sustainable business model, and it doesn't contribute to a humankind thriving. We must look more upstream and become systems focused; are these businesses, our businesses, and the businesses we’re fostering or working with purpose led and purpose driven by design?

If we look at the leaders who are ultimately driving forward purpose driven businesses, what are the most important traits these entrepreneurs possess?

It’s related to the last question. When you look at a lot of these larger multinational businesses who I guess are well intentioned, it's hard to see how some of their businesses can be sustainable in the long-term. Essentially, as we discussed, the actual design and the fundamental business problem they're solving is not sustainable. It's almost like they must focus on their business problem first before they investigate social and environmental problems. That's a correlated point, if you're a social entrepreneur or working in the business for good space, focus on your business problem first before you then branch out into social and environmental problems.

If you were to draw a Venn diagram, if you're a social entrepreneur or working for a B Corp, cooperative or mission conscious business, you want to make sure that the social and environmental causes you're working against overlap with your business problem.

The social, environmental, and business problems should have a lot of overlapping issues, and that's a good frame to put it in. For instance, with Stone & Wood Brewing Co., one of our key focuses for this year is regenerative agriculture. For us, that is where we can have the largest impact in terms of our scope, by focusing upstream beyond the brewery walls on our procurement strategy and looking at the impact of brewing. For instance, with brewing if you look at the ingredients, it's hops, malt, water, and yeast. If you have malt in a glass, the first ingredient is water, and then straight after that is the malt. Essentially work is the main ingredient, and that is where we can have the most impact.

We're working with regenerative cereal grain growers this year, and we're going to be launching into an exciting project. That's just an example, but coming back to your original question, amongst the most important traits I've seen over the last few years, lateral thinking is an important one. When I was thinking about this question, something which came to mind was there's a famous economist called Charles Goodhart. Charles Goodhart came up with this law, and it's called Goodhart's Law. Essentially the principle states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. I think that's a problem I've seen in various instances and touch points.

When I've engaged with various people in the sustainability or conscious business space, a lot of people get caught up in the measurement so much so that it becomes a target, and it loses its good intentions.

We need to look at the work we're doing and think laterally. There's a lot of research coming out, for instance, there's an amazing book by a psychiatrist called Iain McGilchrist where he talks about the different hemispheres. You've got your left hemisphere and your right hemisphere, and a lot of people will be familiar with that. Your left hemisphere is concerned with the transactional, rational thinking. It’s binary, black, and white, and what we use for a lot of straight up mathematical thinking when we need to solve an equation. We need it, it's an important component of our brains and our thinking. But then our right brain is more holistic, so it sees parts as a whole; it sees not only the small things, but the larger picture and it thinks systemically and holistically.

In terms of decision making, we need to lean more on our right brain, and I think that's one of the problems I see with a lot of sustainability professionals. We often err more towards setting measurements as targets so to speak, and going back to that Goodhart's law, we end up unable to see the forest for the trees so to speak. This is something which can translate across your whole life, this advice is not just useful in the sustainability space. If you're able use lateral thinking, try and see the subtlety, nuance, and complexity of the social and environmental problems we're dealing with. They are usually deep, broad, quite complex and require slow and considered approaches. Often with the work we're doing in this space, progress is slow; it's a few steps forward, one step back.

Change requires a few tiny iterations which you make that then compounds like compound interest. Suddenly, you look back and you've made a whole bunch of change, and that is a principle which doesn't just translate into sustainability, it's a relevant truth for life in general.

We should be using our left and right hemispheres, and we should be philosophically speaking our heart, brain, gut, and holistic being to solve these problems, operate and function as human beings in this world. Essentially it comes back to a theory of being, if you trace back macro sustainability problems, they all trace back to micro self-reflection; reflection on us as human beings in the world and how we can operate in a way that is holistic, integrated and offering the best version of ourselves to support a regenerative and thriving community.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across creating a positive change?

There's so much good happening out there, I think what you guys are doing is straight up amazing. You've been in the game a very long time, so hats off to you and your team. There are so many people doing great stuff. When I look at the social impact and business for good space, you've got to give props to some of the OGs like Daniel Flynn with Thankyou. There's been a lot of PR around Patagonia and their new legal structure, and what a lot of people don't realise is Thank You have essentially been set up that way from the get-go. They set themselves up as a charitable trust, so they've been doing progressive and cool stuff for a very long time. They've always been quite disruptive, but they've always done it with a lot of humility and balance which I've appreciated.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is a local sustainability influencer, and I look up to her a lot. She started an initiative called Local Futures who are very focused on localism. They also host World Localisation Day, and their whole theory around localism stacks up. We have this crazy global supply chain where we’re exporting and importing things so many miles and kilometres. This system is fragile, as we've seen during the last few years with COVID and economic volatility; it’s been to the detriment of our personal, social, and environmental well-being. Imagine if we all started shopping at the farmers markets and we all started to get to know our local farmers? Imagine if we actually went out in nature and the sunshine once a week, whether it's on the weekend or during the week depending on where your markets are and when they run? This is as opposed to going into a LED lit, consumeristic supermarket where you don't even talk to anyone because you now scan your own items through the self-service checkout. These social and environmental problems are inextricably linked, and I think localism brings it together in a cohesive, palatable easy to understand framework for people to rally behind. This transcends across various political lines, people on the left and the right side of politics will agree that localism is important, so I love what she's doing.

Lastly, there's another guy who I've been following closely, his name is Daniel Schmuckenberger and I love his work. For those listening to this podcast who are most likely already in the impact space, check him out. He's got some awesome content, and he focuses on systems theories and looking at the interconnectedness of things like infrastructure, social structure, and superstructure. His work is more around the archetypal philosophical meaning a society embodies, but also how it then impacts culture. All these things are inter affecting and correlated. Recently he made an amazing point around the whole theory of change conversation.

To progress (and this goes back to your question around progressing the social impact movement), we need more than just one theory of change, we need an ecology of theories of change. This ecology of theories all needs to align to the right criteria in relation to each other and have virtuous relationships to create progress.

That's just a taster of the stuff he talks about. There are so many amazing inspiring people particularly in Southeast Queensland and the Northern Rivers. We've got our own B Corp social business group, and happy B Corp month to everyone by the way! I’m Looking forward to connecting with more people from social business impact movements this week at our B Corp month event [link at the end of the article].

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

In terms of books, it’s so challenging because often you want to recommend one that's philosophical and focused on purpose, but then you're also in sustainability so you want to recommend one in that realm! I have a few suggestions here; Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is a very short impactful book in terms of being purpose led and looking for a general sense of meaning in your life. Going back to that lateral thinking point I made earlier, something I'm super interested in is The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. Then in terms of systems thinking and sustainability more broadly, an alternative framework which I believe is fit for purpose in our cultural moment is discussed in Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth. I think her model (although it's a little bit optimistic and strives for a utopian vision in many senses) is the best model I've seen. It has a lot of nuance and balance that is underpinned by evidence.