Mary-Anne Scully On Building Rural Social Enterprise Networks Catalysing Change

Mary-Anne Scully is a seasoned business strategist, facilitator and communicator, who specialises in working with rural people who want to make an impact beyond the city lights.

Mary-Anne grew up on a mixed grazing and cropping property at Coolah in Central West NSW. Now based in Albury-Wodonga, Wiradjuri Country, on the NSW/Victorian border, Mary-Anne led the first regional presence for Global Sisters – an organisation supporting female entrepreneurs to achieve financial independence.

Initially trained as a broadcast journalist, Mary-Anne is adept at identifying and communicating stories that resonate. She later embarked on post graduate studies in environmental management, offering a communication ‘bridge’ between business, science and sustainability.

As Executive Director of Services at the Australian Centre for Rural Entrepreneurship (ACRE), Mary-Anne leads a team focused on designing, delivering, and evaluating ACRE programs - including Social Enterprise Schools, Understanding Social Enterprise workshops, Community Asset Ownership, Incubators and Accelerators - harnessing the power of entrepreneurship to drive positive change in rural communities.

Mary-Anne discusses the challenges rural, regional and remote Australians are tackling through the engine of social entrepreneurship, and the opportunity for traditional business models to be modified to specifically address the needs of tight-knit communities.

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 you to working in social enterprise?

[Mary-Anne Scully] - I would love to pretend it was a planned journey, but in some ways, I feel it was a happy accident that I ended up working in the social enterprise sector. Until about 10 years ago, I wasn't familiar with social enterprise as a term, but I have always been interested in social impact. I grew up with that interest deep in my DNA, passed on from my grandparents through to my parents.

I was always aware of social responsibility and that contributing to the community is something you should do. I've worked a lot in spaces like public health, the arts, environment, and other health sectors. I also ran a consultancy for a long time, and through that, I discovered I was good at business.

I like the process of nailing the deal. For me though, I didn't get a great amount of excitement out of making money for the sake of it. It's never been something that's inspired me, but I had the opportunity quite a long time ago to work for an organisation called Greening Australia in which I was leading corporate partnerships.

That's where I discovered I could work with large businesses who genuinely want to contribute to environmental remediation. I was surprised by how I could be a conduit to finding and landing financial resources and people to create the environmental change our organisation was seeking to inspire.

That's when I first started to realise I’m good at bringing these two concepts together. Through my work with Global Sisters and an introduction from ACRE [Australian Centre for Rural Entrepreneurship] to work being done in their Social Enterprise Academy that I came to realise that social enterprise is a sector.

[Social enterprise] is about intentional trading to generate profits to contribute to causes and issues that matter to you, and that's when I realised I had found my place.

As the Executive Director of services at ACRE, can you tell us more what ACRE does and the types of projects you're involved in?

ACRE is a social enterprise that exists to drive the renewal of Australia's rural communities so future generations can thrive. The way we do this is we unlock both the power of social enterprise as a business model, entrepreneurship as a way of approaching challenges and creating opportunities to solve local issues.

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That's what we're about as an organisation, creating thriving rural futures. We work across and with different community organisations, government agencies, and various other entities who also share an interest in doing that.

I first came to ACRE after working with Global Sisters, and I was engaged to bring to life a program called the Breakout Accelerator. This was a program for rural innovators, people who were already building out businesses within a rural context to try and find a way to bring impact to those regions.

Again, these entrepreneurs are not just making money, but also thinking about how they can create employment for young people, address waste management, or find ways to build cultural opportunities in their community. That was where I first came to ACRE, and I’ve now had the opportunity to work across lots of different portfolios within ACRE.

I hosted an event called the Rural Gathering back in 2022, which was offered as a satellite activity to the Social Enterprise World Forum hosted in Australia. Then we developed the Breakout Accelerator with an organisation called SecondMuse, an extraordinary international organisation about developing new economies for rural communities.

We used what we learnt from the Breakout Accelerator to design an initiative called REJUVENATE. REJUVENATE is about connecting, supporting, and guiding rural people who want to build and sustain community led initiatives. It's bringing together what you care about and the opportunities in your community to view them through an enterprise lens.

As part of that work, I've had an opportunity to be part of the development of a manifesto for the Rural Social Enterprise [Network]. This looks at the principles and core activities you can undertake to genuinely support and activate social enterprises in a rural setting. That's been a great project to work on with the ACRE team and colleagues with international experiences.

The work I'm doing within the services team is in building out, designing, delivering, and evaluating ideas. We want to see how we can offer opportunities, learning, and support services so people can build out these initiatives and utilise entrepreneurship to make the change they want to see in their communities.

With the launch of that Rural Social Enterprise Network, what is it you're hoping to achieve and how can people collaborate?

What's interesting is in many countries around the world, rural communities face unique challenges like geographic isolation or limited resources. In Australia, 70% of rural inland towns have suffered a severe decline over the past 50 years.

Despite these challenges and disadvantages, what we have found is there is a remarkable similarity in terms of what people are seeking for their communities and the aspirations they have.

Often, it's because the people care about the places they're based in and the future they create for young people. Rural social enterprise can play a critical role in addressing challenges like creating employment, restoring essential services, addressing environmental challenges or creating economic opportunities.

Why is that relevant to the Rural Social Enterprise Network? It's because what we are doing is we are calling for the co-creation of it. We recognise that across Australia there are many people who have a deep understanding social enterprise and people who are interested in creating better futures for rural communities.

What we want to do is develop this network through which we can share information, techniques, opportunities and expertise. Basically, we want to build a stronger collective voice to unlock new resources and opportunities for rural communities.

The network isn't just a ‘blah-blah’ festival, it's about finding ways to come together to understand the unique dimensions of rural communities, but also what opportunities exist.

What we know is in places like the highlands and islands of Scotland or rural Canada, these social enterprise networks are alive and running. We want to see something like that emerging in Australia so that we can support each other regardless of geography to utilise the incredible power of social enterprise to bring opportunities to rural communities.

We've been amazed because now we're just calling for a co-design process, and we've already had over a hundred people who have said they want to be part of it. People from every state and territory across Australia want to be a part of this.

What we think is we've struck a chord, which is terrific. What we also know is our manifesto is an incredible resource that has key guiding principles for working with and alongside rural communities.

It contains eight actionable recommendations, which means no matter what space you're working in you can find something to take forward in a practical way to work with and alongside a rural community to create opportunities.

Where do you see this broader rural entrepreneurship climate changing over the coming five years?

From my perspective, there are a couple of things I see already emerging that I'll have a crack at forecasting. In my mind, one of the most interesting and unexpected things that happened with the advent of the COVID pandemic was that rural became the new black. Prior to COVID, I often found I almost needed to be apologetic for working in a rural space.

It was seen as a second-class career choice, and perhaps you weren't brave enough to work in a city-based location. Now, the truth of the matter is I have spent large chunks of my life living and enjoying cities. I love cities, I'm not an anti-city person. I think many people who have lived and worked rural for a while suddenly find that it’s cool.

What people are also discovering is living rurally is not about making sourdough and tomato harvesting; it can be challenging as well. I see some significant shifts happening due to rural social entrepreneurship and people starting to understand the existing opportunities and challenges.

Firstly, I think we are going to see a change in the way capital is available for rural ideas. Now, the conventional thinking about finance and capital is predominantly based on scale and numbers, which is understandable if you're operating within a metropolitan context. Those two elements are not necessarily relevant (nor appropriate) for a rural community.

A rural community wanting to address an opportunity may want to do something like buy back a garage because it's going to close. The people who own it are retiring, but they want to retain that service in their community. Maybe it's providing automotive services, a depot for parcels and packages, or a training ground for young apprentices.

If it goes into community asset ownership, it's never going to grow from being one garage to being a zillion garages! Since it's not a scalable model, getting finances can be quite challenging.

One thing I do see is a growing awareness of a need for different types of approaches to finance, approaches that enable rural communities to achieve trading models appropriate for the place they're based and the scale at which they operate. They may need to be a bit more patient, and we're working in this space while being informed by international partners who are sharing great models with us.

The other challenge I have observed in rural communities is that the exiting of young people is causing an aging demographic. People want to bring young people back to communities, so one thing I would like to see happen is the creation of new ways to bring entrepreneurial learning to the next generation.

Current models of schooling and the conventional thinking around working towards getting your HSC (High School Certificate) and heading off to university doesn't suit everyone. There is an opportunity to utilise entrepreneurial education in rural areas, so people become job creators and not just job takers. That means the vibrancy of industry will change in rural communities

The third thing that I think will change with rural social entrepreneurship is that people will start to appreciate that community led initiatives are not just nice little fluffy things someone's thought about over a cup of tea. They're genuinely initiatives people can see emerging in their community in response to an opportunity or challenge.

We have extraordinary community led initiatives happening right across Australia, particularly in sectors like the creative industries that are creating new opportunities for people. 20 or 30 years ago, these ideas would not have been taken seriously, and now they are creating employment, social cohesion and economic engines for people to prosper.

They also provide clever solutions to problems like waste management or create facilities that bring together young people and aged care to ensure these demographics are on the same side. It's these community led initiatives that I think will start to be taken more seriously and be viewed in a less patronising way.

What important traits have you observed amongst changemakers experiencing success?

The number one trait that comes to mind is curiosity. A social entrepreneur is someone who notices what's going on around them, the gaps, opportunities, or occurrences in a community regardless of its location. This could be in metropolitan, rural, or remote regions. What's happening around you? What population shifts or areas are emerging?

With a social entrepreneur, they’re often ahead of what is already in data or government policy, which requires a level of curiosity. There is also a level of risk taking without being reckless that is required; being prepared to try things is important.

There is also a degree of determination that is needed, because it's hard work. Social entrepreneurship is not a straightforward process. You need to be dogged is what I would say.

To be honest, I also think you need to be open. The reason I say that is it’s remarkable where you can find the knowledge and know-how you need. It's not always obvious, but if you are curious about something, you can start to see gaps and opportunities.

If you are dogged and prepared to take a risk and be open, what it means is you can start to find solutions within your own area (or even internationally) to inform what you're thinking about. That will lead you to developing a business model that you can use to build the change you want.

What common reasons have you seen for social entrepreneurs to fail?

I'm going to step back for a moment to a presentation I heard many years ago at a Social Traders conference. It was led by a social entrepreneur in Singapore (I think his name was Tong Lee), and he was quite extraordinary. He said something which I call a coconut on the head moment, and it's something that's always stuck with me.

It’s about addressing the challenge of people lacking enterprise acumen and interest. In my experience, the most common reason social enterprises fail (particularly in Australia, which is where I've got more expertise and exposure) is they focus too much on the social impact and lack the acumen and interest in enterprise.

It's interest in the acumen of enterprise as well, because the social enterprise needs to balance its purpose piece.

What is it that you want to change? What is the issue that matters to you that you want to address? Generally, if you’re passionate about that, you can sustain that interest. If you fail to build an enterprise model about that problem, it will never be viable.

I would probably say the most common reason social entrepreneurs fail is they have too much heart while lacking an interest in enterprise. You don't have to do it all, but you need to be prepared to bring in expertise if you need it.

The other thing I would say is entrepreneurs fail to build in systems early. What can happen is that people just focus on the one thing they care about, so they will work hard to solve that problem while working themselves into the ground. If you don't have a business model and the systems to back it up, you're in trouble.

One of the graphics I saw many years ago that has stuck in my mind clearly says you need a triangle of knowledge and know-how to underpin a social enterprise. You need an entrepreneur, someone who can see an opportunity, who cares about the problem, and is prepared to take risks.

You also need the technician, the person within that social enterprise who deeply understands whatever that social enterprise is about. Let's pretend it's a catering business, you will then need someone who understands catering. You can't just expect that you're going to suddenly attain that knowledge.

You need an entrepreneur who can see opportunities and who is prepared to take risks, you need a technician who has deep lived experiences of whatever it is you're building as a social enterprise, and finally you need a manager, someone who can be build out those systems for logistics, taking payments, or sending out invoices.

A common reason you may fail in social enterprise is that you often don't have those three points of the triangle in place. If you've got the entrepreneurship, the technician and the manager, those three elements of expertise in place, generally you will thrive. If you don't have those three elements, you will become vulnerable.

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

I'm going to use real examples of projects and people I've had the opportunity to work alongside. One of them comes from young people, and I mentioned before that I see (particularly for rural communities) that the next generation is the future in so many ways.

These are the people who will live and work in rural communities, care for the elderly, and create new opportunities with vibrant new ideas. I'm going to shine a spotlight on Bourke Public School which is in Western New South Wales.

It's a relatively remote and isolated community, but the reason I'm choosing this school is that we host a program across various parts of Australia called Social Enterprise Schools.

With this program we ask young people what matters to them in the world? What do you care about? What do you want to change? How might you use a business model of social enterprise to generate profits to address what you care about?

Often the judgment of young people is that they're very self-centred, they watch TikTok all the time, they don't want to do anything with adults, and they are in their own zone. I'd like to challenge that belief, because if I look at something like Bourke Public School, what happened there is young members of their student leadership team came together through Social Enterprise Schools to reopen their school canteen.

This canteen had been closed for several years due to a whole range of complex issues. They are now generating profit by activating food sales through that canteen, and the money that they're generating through trade and profit they're giving to the local hospital auxiliary to purchase medical equipment for improved local services.

These are young people at a small, rural school who said, “we've realised that we care about people in our community, we know that there's a local hospital auxiliary wanting to purchase medical equipment, and we're going to do something about that.” That’s a great example of caring for something beyond you.

The other project I would like to shine a light on is from a place called Wangaratta, which is in Northeast Victoria (about three hours North of Melbourne). When you think about living rurally, I think a lot of people tend to think about Akubra hats, riding boots, and horses. There’s a lot more to rural communities than initially meets the eye.

One of the great communities led initiatives ACRE has walked alongside through the REJUVENATE initiative is called LINE Wangaratta. LINE is an emerging service coming out of Wangaratta playing a crucial role in connecting and supporting the LGBTQIA+ community in Wangaratta and beyond.

For the people who are part of LINE Wangaratta, they identified that there was a lack of understanding of the needs and interests of this community. They're putting in place a trading model to build out learning, development and services to be more inclusive in their community.

To me, that takes curiosity, doggedness, and an openness for a rural community to also identify something like that, but that's for me an interesting and emerging example of positive social change coming out of a surprising geographic location.

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

In terms of thinking about rural social enterprise, I would suggest for anyone who is wanting to work in this space to please download the Rural Manifesto. It is something that was developed from the ground up in rural Australia. It then had greater Australian and international contributions from almost 40 different countries around the world and it just seems to resonate wherever it goes.

If you're wanting to work with and alongside rural enterprises, it's a practical resource for understanding the principles of working with rural communities and genuinely actionable recommendations you can get going with. I'm also a believer in having a bit of time out, that's part of what I think is important for anyone who is working as a rural social entrepreneur.

I recently re-read a couple of books, and I’m going to recommend them as while these don't have insights for social entrepreneurship, they're great reads.

One is an Australian author by the name of Garry Disher. He is often known for his work in crime writing, but he wrote a gorgeous book called The Sunken Road, which I have re-read recently. It's based in rural South Australia, and it is an intriguing, quite challenging, and beautiful book. I think in a poignant way it works within and across the complexities and quiet, hidden moments of a rural community.

I'm currently having a good old crack at reading Question 7 by Richard Flanagan, and I'm enjoying that again. It's an opportunity to reflect on family, the history around us, what drives us, and what we might want to reflect on as important to us about love and life.