Andrew Curtis On Social Enterprise As A Key Mechanism For Social Justice And Equality

Andrew Curtis has 40 years of experience at senior management levels as a Founder, CEO, Board member, Consultant and Director in charities and social enterprises both internationally and in Australia.

Andrew has worked with or provided advisory services to both very large and smaller social enterprises and NGOs both in Australia and the UK.

Andrew is currently delivering, in partnership with the refugee- led organisation Value Nation the Economic Pathways for Refugee Integration Project funded by the Department of Home Affairs generating new business and self-employment opportunities for those finding asylum in Australia. Andrew is also on the leadership team at the Frankston Social Enterprise & Innovation Hub, and continues to offer advisory services to a variety of organisations in the for-purpose sector.

Andrew has a Ph.D. from OU/Queens College Oxford and an MBA from Swinburne University. Andrew’s other academic qualifications include a B.A (Macquarie University), B.D (Melbourne University) and an M.A (Sydney University).

Andrew discusses how social enterprises address systemic inequality, create opportunities for people experiencing disadvantage, and where the business for good ecosystem can accelerate its growth.

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

[Indio Myles] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background and what’s led to you working in social entrepreneurship?

[Andrew Curtis] - I don't want to bore people with a 40-year summary of my background. I could take quite some time if I went through all of that, so let me just give you the headlines.

Way back a couple of decades ago, I trained in a theological college and seminary to become a vicar. At that time, I was informed by what was called a ‘theology of liberation’ and the German political theology of the 1980s.

Unlike the normal run of the mill courses, I focused my attention on what injustice looks like and the systemic causes of global and local poverty, social exclusion and the way the patriarchy had formed most of the church-based dogma.

I began questioning all of that right from the start, which didn't make me popular with the hierarchy. During the 1990s, I led a charity called Hope Street in King's Cross, Woolloomooloo, Darlinghurst and Gleed in the inner city of Sydney.

During that time, we set up a cleaning business for men and women exiting the sex industry with all the profits going back into Hope Street. That was successful and it is still going. The thing is, at the time we didn't know that was a social enterprise.

We thought we were setting up a business that made sense in the context. I can't claim we owned it as a social enterprise way back then; that word only came into currency around the end of the 1990s.

In 1999, I went to work at WorkVentures with a guy named Steve Lawrence, who many would regard as the grandfather of social enterprise in Australia. WorkVentures was the first organisation to pick up on the social enterprise model based on what was happening in the UK under the Blair government, where social enterprise became incorporated into what they called the third way.

At WorkVentures, we set up a variety of things, which included Work Ventures Connect. WorkVentures Connect was a business refurbishing and reselling laptops. At the same time, it funded the neighbourhood technology centres WorkVentures set up on several Sydney public housing estates to address the digital divide issues.

I stayed in the not-for-profit sector for several years working senior positions. What was useful in my last job at Baptcare was that we were able to open the first fully supported asylum seeker reception housing project called Sanctuary. This was in a disused 30 bed nursing home, which is still running.

During that time, I developed a background in the world of academia. With more degrees than I probably need, what I know is that the more I learn the less I know. What I did do was a PhD focusing on ‘critical theory’ or ‘critical reflection’, which can basically be reduced to two simple questions, “why are things the way they are?” and “whose interest’s does it serve?”

My preference is not the academic world, but instead the world of practice. After I finished my PhD, I did an MBA to learn about how the businesspeople did what they did so that I could understand their thinking and apply it to social enterprises and for purpose organisations, thinking with the head of a corporate but the heart of a charity.

As the co-founder and director of the Dragonfly Collective Australia, can you please share more about what it's doing and how is it tackling societal injustice?

We commenced the Dragonfly Collective in 2011 after literally writing up the concept on a napkin in a cafe just outside of Canberra after a conference. The Dragonfly Collective has three driving elements guiding our thinking, challenge, imagine, and transform. We provide advisory services to the not for profit and social enterprise sector.

For the first two years, we operated in Sydney. In 2013, we moved to London, where in the first two years I audited a master of social innovation program at the University of Danube in Krems, Austria. We also set up the Dragonfly Collective UK.

After those two years, we stayed another five, and I worked with a variety of established and aspiring social enterprises. These enterprises included small and effective ones like Mazzy Baz, a migrant catering business for women, all the way up to the bigger ones like Oxfam UK on their London anti-poverty strategy.

Perhaps I did my best work with another large organisation called Caritas Westminster. We were able to renovate a disused building in Wembley, and in 2017, we opened the Social Enterprise and Innovation Hub, which is still achieving huge results for people from resource poor communities who want to set up their own business.

The distinctive thing about was it has a co-working space and several training rooms with enough space for 40 people. Our aim was not to fill that facility with fee paying people. Two thirds of the people we wanted in the hub and who now come to the hub do not have the ability to pay.

Whether they're referred from the British Refugee Council or another charity, they all want to start up their own businesses. We offer each one of those [people] what we call a bursary plus a 12-month program to be part of the hub.

Back in Australia (since 2020), I've worked with social enterprises of different shapes and sizes. One of my favourites is Nairm Marr Djambana (an Aboriginal gathering place) and their social enterprise Djambana Catering.

I'm also delivering in partnership with a refugee led organisation called ValueNation the Economic Pathways for Refugee Integration Programme. Again, there's a focus on self-employment and small business start-ups, like what we did at Seeds.

In terms of what we do, we offer practical straightforward advice, some of it incredibly boring, like financial management support. This is quite significant in terms of trying to run a business like a social enterprise. Of course, we do strategic planning, strategic foresight, theories of change, and business planning, all those advisory services and support needed in the for-purpose sector.

What are the systemic underpinnings of social isolation and why are impact led businesses ideally positioned to address these sources of inequality?

The short answer is the systemic roots of socialisation lie in capitalism, especially in its more extreme form, neoliberalism. This has been the dominant source for economic forms of social exclusion, which manifests in social isolation in all its form.

Neoliberalism is not just a way of doing economics, it’s politically and ideologically loaded. Its best been expressed by people like Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan who set the process off in the 80s, adding up to about four decades of this dominant way of organising society being in place.

No matter what political party is in power, it's still shaped by the elements of its thinking, which of course, to summarise them quickly include small government, a free unfettered market, deregulation, privatisation, economic rationalism, lower taxes for business and the rich, more power for employers and shareholders, and less power for workers. They're all interlocking policies that have intensified capitalism and made it ubiquitous.

In recent years, everyone's starting to see the system has failed or it is failing. This is rather than it being sustainable in creating widely shared prosperity, as people talked about in the trickle-down model.

It's produced wage stagnation, in work poverty, evermore inequality, a banking crisis, an impending climate catastrophe, and of course, as we've just seen, the rise of populism, which is quite a frightening thing in one way, but needs to be taken seriously in another.

The challenge for a person like me (who’s white and middle class, not poor in any terms of the global context) is how do I change that system from which I benefit? That's in terms of systems change, I think that's a key question that those of us who want to see change in the system need to ask ourselves in the Western world, because we are all beneficiaries of that system in one way or another.

There is serious thinking that needs to be done around if we can change the system from within, or will it take something that's totally outside of it?

WITHOUT BEING TOO GLOOMY, WE NEED TO RECOGNISE THERE'S A GROWING desire for A NEW KIND OF ECONOMY. ONE THAT'S FAIRER, MORE INCLUSIVE, LESS EXPLOITATIVE AND LESS DESTRUCTIVE TO SOCIETY AND THE PLANET. THERE'S THINKING ALONG THE LINES OF THE WELLBEING ECONOMY, CONSCIOUS CAPITALISM, AND DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS.

There's a re-emerging cooperatives movement, even here in Australia as well as in Europe. There's a concept of employee-owned businesses and there's also of course all the thinking along the lines of social innovation. It's important just to say when we talk about social innovation, we’re talking ideas that will intend to generate equality, emancipation and justice.

That’s in the application of social innovation to some of these movements that are emerging and gaining pace to look at countering the effects of the last four decades. The economic focus of many Western governments is becoming more effective and heard.

That's where I think social entrepreneurship or social enterprise has a space and a place to generate social outcomes. It's within that different non-ordinary context of capitalism in its worst form.

It's just outside of that space social entrepreneurship or social enterprises can generate with the model that they have to reduce social isolation, poverty, and have a much better effect on the environment and the world in which we live.

What needs to be done to help the business for good movement to grow and transform into business as usual?

The business for good and social enterprise ecosystem needs a renewed focus on building the capability of the sector to generate income from trade; that is to do good business by combining all the elements of running a business for profit and at the same time achieving purpose by going beyond profit with social and environmental outcomes.

The more successful social enterprises there are, the more likely it will become business as usual. That potentially means more time spent by social entrepreneurs in MBA programs learning the skills of the for-profit sector while at the same time educating people in the for-profit sector about the alternative of social enterprise model.

It could be doubly successful in terms of money and mission, a two-way learning process. When we talk about social enterprise as being business for good, we must focus on both parts of that term, business and good.

The challenge for a lot of social enterprises remains how to run a successful business? What capability building do they need to make sure they can succeed?

What advice would you give to an aspiring social entrepreneur or changemaker who's looking to create a social change?

My advice would get ready for hard work. A social enterprise is not an easy business to run, and a social enterprise is a hybrid model. It needs to achieve things, the two things side by side that we've just been talking about.

It needs to achieve those two things side by side within the bigger picture of how we operate in terms of the charity and for-profit sector. It needs to run those two things side by side that have previously been disintegrated in business models. That is the charity and for-profit business model.

To aspiring changemakers, we want to encourage as many people as possible to look at how the challenges we face both globally and locally can be overcome in new and creative ways. I would encourage anyone who's an aspiring changemaker to be ready for the long journey of taking your idea or modifying your current business model into a successful social enterprise model.

The other advice I'd give is never give up. Don't stop even though the hurdles might seem large. There's plenty of resources and a range of people to connect with. Don't try and do it in isolation, do it alongside other people and generate as many connections as you can across the business for good, for purpose or social enterprise sector.

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

There is so many deserving to be mentioned, I hesitate to nominate just one or two. Amongst First Nations people, Djambana Catering, in the refugee sector, SisterWorks, in the circular economy, Green Connect, Construction, Nick Tiling, Food and Environment, Project Fresh Start; all of these are wonderful social enterprises.

Andrew Curtis Social Enterprise Startup.jpg

They're all part of a system, a mosaic if you like. When that fits together, they demonstrate how social change can and is happening. That's the best way I can say that, because if I say some, I'll miss out on others.

The number of social enterprises identified in the RISE report published by Social Traders and launched yesterday totals around 6,000 projects. Each one of those are self-identified, recognised, and certified social enterprises that are part of a much bigger mosaic or ecosystem. When that all fits together and works well, that can demonstrate how social change can and is happening.

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

It's an old one now, but Jim Collins wrote a book called Why the Mighty Fall, and I always encourage everyone to read this, especially the first chapter on hubris. We can always get a little bit carried away with our own sense of self-importance. Humility, in terms of what we're doing and our self-understanding, is good to check on to see how we view the world.

Mark Carney, the ex-Governor of the Bank of England has a good book on values, it's called Building a Better World for All. Joseph Stiglitz’s The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society is a good read challenging the claim neoliberalism is morally superior to its alternatives.