[Cat Harding] –

One of the ways that it’s been really successful is by working with those clients to set their own unique and individual targets, and then helping them measure that.

And that’s a really great way to engage and get the teams on board. So SXiQ, we’ve set volunteer targets for the amount of hours that their staff have volunteered at SecondBite. We’ve set targets for the number of meals that we’ve been able to deliver through our partnership with SXiQ and now working with Sensus, Red Energy, City West Water. They are bringing us clients because their team are motivated to reach these targets. And taking a certain pride in being able to deliver something that they can go home to their families and say, “Hey, I’m working on this project and it’s not just an IT project, but we’ve fed 20,000 people on this upgrade program that we did.”

It’s something really real and really tangible that when I go home at the end of the day, that I haven’t just done that, but they’ve given back as well.

So we get to share that sense of social enterprise and that sense of giving back with the people that we work with. And that’s where setting targets and measuring outcomes becomes so valuable, because people feel a part of it. And they are motivated by a journey and an experience that they can take together.

And to that end…

the most important thing that you can have that will underpin all of the communications and all of the marketing that you do is your journey.

Every book and every movie that you’ve ever loved in your life has a protagonist, and they have a journey to a point. So if you set a target and then you take your clients and your customers and your stakeholders on that journey with you, you will have an engagement level that will engage people. As Cinnamon said really well earlier, ‘don’t just talk about yourself,’ but talk about the journey. So the journey can be who are the people that you’re working with? What are the wins that you’ve had? What are the challenges that you had? Who are the characters that are working or volunteering on the site? What are the locations? What’s the back history to that?

And when you start to build all of those pieces, you’ll have a social media strategy that tells the story from beginning to end that people will be interested in. Because it’s real and it’s vulnerable and it’s authentic, and people will be engaged in the process from getting from A to B. We talk about our million kilos and our million meals, and that’s the theme that sits in the middle of our journey. But we also like to talk about SecondBite because that’s the real stuff.

[Mardi Brown] – Yeah absolutely, and storytelling along the way is really important. Who are the characters in the factory that are sorting our food on the day to day basis? Who are the people that are getting up at six o’clock in the morning with their kids to show them that they can go to the market and collect fresh food to help feed people. Why are they doing this?

Tell those beautiful little stories and help really engage people along the way because it helps to create that loyalty and that engagement really for the long term.

[Cat Harding] – And also talking about the things that are hard brings a sense of authenticity as well. I think it’s really important that everything isn’t shiny because some days it’s hard, and also celebrate the wins. So when you hit a milestone, make sure that everybody who’s been a part of it knows that they’ve been a part of it and knows that they’ve helped you get to a from point A to point B.

Thanks very much Mardi and Cat. That was wonderful. And the key thing I got from that was really about that shared purpose with your audience, understanding their needs and also having the metrics and measurement to help them understand how they can reach their goals.

We’re going to move to audience Q&As. So who would like to ask the first question?

[Scott Ko] – Thank you everyone. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. To what extent do you think it’s important to market the social enterprise component of social enterprise as part of your story? Because we want to understand what our customers and stakeholders want, but sometimes the social enterprise part doesn’t necessarily need it or fit into that. I’d love to get your thoughts on that.

[Mardi Brown] – I think if we’re talking about outcomes, we often get asked and interviewed quite heavily about where does our money go and how does our business model work? And we’re very incredibly transparent about that. I don’t think we ever leave the social enterprise part of it out because it’s the leverage point of how we’re able to create outcomes. I don’t have a differing of opinion about why you would leave it out.

[Cinnamon Evans] – I think it depends on your audience. So as a whole organisation, when I explained CERES, I say we’re three things. We’re a park, we’re sustainable through our social enterprises and we have education and training programs. They are three things that we do. And for me that feels important in telling the whole story of CERES. However, our largest single social enterprise CERES Fair Food is an online organic supermarket.

We have discovered over 10 years of trading that we absolutely have to compete on price, convenience and quality. And that the story is secondary to that customer segment. So whilst people will stay with us because of story, they will definitely leave us if we’re not competing on a level playing field with everybody else; the non-organic supplies and non social enterprise suppliers.

So that customer segment, social enterprise is not a thing of significance, well, but telling the whole story of the whole organisation that is. So yes and no from me.

Thank you very much, Scott. Next up we have a question from Min.

[Min Seto] – I’m from the Australian Social Value Bank, and I really love the way that you have the infographics saying what your outcomes were, and I think that’s where we are in the sector, in the space. Part of what we do is trying to translate that social impact into dollar terms. And it’s not just about selling the story. There’s lots of other reasons around funding and making the case and all those sorts of things around cost effectiveness. I’m interested to hear your perspective on actually going to that next step and translating outcomes into dollar impact and whether you think that would add to your case or whether you see that as just not being necessary. But if, for example, like with your savings from landfill and then your meals and those sorts of things, if you could aggregate all that up and give a dollar figure and say, “Well, we’ve actually created this much impact,” whether that would actually strengthen the case and whether you think that is a good move or not?

[Cat Harding] – We work with a number of clients and one is London Benchmarking Group. One of the ways that they measure their outcomes is financial. And we do translate some of outcomes into financial. But Mardi and I made a very firm decision when we started PonyUp that that’s not how we wanted to talk about our impact. So it’s not that we’re not able to do it. It’s that we choose not to. We want to talk to clients about people sitting at a table and eating a meal. And we felt that that was a more tangible thing for the people that we work with. And the stories that they’re looking to tell. In some rare cases we do do it and we are able to do it, but we choose not because we feel that steps away from the narrative that we’d like to tell around the impact that we make in the feeding of people in the keeping of technology out of landfill.

[Min Seto] – So do you think that will change as the impact in the social enterprise space becomes greater and there’s more competition about the impact you’re creating and being compared? So, for example, with SecondBite, and food banks and those sorts of things, whether that would strengthen or weaken it in terms of then you can become a collective and start to add and say, “Well, all of us together we’ve created this amount of social impact because it’s all in the same terms.” Do you think that will have any…?

[Mardi Brown] – I think if it adds value to the narrative and it adds value to the story, I have no problem in that. We’re a pretty transparent organisation and yeah, we’re always looking to evolve. We’re looking at the moment in where we want to be in two years time and that absolutely includes more collaborative partnerships and if it makes sense at the time to talk about the dollar, because that is what the audience needs to hear, or that is what is going to help leverage something else for us, no problem in doing that. For us at the moment, at this point in time, the meal outcomes always just keeps us connected to that meals outcome narrative and the stories. Absolutely, if it needs to change, we would.

[Cinnamon Evans] – CERES hasn’t had a lot of resourcing to do even basic impact measurement. But if we had the time and space and resources, I would love to do an economic impact assessment. I think that that would be amazing. And I also think that…

it is important that we are able to demonstrate how social enterprise is a piece of the puzzle with respect to economic change, economic system change.

And so therefore I do think it is important individually and also collectively as a sector that we can demonstrate how we are contributing to that movement towards, well, I think of it as a away from globalisation and toward localisation. And I think social enterprise is a key part of that. So let’s raise up that narrative.

Some great points. And thank you for the question Min. We have time for one final question.