It was just a great start into thinking about that intersection between social impact, creating positive social change and also business and how businesses can help that. On the flip side, it also showed how people cannot stay in the hamster wheel of funding and maybe look at the social enterprise models for being able to create more impact through the social change projects that were happening. I developed a real passion for aligning that business with purpose during that time. Then at the same time, I started working with The Social Deck. That’s my background to how I got to where I am.

Mel, that’s a wonderful background that you have there and some amazing mentors to have met along the way. You touched on it at the end there, but that’s now led you to working with The Social Deck, so for our listeners, could you please describe the activities of The Social Deck and how you are helping organisations to create their own positive impact?

My business partners, Kate and Steve actually founded The Social Deck in New York a couple of years before I joined. At the time, The Social Deck was formed because there was a social enterprise movement in about 2011 in New York, where they were at the time. They saw this gap where there were all these amazing social enterprises happening, but there was a need for helping social enterprises and non-profits in general to communicate the impact that they were having, and to just help with communications in general. That’s where The Social Deck started, but when Kate and Steve came back from New York, they went back to some other jobs and we all started The Social Deck again at the start of 2014.

With the seed planted of continuing this idea of being able to do communication for good, which included things like working on innovative social marketing and behaviour change campaigns in health and other things, we were also doing stuff like an online magazine called Ideas Hoist, which was trying to elevate social entrepreneurship, start-ups and those who had a bit of a social purpose-built in.

That’s where it started, this idea of business for good, and we’ve moved into the workspace of mostly consulting government clients on policy change and social change projects that we believe have a positive impact.

Our core work these days is really in community and stakeholder engagement on public policy, like The National Disability Strategy and the National Obesity Prevention Strategy. We do that engagement, but I guess what we do in terms of our impact is that we apply a lens across all of our work that it needs to have that positive impact and purpose. That there will be a positive outcome from the work that we’re doing. For us, that’s really become about people, especially people who are maybe more marginalised or disadvantaged or who don’t usually get the chance to speak, to make sure that our engagement process is really inclusive. To make sure that everybody can have an equitable voice to government when there’s change happening, particularly change that affects them.

We still do quite a lot of work with smaller organisations as well; social enterprises and NGOs around strategy or even community-based behaviour change projects. We’ve done some around illegal dumping and reducing the risk of mosquito borne diseases and things like that.

We basically look for projects that we think will have a really positive impact. overall, we’re about communicating to people and helping them to engage in the way that they want to in changes that are happening.

You’ve interacted with the sector on so many different levels Mel, which is fantastic. I think that maybe if we focus on that national level that you were talking about just then, you have facilitated the design and development of many of these strategies and campaigns. What would be some of the critical lessons you’ve learned from using a variety of approaches in the design and consultation phases of these campaigns?

The first thing I think is the engagement has to be genuine. Consultation and engagement shouldn’t be a box ticking exercise. I think in all of the work that we do, we advocate to government or other clients about genuine engagement and most people are absolutely on board with that. I think that one of the key things is to try to generate trust, and sometimes that actually means letting go of some of the process.

For example, what we’ve found is that we actually work with a lot of smaller organisations often around advocacy in the spaces that we might be consulting with, because they have already built the trust with the communities that they know and that they advocate for and work with all the time.

Melanie, what advice would you give to an entrepreneur seeking to engage the community within their operations and future decision-making processes?

That’s a great question. The first thing I would say is don’t be afraid of people. Not just users, but just generally people who might have any interaction with the product or service, or people who are your beneficiaries. You should get out there and really ask people, “what do you want? Why do you do what you do? What are your pain points? What do think of the opportunities?” If you have made something, you need to be open to feedback and to testing whatever you’re making with a range of people too. Not just people like you, but a range of diverse people.

I think one of the things that I’ve learned is just to not be afraid to sometimes go out there on the street and be asking questions, being really curious about what people think. A lot of people are just keen to have a chat and you learn so much. I think another thing would be to try to bake it into the business model. That might be through a board of advisors or some reference group or champions in the community. Embrace as much diversity as possible into that, whether it’s gender diversity, racial diversity, LGBTIQA+ representation if that’s appropriate, or people with disabilities or neuro-diverse people.

It’s really important to be able to think strategically within a social enterprise, non-profit or a business around the people who will really help to challenge your assumptions, but also help contribute to making the right thing or developing the right service.

The other thing I would say just in terms of communications is don’t use jargon. Language is the best way to communicate with people, and I think that the principles of universal design in terms of communication could be done better in terms of the way that people talk about things with users or the community.

It really seems that you’re touching on that idea of authentic interactions and talking to people. Just really getting the best message to them, which is really beautiful. It’s a really great approach to social enterprise.

It’s also getting the best messages from them as well. One of the things that I find in a lot in our work, especially in this work that we do in strategic projects end to end where we’re starting off with research and ending with evaluation, is that often people forget to ask the really hard questions at the start to really challenge those assumptions. Then of course, the further you get along, the harder you hold onto the things that you might’ve made, or maybe your own biases around that. It’s not everyone of course, but I think it’s important to genuinely engage and take on board feedback, asking a variety of questions at the start to make sure that you’re making the right thing.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently that are creating a positive social change?

I am really inspired by the cooperative models and the networks that are out there. The Nundah Co-op I think is just an incredible organisation, I know they’ve won some awards recently.

The point is that it’s a member organisation, it’s a co-op. The benefits flow to the people that the business is looking to generate capacity for and to empower. It’s not just empowering them in terms of telling people that they’re doing a great job, getting them to speak up or generating employment opportunities, but it is actually flowing back in a business sense.

I think there’s lots of great organisations like that. What Robert and Emma-Kate are doing with The Food Connect Shed and what is happening on the Sunshine Coast with FAN, The Food and Agribusiness Network is really cool. There’s lots of those networks where they operate on behalf of their members and everybody’s lifting each other up. A lot of the proceeds are actually going back to members, or the benefits are going back to the network. I think those are really cool organisations. The other one I guess I’d love to give a shout out to is my friend Tasha who runs Talk Revolution. She’s generating some really good stuff at the moment. She’s developed curriculum matched resources for teachers and parents that are about real talks. They’re presented by kids, for kids about the conversations that matter, things like periods, drugs, alcohol and sex. It’s really relevant to this moment.

Those are really key things to touch on for kids there.

The most important thing is it’s actually developed by kids as well. I think that peer model is what we’ve seen work really well. That’s a really cool social enterprise as well.