Social Enterprise Council CEO Kylie Flament leads boom in membership

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Social enterprises are on the rise as everyone from urban farmers to toilet paper manufacturers is choosing an operating model that puts people and planet first.

Membership of the Social Enterprise Council of NSW and ACT (SECNA) has more than tripled in the past 18 months, says the organisation’s CEO, Illawarra local Kylie Flament.

“We had just over 100 members, a mixture of mainly social enterprises, but also funders, councils, state government folks, individuals – people that support social enterprise. We're at 380 now. It’s amazing and it's so good to be able to connect and engage everyone and to be a voice for them.”

Wollongong social enterprises also include Flagstaff, Greenacres and the Disability Trust. “Greenacres is really having a strong focus on that now – so they've just started a whole homewares business, which is really cool.”

Before joining SECNA, Kylie was the general manager of local social enterprise Green Connect. She left that demanding role in 2022, ready to take a break. But soon afterwards Kylie found a new and exciting way to build on her experience, thanks to a trip to the Social Enterprise World Forum in Brisbane.

“I was between roles and I just went, 'Oh my God, these are my people. This is my tribe.'

"I come from the business world, but I have a burning desire to leave a cleaner, greener, fairer, kinder world behind. And that's what social entrepreneurs do.”

Social enterprise sector takes off

Around Australia, the sector is booming. “When I came into the role at SECNA, I thought, we've got this uphill battle trying to get the idea of social enterprise into the mainstream, which is what it felt like at Green Connect," Kylie says.

“And then suddenly just in the last 18 months since I've been in the role, we've had the United Nations come out, recommending that all countries get behind social enterprise as the model for economic development into the future. The European Union has done the same thing. OECD is developing frameworks to show governments how to support social enterprise in a really meaningful way. So globally, suddenly there's this laser focus on social enterprise as a better way of doing business.”

The Australian government is on board too. “Social enterprise has been called out in the employment White Paper. So, a once in a generation report about employment in Australia saying this is the way forward, the Workforce Australia report. It's really exciting and it's coming at such a fast pace.

“Something that has felt like we are beavering away and we're on the fringe is now becoming very mainstream, and that's incredibly exciting.”

Social enterprise certification recognises a business’s purpose but does not change its legal structure, Kylie explains.

“Social enterprise is a business for good. They trade like any other business, but they exist specifically to make the world a better place.”

“I get approached a lot by either businesses or charities saying, tell me more about social enterprise… Why would I become one? How do I become one? They're often seeing the writing on the wall that this is where both policy and government funding is heading and what consumers want.”

'Walking the tightrope every day'

For almost five years, Kylie was a passionate advocate for Green Connect, which focuses on creating jobs, reducing waste and growing fair food at its urban farm in Warrawong. In August 2022, she finally handed over the GM role to Robert Servine.

It wasn't easy to walk away.

“We needed time to find the right person to take on such a crazy role because not everyone has the skill or the will or the energy to manage this organisation with five different business units, 120 young people and former refugees, all with multiple and complex barriers to employment; the environmental outcomes we're trying to have, balancing those with the social impact we were trying to have, balancing that with the financial imperative to not make a loss.”

Running a social enterprise is a hard act to balance.

"I talk about it as you are walking a tightrope every day, balancing the financial needs and the social and environmental impacts that you want to have.”

Yet it’s a challenge many people are willing to accept. Today, Australia is home to about 12,000 social enterprises operating in a range of industries, from healthcare to recycling. Many are run by women – according to SECNA, one in two social enterprises globally are run by women, compared to one in five traditional businesses.

Time to put people and planet first

“I think we've reached a point in human history where we recognise that what we've been doing for the last … let's say 200 years since the Industrial Revolution … has not served us well, and we cannot continue to do this," Kylie says.

“Every measure of planetary boundary that you look at, we're exceeding. We cannot keep living as if resources are infinite and we cannot just keep on mining the planet and we cannot keep on treating some people really well and some people really poorly.

"We've woken up to the fact that humans have, in a very short space of time, made the planet dirty and dangerous. And we've increased inequalities. And so socially and environmentally we are at a crunch point.”

To find out more about the world of social enterprise, Kylie recommends attending the free Social Enterprise Festival on August 3 at UTS in Sydney. Last year's event attracted more than 800 people and 71 different social enterprises.

"This year would be a little bit bigger," she says. "The second one ever… bring your neighbour, bring your colleague, bring your children, your grandmother. [There is] something for everyone. There's market stalls, there's talks, there's workshops, it'll be awesome."

For more information about social enterprises in NSW and ACT, visit SECNA's website.