Setting up a Social Enterprise for Grants Success | Levi Fernandez - Society Melbourne

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Hi, I'm Jessie Ballantyne and I love grants. I sold my house to fund the launch of the Grants Hub because I truly wanted to make grants easier to find. In the very early days, I ended up running the Grants Hub from the ICU ward of a children's hospital. Let's just say I'm committed to the cause of helping you find grants. If you're looking to get real with grants to learn what works and what doesn't, to hear from grant experts from across the country and have some fun while we do it, then Grants Uncovered is the podcast for you. I am here with Levi Fernandez, co founder and head of partnerships at Society Melbourne. Society Melbourne is a social enterprise supporting young people experiencing homelessness. Society Melbourne invests 100% of the profits from their portfolio of social enterprises back into their impact model. Levi and the team have achieved big things in a short amount of time, and grants is just one area of their success. In fact, Levi and I first met at Society Melbourne was awarded the Grants Hub Social Enterprise Grant back in 2019. Social enterprise is a rapidly growing arena in Australia, with more than 20,000 now in operation. It's no wonder I'm getting an increasing number of questions about social enterprise and grants. So today, Levi is generously coming on to share some of his insights and experience with us. Thanks so much for coming on to Grants Uncovered, Levi.

Thanks for having me, Jesse. It's great to be here.

Levi's down in Sydney. I'm up here on the Sunshine coast, so we're spread apart. It's one of the beauties. I think now that we can do these things a lot more easily, particularly since COVID I think it's helped some of the remote work. A lot of us have worked remotely anyway, but I think this has helped fuel that.

Yeah, absolutely. We're worth just chasing the sun.

Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Hey, Levi, look, first question's very serious. 1. Society Melbourne runs cafes, so we've got to get your coffee preference. First up.

This is my big, dirty secret. I don't drink coffee.

Oh, I was worried you might say that. Yeah.

I'm a terrible, terrible ambassador.

No, that's not. That's not cool. Do you eat crepes? Cause there's also crepes for change.

I do, I do. The crepes are really yummy. I'm more of a tea man, so I love a peppermint tea.

Okay. And the cafe does good tea.

They do incredible tea.

Excellent. Great. Now, the other one is the cafes are also vegan. Now, is that A preference that you guys both, you know, all the founders are vegan or what was your decision behind that?

Well, I should preface it by saying the food menus are all plant based. We still serve dairy in our coffee. Just because we haven't been able to figure out sort of a viable alternative, that doesn't completely disrupt the business model. But that was sort of, I think, my influence a little bit. I'm huge environmentalist. I'm really into sustainability. And we had always been a vegetarian business. And the more I was learning about sustainability and the type of values that I wanted Society Melbourne to have, we began sort of transitioning our existing menus and trialing different things to see if, you know, we could offer really nutritious, really sustainable, but most importantly delicious food to our customers and how that would affect our bottom line. And fortunately, we've been able to do really well off the back of it. Dan Tenille and I are the three co founders. I think Dan's vegetarian, Tenille's vegan. I'm vegan as well. But the, the only reason we're doing it from a business point of view is just from sustainability. We exist to support young people experiencing homelessness and we also want to contribute to a world where young people in the future have a safe and secure place to live.

Yeah, that's really cool. I think possibly the locations where your cafes are as well, near Melbourne Uni, I'm assuming that's good. Your food decisions are no doubt based. It's a business decision that you're making as well as that you know the full purpose side of what you're doing.

Yeah, definitely. Like, we, we obviously have a responsibility to make sure that every business decision that we make is creating positive outcomes for our revenue. At the end of the day, as a social enterprise, that's what. That's sort of one of our markers of success, obviously, is our ability to bring in strong revenue. So any of these decisions where we're sort of bringing in our own personal values into the business, they need to stack up.

Yeah, no, it's awesome. It kind of closes that loop. I think you want to have that every element should be contributing towards that core purpose, ideally. And you guys are just achieving big things with that. And I think that's one of the things I come across so many not for profits and social enterprises. And you guys continue to stand out for so many ways, but I think that's one of them. To me, you just seem to tick everything across the board and it's an exciting thing to be Watching and it's not surprising to me that you've been as successful as you all have been.

Yeah, it's very kind of you to say, like these decisions, I think, don't always create the best outcomes. You know, it is quite restrictive in some ways because we've now decided as an organization all of our food menus across all of our social enterprises have to be plant based. They have to be sustainable. And that does irk and sort of scare some potential partners that we've, whether it's projects that we've tended for and stuff like that, where, you know, they might ask, oh, so there's no meat and there's no dairy, blah, blah, blah. And we're like, no, like there's not. But that we don't do it in sort of an overt way. We try and do it just so that it's just really delicious food. It's not crazy vegan stuff. It's just really yummy and really good for the planet.

I've eaten there and I'm not vegan. And I can tell you that I loved the toasty. It was definitely, I would have loved it whether it was vegan or not. So to me it didn't make any difference when I was eating it. I just really enjoyed what I got given. So good.

That's good to hear.

He's down there in Melbourne. Go and check it out. Yeah. So Levi, tell us, as Society Melbourne, we've touched on a couple of these already. You've got crepes for change in those cafes, home one and home two. And then you've got the coffee cart as well. How are you using that to actually support people experiencing homelessness? Like in practice, day to day? How is this working?

Sure. So sort of two ways, through the profits that we generate. You touched on it earlier. 100% of the profits that we create. And it's important to distinguish for those who maybe aren't super familiar with social enterprise, that you've got your revenue, which is all the money you make from selling and all that sort of stuff. And then your profit is the money you've got left over from paying your staff, from paying rent for, paying for the ingredients, all that sort of stuff. So the money we have left over after paying everyone, that's the profit and we use that money to invest into our impact programs. And so two of those programs that are worth noting, one is called Home Plate and that's an employment and training program. And also one housing program that we run in partnership with Launch Housing now, the Home plate program sort of ties into the process element of our impact model where we actually employ and train young people within the businesses themselves. So, so you talked about that closed loop before. We think it's really cool how the money we make gets put right back into the business by employing and training young people across a six month program where obviously a huge part of it is hospitality skills. And in a city like Melbourne it's really valuable to be able to have those skills and be able to transition into ongoing employment in hospitality. However, we recognise that a lot of people and a lot of young people don't see careers in hospitality, so we make it a, a real focus to ensure that they have general employability skills that are transferable across the vast majority of industries. So we've had young people come to us, go through our program, graduate and transition into ongoing employment through one of our employment partners in the health field, tech, law, sort of everything. And we think that's a really sustainable model. So not only are they staying with us for about six months and all of their time they're paid for, we want to create a really clear, respectful relationship that they should come to expect from their future employers. And then as they graduate, we work with them, with our community of employment partners to help transition them into ongoing employment. So that's the home plate program and then, and that's sort of a combination of both process and profit social enterprise models. And then purely from a profit point of view, we also invest, or we have invested in the past in a housing program in partnership with launch housing. So launch housing run the foyer model across a few venues around Melbourne, which is in a nutshell, assisted living arrangements for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. And as they are looking to transition from that four year model into long term sustainable accommodation, often rental, obviously we, we subsidize the first year's rent in the private rental market for them. So I think for the first four months or first three months we cover 75%, then for the next three months we cover 50, 50 and then for the final three months we cover 25%, they cover 75%. So by the end of the year they're in this really sustainable, really outstanding sort of housing arrangement where we know from the data and from sort of testimonials that we measure and evaluate that it really works. So all of the young people that have gone through both these programs have remained out of the homelessness cycle to date, which means that they have access to secure and safe housing, meaningful employment, often they're engaged in some sort of education. They're a part of a really inclusive community and as a result of those four things, they've developed this really powerful and resilient sense of confidence. So that's the short, long version of kind of what we're up to.

It's incredible. And I think for anyone who's listening to this, you can see why they've been successful. So they've got. These are very smart people who have come together and they're achieving things across the board. So they're running a business and they're doing these incredible support services, but it's also this awesome ongoing. It's not a handout. I don't think your model is a handout. You're wanting to, you know, the transition that you're doing with, say, the rent. It's just a clever system that you've put in place to help hopefully see long term and sustained change. I think with people experiencing homelessness.

Yeah, absolutely. And like, we're not Tenille, Dan and I, when we started this, we're not particularly, you know, brilliant people. Like, I think we're all capable, but one of the things we did really well was lean on people with lived experience of homelessness and also existing service providers who have decades of experience to make sure that whatever impact we're looking to make, it's, you know, informed by those with lived experience and by those who've been doing it for a long time. And so we sort of, I think, what's the expression with on the shoulders of giants or something like that? Basically, we've just made sure we've partnered with and learnt from people who are a lot smarter and a lot more experienced than we are.

But that humility that you've shown is like the, is one of the critical things people can learn in leadership or in business. No matter what field you're in, it's so critical to keep learning. And I think. But so many people don't, or they're not willing to, or they feel like they need to show like they've got it all together. Whereas I think you guys are really showing that, that beauty of learning and you've got a team of people that are coming together, going, we don't have all the answers. We've got some skills. You're saying you're not clever. I would argue with that. But you know, you're saying you've got capable people that have come together to pull something off and look what you're achieving. Like, it is amazing. Levi?

Yeah, yeah. I think one of the things we caught onto early on was really honing our superpowers and not trying to be everything to everyone. So, you know, at the start, if you look at just the co founders, Dan is an incredible, incredibly entrepreneurial person and sees business opportunities where few would. Tenille has an incredible operations brain and is able to sort of manage these really complex, difficult projects with what seems to be a lot of calm and ease. And then it's quite funny, when we were sort of working all that out, it was really clear where Dan and Tenille's strengths were. And for me, it was a little bit more, a bit of an unknown because I think none of my skill set were as apparent to us how it was going to fit in. And I think in the end it ended up being sort of partnerships focused. But we all just had these superpowers that we held onto really tightly and leveraged those. And then the holes and the gaps that we had, we plugged them with different people that came into our community. So I think you're right. I think we were able to enjoy the relative success that we've had as a result of the people that have supported us, whether they're volunteers, whether they're staff, whether they're our philanthropic partners or service partners, or just everyone that's been in that community is very much the reason we've been able to get to where we are.

Is there a backstory to the idea in the beginning? Like, what brought you together? What started this?

So Dan, one of the co founders, he'd started the first social enterprise, Crepes for Change, so a food truck with his brother Liam. And Tenille and I got on board to volunteer, mostly from a behind the scenes point of view. So I think we were both working on the impact stuff. And then as the sort of work we were doing just snowballed. We started, I think, a coffee cart at rmit and then we were at the point where, you know, we were called Crepes for Change. And that wasn't really what we were anymore. That was the food truck. But actually we were doing a bit more things and I think it was that point where we thought, okay, cool, great opportunity to rebrand and to start something a bit different. And that's where Society Melbourne came from. So we all sort of were already together to support Dan and Liam's first social enterprise, Craps to Change. And then we saw the opportunity to leverage the superpowers that we had to create the type of impact that we were really wanting to see in our community. And also we were, I think we were 21 or 20. So we just had a lot of energy and naivety and also just like a lot of audacity to think that we could do the things that we wanted to do. But it worked out quite well.

I was gonna say you guys are really young. Like, people can't see you through a podcast, but this team is a really young team. I don't know how old you all are now, but you're all very young people, really. Well, definitely started at, you know, 21. That's young. I guess it's all relative. It comes back to perspective. But I think a lot of listeners will consider you all to be quite young. I haven't met Dan yet, but, you know, you've come up with something. And I think that seeing young people doing things when you're still brave and gutsy and you don't have all the answers, but it's kind of a cool time to start stuff because you're not afraid then.

Yeah, yeah. And like, look, I think so we're all about 26, I think Dan's 27. And just like, we were scared a lot of the time. We had no idea what we were doing and we were entering into situations and conversations that we were ill prepared for or under prepared for, I should say. But I think what held us in good stead was we were always really committed to doing the right thing by the young people we were working with. And that's not to say we didn't make mistakes. We've made so, so many mistakes. But I think the more opportunities we had as young people to learn on the job and to trial and to fail and fail quickly and fail spectacularly, it sort of, I think, allowed us to calm our nerves a bit and yeah, just probably bite off a lot more than we could chew, but then.

Chew like hell, love it, jump in and then work it out later. I can definitely relate to that from personal experience with a couple of things I've started. So for you, back then, when you decided to go from crepes for change, you had, you had, you were supporting Dan and then taking it to something new and rebranding and something fresh. Why a social enterprise at that point? Why not a not for profit?

Well, I should say so technically we are also a not for profit. We're a not for profit organization that really utilizes the social enterprise model. And the reason why that really appealed to us is because it gave us a level of autonomy over the work we were doing. So early days, we didn't like the idea of Having to tick certain boxes or meet certain funders requirements in order to attract funding. And the idea of running sustainable and profitable social enterprises to fund our work really appealed to us. And I think that was because we were really looking to work with young people in ways that we thought and our service partners thought was the most effective. Because the service partners and the young people that we work with, they're the ones with all the information and they know what's best rather than sometimes working with funders who want to see certain types of impact. So that's why the social enterprise model really appealed to us. Dan and Tenille, in all honesty, were the two that were sort of, I think, the most taken by it. Dan, from an entrepreneurial point of view and Tenille, with a background in international development, I think both of them saw the power of the social enterprise model a lot clearer and a lot more early on than I did. And so that's why we sort of settled on it. And yeah, it's worked quite well for us.

Yeah, it's interesting because social enterprise itself doesn't have a legal structure in Australia still. So, you know, when people are setting themselves up, it's like, how do I start a social enterprise? Well, we still don't have an actual structure that everyone can follow. And I think this will come because social enterprise as that concept, let's just call it a structure, it doesn't actually have those legal definitions around it yet, but I think that's changing quite quickly. And we're seeing states coming up with social enterprise networks and things, particularly this year. That's really starting to take off. But you know what you're doing. How did you structure like your actual structure? Did you factor grants eligibility into those legal decisions or structural decisions, or how did you guys choose to do it?

So I had to message Tenille quickly this morning just to double check what our company structure was. We're a company limited by guarantee, we have our DGR status, we've got all of that stuff. But initially I think we were an incorporated association. And the reason we transitioned was to be able to get our DGR status more easily. But to answer your question, no, we never really took grant funding as a focus for our company structure. Although in saying that, obviously we transitioned our company structure to one that was more favorable to receiving DGR status. And to have DGR status obviously opens you up to a lot more granting opportunities.

I'll just jump in quickly, Levi. For anyone who's listening who doesn't know what DGR status is, it's Deductible gift recipient status. So any organization you can receive a tax deductible receipt from for their donation, that's essentially what a DGR is. So it opens up a whole world of grant opportunities. That's what Levi's talking about here.

Yeah. So in the, in the earlier days before we had it, we were a registered charity, which means you're eligible for donations. But like Jesse just said, if someone gave us $15, we couldn't give them a tax deductible receipt for their gift. And so there are still some granting opportunities and funding opportunities that we could get with our DGR status, but they were a fraction of what we were then eligible for once we received it. So I think inadvertently, without thinking about the granting opportunities, we got our DGR status more from a sort of private foundation viewpoint. But it definitely changed the game for us, grants wise.

And I think that's the beauty for me, it's a beauty of social enterprise because you've got revenue that you can use to, to do whatever you want with through your sales. You know, that's the whole self generated revenue stream. And then you can add on through grants or other donations and funding sources to really probably fuel. We'll get into this. But what you've used grants for compared to what your sales revenue covers, you know, they're two different areas.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, we can sort of go into it now, I suppose, like the, the money that we're using. Sorry, the profits that we're using, the profits we've generated, what we use them for. You could almost look at it for a catalytic funding point of view. So things that maybe don't always attract the most amount of funding, things that foundations and philanthropists and corporate foundations aren't as eager to fund, we're able to leverage our own profits to invest in those.

Can you give us some specific examples? Leave. I think most people would know what a lot of these things are, but things like electricity bills and things. Funders aren't generally rapped about funding electricity bills, even though they're an essential part of a core program. Some people are clever. You guys would have done this. But you can build in your operational costs into programs sometimes, but not always. So would you use your revenue from your sales for that sort of thing compared to. Absolutely.

Like we've sort of, you know, it would be lying if I said we set out to do this, but all of the social enterprises we run, and it's the sort of model that we now are really strong on they have super low overheads and that's as a result of these incredible partnerships that we've been able to either create or be invited into with, you know, Melbourne University, Nightingale Housing, rmit, organizations like that, who maybe cover a portion of the rent or a portion of the electricity bills. So we're still paying some of our overheads, which obviously comes from our revenue. But a good example, I think is that grant funding is unlikely to ever be extended to capacity building or salaries of staff. I think funders often want their money to be used entirely within the impact project itself. So at the moment, I'm not sure if we've actually started advertising for it just yet, but we're putting out a position within our organization as an operations manager and we've been able to take our own revenue and put it into that, as well as a combination of some other funding that we had to be able to pay this role. And if we were to rely entirely on grants, it can make it difficult to expand the team from a salary point of view because it's often one of the first things that aren't allowed from grant applications. Yeah, but that's an example of how we're using our profits to sort of reinvest within our impact programs. Yeah.

So what are you then using grants for?

Yeah, you know, you talked about before the grant that we received from the Grants Hub a couple of years ago, we used within one of our Cafes Home two at the University of Melbourne and to purchase some equipment there. And, you know, I think I remember writing the application, there's a really clear business proposal within it which is, you know, by purchasing this equipment, we're going to be able to provide this product which is going to be able to create X amount of revenue. And the grant that you provided will have paid for itself within, you know, this period of time. And then obviously all the money that's generated after that is a, you know, in brackets, profit. So things like that.

It stood out to me when I read that because I read all of the applications, you know, that stood out. And we got people to submit a video that round too, which it was really debated across the team because I'm not a big fan of video submissions with applications, but I can still remember watching your video. So it was, you know, it stood out. I'm like, man, these guys got passion. Like, they clearly know what they're doing. He's got passion. People want to get on board with stuff like that. So that's where you're nailing that partnerships.

Role, Levi, that's great. And so I think, you know, some of the other stuff that these grants have covered, for example, is our home plate program. And so that's the employment and training program that we run across our social enterprises. And that's the. Probably the project that we look for funding the most for, because that's the. That's the opportunity that we see to have the greatest impact. The way that we measure and evaluate it is really sound. We can see really clearly that the impact we're having is sustainable. Most importantly, it's measurable. And we go, okay, cool, if we know this is working, we just need to increase our capacity to support more young people within the program because there's no shortage of demand for it. And so that's the program that we're seeking funding for most. But, for example, yesterday I submitted an EOI for a grant that will cover, or that's looking to cover the inclusion of the voices of people with lived experience. So we have already included young people with lived experience of homelessness within the design of our programs. I think that was a couple of years ago. And I'd really like to get them back in and have a council of young people with lived experience to be monitoring and to be giving us their insights. And it's really important that they're, you know, rewarded for their time with payment. And so putting an EOI for this grant opportunity that would be, you know, putting money towards this type of thing, which is obviously a really unique type of opportunity and doesn't come along all the time. So it's a really wide variety of stuff that we're kind of. Yeah. Looking for.

Yeah, that's cool how you don't have to give us all the details if you don't want to, but would you share how much or roughly how much you've been able to generate through grant funding?

I think from the start. So we, in the early days when we were doing this, we first crowdfunded for crates of change, the food truck, and that was in the tens of thousands. And then from the years after that, I think we were receiving sort of in the tens. And then we got a really big one from community sector banking. I think it was for $50,000 to pilot the home plate program. And back then it was called the hospitality training program. And then as we sort of grew those 5 and $10,000 donations grew to sort of 20 and then 50. And then when we were all still volunteering, which is a couple of years in, I think Tenille, and I sort of said, okay, we see ourselves working in this organization full time. And we put it off for a while and I kind of said very naively, okay, cool, I'm going to go out and find funding to put towards your salary, my salary, and that way we can really dive head on into this. And you know, naively, like I said, I thought it wouldn't take very long, but it took about 18 months. But that funding that we then received would cover Tenille's full time salary and me a day or so a week. And that was a huge moment for us because it showed that another group of people believed in what we were doing and also believed in Tenille and I and our ability to meet the targets that we said we would and to deliver our promise to them to create really great things in our programs. So I think, you know, over the years it sort of chopped and changed and we used to get super excited and we still do for $5,000 grants. Now we're sort of looking for bigger ones to cover more sizeable programs and bigger things that we're up to. So I think, you know, anywhere from maybe 500 to a million maybe I think we would have received over the last five or so years in granting. Although I could be way off. Tenille is very much, is a lot better with the numbers than I am.

She's the details person. Yeah. I think you said before Tenille always is calm. I man, every time I speak with her, she could have anything going on. They could be a cyclone. And Tennille's just calm, cool, calm and collected.

Yeah, she's very, very well practiced.

Yeah. I haven't gotten to meet Dan yet, so I'll have to meet him one day.

Absolutely.

I think that scaling up that you've basically shared through your grants program is what we often recommend to people. Like start with the small things. Don't try and go for your $100,000 grant. First up, I think there's a lot to learn and through a grant application process, through the funding negotiation, through managing grant fund that you've won, through acquitting it, you know, there's the whole, the full gamut of the grant cycle that scaling up, starting little and working towards big has clearly worked for you. But it's a really key thing that I think a lot of people could take away from this that you know, start with your little grants. Let's get some wins on the board and show that you know how to manage grant funding properly before you try and go for the really massive stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. And I should say like we were absolutely throwing our hat in the ring for grants that we had no right to be like applying for in the earlier days. And we got some really great feedback. And in all honesty, it was great practice for me when I was writing them to learn about what is expected from organizations. And, you know, not only people aren't always just looking for passion.

Right.

Like, they want cold, hard evidence, data of. Data of what you're up to. How do you know you're actually achieving what you set out to? You know, how can you. How can we trust you to be able to use our money in the most efficient way possible? And that was a really steep learning curve. We had to reevaluate how we were evaluating our work and we were able to do that again through wonderful people that volunteered their time with us. And we recently worked with Social Ventures Australia to measure and evaluate the work we're doing so that we have a really strong body of evidence to provide to those who are interested in our work. But, yeah, it sounds like we started small and gradually worked up, but we were animals. We were applying for everything.

You went for the perpetual program first up?

Absolutely. We were just doing whatever we could to try and make it happen.

I like it. I think it shows guts. Why not? And actually, I really liked what you said before is that you got good feedback because often we hear that funders don't provide the feedback that is more common than not, that funders aren't providing feedback to applicants. So that's a great example for any funder who is listening. This is what your feedback can do. It can help people like Levi and Society Melbourne know what they should be doing and learn from that. But it's true. Everyone's learning in this space. Yeah. A lot of time goes into those applications, whether they were good ones or terrible ones, a lot of time goes into those applications usually. So I think a recognition of that is provide someone with some feedback that they can take away and learn from it.

Yeah, exactly. Right. Because there's an opportunity cost. Right. Whenever you create and write your grant application, because that's time and resources that could have been used somewhere else.

Absolutely.

We were quite, you know, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, I'm not sure. But because we were volunteering, I think we were always happy just to put the time in because there wasn't as much of an opportunity cost from a money point of view. And we were just doing this as a passion project. So it was a good way of learning how to do it.

The relationships that you're building with funders really stands out to me. It's clear that you and the team really value their partnership. Beyond the grant itself, just the dollars as head of partnerships in the role that you've got, what are some of the key things you do to build and maintain those relationships with funders?

Well, you know, I spoke about before how, you know, Dan's superpower and Tenille Superpower superpowers were. It was really clear how they benefited the business or the organization in the earlier days. And, you know, my superpower wasn't as clear at the time. And that was probably a feature across, you know, high school for me and even university, where I never really like it. Just like academia really didn't suit me very well. And it wasn't until, you know, we were doing this work with Society Melbourne, where I actually kind of found my feet a little bit and realized that, okay, being able to speak and being able to include people and create really authentic, you know, fun relationships is a valuable offering to every organization, you know, even outside the not for profit world. And I think that it was, again, a really steep learning curve. And I was really fortunate that when I would reach out to people in the earlier days, whether it was because of my age or whether it was because of Society Melbourne's mission, they were really kind and generous with the time they would give us. For example, I think we used Square, which is the payment system across our businesses, and we were trying to look at, okay, could we. Could we ask for or negotiate a different processing fee? So obviously it'd save us a bit of money. And I think I reached out to Square's head of operations or the head of the team in Australia, and he replied to me and, like, we got a meeting. And it was just so nice of him to give me his time because, you know, who the hell was I to be asking for Ben's number, Ben's time? And he came and met me, and it was really lovely. And so those earlier days, I think, were based on just trying to just speak to people and speaking to as many people as I could and failing a lot and enjoying some success. And then I sort of hit like a sense of fatigue with partnerships, where I felt quite overwhelmed by the idea of constantly asking for people. Sorry. Constantly asking people for things. And I just felt like I was taking, taking, taking. And it wasn't until I spoke about this fatigue with a colleague of mine, Kylie Wallace, who was the head of the Polish man campaign at ygap, when she helped me sort of Adjust my perspective and look at it from a different lens, which was, you know, you're not just asking for something, but you're offering something that's worth so much more, which is, you know, being included in a community, finding your place. And for the people who were funding or giving us their time, like, making it really clear to myself what I was offering in return. And that was a really important lesson that sort of, I think, refuelled me and allowed me to enter conversations, not always feeling like I was the only person asking for something or the only person that was offering something. And so that was a really, really important lesson for me and one I wish I'd learned much earlier. That, yeah, just held me in really good stead and allowed me to enter conversations with people and, you know, doing my research and helping me understand, okay, what is it that I'm offering to this person or to this organization and what's the value exchange here? And then the final sort of learning I had was just not expecting anything. It's really tough in a partnerships role because you're known by one thing, which is obviously the number or the amount of money you're bringing in, but entering every relationship as you would a friendship, which is just, you know, you have zero expectations. You don't go in expecting X or Y or Z. You're just going in in the hope that you're going to find someone that you connect with, that you enjoy spending your time with, that enjoys, you know, learning more about society. Melbourne, and then, you know, it might take 18 months, it could take 36 months. Something happens where you're able to offer them something or they're able to offer you something. And I think that's those. Those sort of two learnings have really helped me from a partnerships perspective.

Yeah, they're really fascinating insights. I think what you said, people that there's people on one side who have got time or money or resources, whatever it is, to give. So say Ben from Square, you know, they've got, I'm assuming that went in a positive direction. But, you know, say, say Ben sitting there at Square doing his job, and then someone comes along with an opportunity to make a difference with homelessness. Those are really valuable connections. And if we don't have people like you making those connections happen, then those of us who sit in business and want to be connected with people in need or, you know, make a difference somehow, you're like the link between the two people. And I think you're really helping people on one side help the people on the Other side, you know, you bring people together. And yeah, for me, it's not so much that you're just always, you don't actually come and ask. This is going to sound like you come and ask me for stuff. You actually don't do that. I now want to go and ask you, what do you need? But you know, people, people can come and it's like we get asked for things a lot, but certain times you just, you want to know, wow, I could make a real difference here. So for me, you're like the link between the two. That helps some of us with something to give, maybe whether it's time, money, resources, actually be able to give it.

Yeah. And like, I wasn't aware of that, the need of people on the other side to be aware of those opportunities. You know, I went from high school to uni straight doing into this type of work where I never worked in the corporate world or in the for profit world, I should say. And I wasn't. So I wasn't aware that there were people who were really, really wanted to be involved in something that meant more to them, but often wouldn't know where to start. And that was when, you know, you're spot on. It's so nice to be able to be that conduit between both sides.

Yeah. Have you seen a shift in that at all since, like over the last 12 months, 18 months. A lot of people are reevaluating just life, full stop. You and I have both made significant geographical moves in the last 12 months. You know, like a lot of people are doing that. Are you finding that that's shifting within partnerships at all? Like some people are now going, hang on, there's more to life than this or have things changed?

I think partnerships is always changing, particularly in terms of the types of partnerships that people are looking for. When we're working with corporate partners, obviously a large component of it is being able to show them. Sorry, is them, the corporates, being able to show their customers the type of work they're doing with us. Because obviously there's a value proposition there. And I think as our community's values shift and you know, like you said, as what we're looking for ourselves changes, partnerships is going to sort of be replicating that or mirroring that, I should say, with a slight delay.

Yeah, it's interesting. It'll be fascinating to see what happens with it. All right, big question. Need a drum roll, but it'll make the microphone sound terrible. Brave enough to share your biggest grant stuff up with us, Levi?

Yeah, Absolutely. There's been two. One of them is like, probably this is a classic. I'm sure. I hope not, but I'm sure lots of people have done this. It was one of my first grant applications ever. Finished it. It was like a Friday afternoon. I was, like, so happy I'd done it. I just couldn't wait to submit it, submitted it, you know, forgot about it for the weekend. Came back on Monday morning, opened my laptop, hadn't touched my work laptop all weekend, so everything was just the same as it was Friday afternoon. And I opened it and there's a little tab that said, are you sure you want to submit? And I just hadn't clicked that second yes button. And I was like, oh. And you know that feeling that just sort of drops in your tummy, you know, when you, like, maybe you realize you've lost your phone or you realize you've just completely forgotten to do something. I just felt like such a fool. So I emailed them and I just, you know, pleaded my case. I was like, I'm so sorry. Like it really was an accident, like it was all finished. And they gave me absolute donuts and just told me that, well, the timeline's over, so you can't submit it. And the other one, and I feel like I'm less at fault for this one, was for a grant application that you could only submit it by post. This is the only time I've ever had to do this. So you had to fill it out, obviously, in Microsoft Word or whatever, print it out, put it in a letter and post it to the foundation.

There's only about a handful of those programs left in Australia. I think they're few and far between.

Yeah. And so I didn't have much practice in it. So I did it. I wrote it all out, put it in the post. And obviously, with the sort of digital work that we do now, it's very reliable. When you submit something, you press the button and there's a very high chance that it's just going to work. And so I assumed, wrongly, I assumed that that was the same case with this grant that I'd posted. And a few months went by, I hadn't heard anything back, so I gave them a call, and they were just. They just said, oh, no, we never received it. And I was like, you know, obviously very frustrated because it was a really strong opportunity that we had missed out on. And I think we were very likely to have received the grant if it had been. If it had arrived. And, you know, constantly balancing that. That relationship and understanding the power dynamic between the funder and the recipient. And I was sort of on the phone just going, okay, so, you know, maybe post isn't the most efficient method of doing this. And they just kind of told me, well, we've never had this problem before, so it's probably your fault. And I was like, all right, cool. Clearly not a good one.

Have they transitioned across to other?

I have no idea. I have no idea. I can't talk about it. It still makes me too angry.

Yeah, that's not cool. You dropped a line in the power dynamic between funders and applicants. We could do a whole nother session on that. But I'll. I'll just let that one sit there right now, I think. Yeah, it's. It's an interesting one. I've got Tom Dawkins coming on to chat about some of that sort of stuff too. But, yeah, just what funders will fund and won't fund. And every now and again it. Yep, it's an interesting space.

Yeah, it's fascinating. There's so much to say about it. And, you know, if you're ever looking to dig a bit deeper into that stuff. Yeah, I have. I love talking about it. It's all really interesting stuff.

I did my minor thesis in uni on the. On donor driven development, so it's a really big area of interest for me. So just that power dynamic, really, between, you know, funders and recipients and it's just. Yeah, it's an interesting space.

Yeah, yeah, it's wild.

Sounds like we'll have another session. Levi?

Yes, please.

Yeah, that's great. All right. Biggest grants win.

Biggest grants win would be when we got the funding in for Tenille to go full time. That took, like I said earlier, I think it took about 18 months from ideation to the final result. And the reason why it meant so much was that we'd been volunteering our time for the years before that sort of juggling work and study. And we both knew that our real passion was Society Melbourne. And we really struggled with the idea of taking money away from our impact. So, you know, that's our profit that we're generating and putting it towards our salaries like that felt quite wrong. In hindsight, it's actually the best thing you can do because having someone around full time and having their primary focus be developing Society Melbourne in the long run is invaluable. But at the time, I think we probably got a bit egotistical and we just. We didn't like the idea of taking money away from our Impact and putting into ourselves. But like I said, that would have been the right move. And so the funding that we got in, yeah, for Tenille to go full time was just completely changed the game for us. It allowed us to have someone that was just always working on society. Melbourne, always pushing us and nudging us and prodding us in the right direction and, you know, shout outs to Michael Barr from the Barr Family foundation who partnered with us to deliver it. I'm sure at the time, you know, I think we, I think we would have been 23, maybe 24 at the time. We had done good work, our businesses were profitable, they're sustainable, but it was still a risk for them to invest in us. I'm sure there are much bigger, larger, older, safer organizations that they could have gone with. But fortunately I was able to stumble into Michael one day and we just got chatting and you know, six or 12 months later we sort of ended up being able to work together, which was by far the biggest win I think we've ever had.

Yeah, that's great. How did you convince them to fund that salary? Like was it saying this investment will allow us to grow by X so that then within three years it'll be a self funded position. How did you actually present that?

Well, going back to what I said before about not going into any interaction or relationship with any expectation, Michael and I were at the Philanthropy Australia conference and it was lunchtime and I was standing, I've said this story before, standing in the cafeteria area holding my plate, didn't know anybody there and I didn't want to eat my lunch by myself. And so I wandered over to a friendly looking man who I didn't know was Michael and just asked him, hey, is it okay if I eat my lunch with you? We got chatting, we caught up maybe a handful of times over the coming months and I literally had no idea who he was or what he was doing or what his foundation, his foundation, the Bar Family foundation, focused on supporting young people. I had no idea about that. I was just, you know, he was a really friendly guy who seemed to have an interest in my work or in our work and was helping me probably understand and navigate the philanthropy world a little bit. And so it was quite surprising when he invited us to, to apply for a grant from his foundation and. Exactly right, what you said. We had a number of essentially KPIs to go. Okay. By employing Tenille full time, we're going to be working on developing X amount of new social enterprises per year, which is going to Create X amount of revenue per year, blah blah, blah, all that business sort of stuff. So essentially it was a business case and I think it was a bit fortunate at the time the foundation were looking for a partner that was looking for a capacity build type of thing with a social enterprise component.

Very exciting. You mentioned earlier that there's not much funding around for organizational and capacity building sort of work. Ironically today, and we hadn't pre planned this, but this episode will come out afterwards, but the Grants Hub's putting out a newsletter that's all brand new operational and capacity building.

It just came out.

So there you go, you'll have to jump in. But you know, it's been needed in Australia for such a long time and some of that digital upgrading and you know, capacity building of staff and skills training and things, it's often not there. It's a very rare space. There's still not a heap of it. But you know, jump on and have a look at this newsletter, hot off the press for people that are listening to this now, jump on one of the Grants Hub social media pages or you know, track it down that way. But yeah, for you, Levi, you know, jumping on and having a look at some of that new funding that is coming out. I think the last 12 months actually have helped in that space. It's fueled the need and sped up the process behind some of that funding that is rolling out now in some of those areas that we need.

Yeah, that's great because it makes sense, right? Like I totally understand philanthropists and sometimes why they're reluctant to put money in certain places. Like there is logic to it. It's just great now that voices of people within the social impact sector, their voices are being heard and they're the ones who know best about what is needed, which is just really cool. It's really awesome.

Yeah, it's great. Last question. What advice would you give someone thinking about launching or who's just launched brand new in the game, a social enterprise. If they want to win grants as.

A social enterprise, I think our biggest advantage or our superpower, I bang on about superpowers all the time. A social enterprise's superpower is, is our sense of sustainability. I think that's why a lot of people are drawn to the social enterprise model and why people express interest in working with society Melbourne is that there is an element of sustainability to our business model. We were talking with a foundation recently and they asked us sort of point blank, are you guys moving towards being a completely sustainable self. Sustainable self sufficient organization that's not reliant on philanthropic funding. And if they would have asked me that five years ago, my answer would have been very quickly, yes, that is exactly what we're moving towards. However, Tenille and I have softened to the idea of including philanthropic funding within our business model. And the way we view it is we want all of our base costs to be covered by our social enterprise model. And we see philanthropic capital is almost like as an accelerant. It allows us to create and deliver and innovate ideas and projects and initiatives a lot faster than we would be able to if we were relying entirely on the own revenue we've generated ourselves. So my advice would be leverage your superpower, which is the ability to be self sufficient, but be honest and say, you know, we want 80% of our costs covered by our own revenue and then philanthropy seemingly will always exist and so how can we also leverage it at the same time?

Yeah, that's really great advice. Building in both. And that to me is the ultimate beauty of social enterprise and that impact business is you've got your sales, you've got your revenue from other sources, you've got donations, but you've got this opportunity to build grants into that and what you're doing. And so you've, you're more sustainable than just a straight not for profit. You've got the beauty of that, you know, the matched funding that you can contribute towards grant programs. There's a much stronger case for financial sustainability with social enterprise than just a straight not for profit, 100% reliant on donations.

Yeah, yeah, it's a really nice distinction to make.

Excellent. Thanks so much for your time, Levi. Truly has been wonderful having you on. I think people listening to this will be very thankful that you've been willing to share so much. It's nearly like the 101 of how to get grants if you're a social enterprise. And some of those tips even. How do you structure yourself? Getting your team on board, working with funders, asking questions, being humble, working out your superpower. There's been a heap of gold in this, so I really appreciate all the time and energy that you've put into it. And yeah, it looks like we need to have another chat another day.

Yeah, cool. Thanks for your time, Jesse and I'd absolutely love to.

Thanks for joining me on Grants Uncovered. If you'd like show notes, head over to grantsuncovered.com see you next time.