Case Study 3 - Giving social impact a voice

Are you interested in how other for-purpose organisations measure their outcomes and impact?

Introducing Vanguard Laundry.

Vanguard is a Work-Integrated Social Enterprise delivering commercial laundry services to Toowoomba and surrounding areas in Queensland. They are led by a social mission to help people with a lived experience of disadvantage and unemployment find long-term work by providing employment opportunities within their laundry operations and supporting transitions to other employment outside of Vanguard.

Since 2017, Vanguard has partnered with the Centre for Social Impact (Swinburne) to undertake a longitudinal evaluation of Vanguard’s social impact.

Mark Gates: “Impact reports allow us to evaluate our assumptions made around Vanguard, the impact we’ve had on our community, target staff, etc. It also allows to then take it forward into expansion so we can show proof of concept of what we’ve done in Toowoomba and potentially go to other geographies, other markets, and expand at a much quicker pace than we would’ve done in Toowoomba at the time.”

Vanguard’s Impact Reports provide evidence regarding their Theory of Change which identifies intended impacts of their activities. The Theory of Change was revised in 2021 to reflect learnings from previous evaluations and Vanguard’s decision to broaden the type of staff they support. The revised Theory of Change identifies four impact domains: people, place, profits and the social enterprise ecosystem.

This final domain states an expectation that: if Vanguard provides evidence on how their program can improve employment participation of people experiencing social disadvantage through measuring and reporting on their impacts, operations and learnings, the social enterprise ecosystem will have access to learnings that contribute to sustainability of other enterprises and effective and increased funding. This will ultimately lead to improved sustainability and reduced volatility of the social enterprise ecosystem.

In order to support this impact Vanguard have been sharing their Impact Reports with the sector for the past four years.

Mark Gates: The main reason for sharing our impact report was the benefit of the sector more holistically. If we can take learning from Vanguard as we’ve scaled in Toowoomba and other markets then we can share them to potentially other work-integrated social enterprises, they will be able to also scale their organisations quicker and be more successful in that process.”

Vanguard’s Impact Reports have also been used by social impact funders and industry bodies.

Funders following Vanguard’s journey have been able to see the value of investing in outcome and impact measurement. The rigorous evidence produced by the evaluation has demonstrated the value of ongoing investment in these activities and how they have helped to strengthen the social enterprise and maximise funder’s investment.

Industry bodies such as Social Traders have utilised the evidence of the added social value of Vanguard’s activities to advocate with the business community and government to support procurement from social enterprises.

By investing in outcome and impact measurement and making their reporting available to the sector, Vanguard has helped develop and grow the social impact sector as a whole.

To find out more about Vanguard Laundry and their journey to grow and report on their social impact visit dss.gov.au and search ‘Vanguard Laundry’ for the full case study.