Waikato’s only certified social enterprise has been on a remarkable three-year journey that sees it poised for further expansion.
Interactionz, which has its origins in the disability sector, has built an impressive commercial workstream in graphic visualisations for business while also developing a training stream working with community organisations.
This year it also achieved Ākina certification, the only social enterprise in Waikato to do so and one of only 32 in the country. That opens up immense possibilities as Ākina works with large corporates on their social procurement practice, linking them with social enterprises.
Interactionz has already worked with NZ Post, Waikato councils including the regional council, Tainui and businesses around the country – even covering a three-day conference in Fiji with its visualisation service.
It can also facilitate meetings, with companies and organisations also gaining highly effective visual records of their discussions. That saw Interactionz recently conduct a values exercise for more than 100 South Waikato District Council staff along with providing a visual output.
Business development leader Lisa Clausen says companies and organisations appreciate the way in which Interactionz uses the income from its visualisation service to support people with disabilities.
“What we’ve found now is that people are engaging with us because we’re a social enterprise,” she says.
“People are wanting to give back. They may not have the mechanism within the organisation but buying our services means they can.
“Some people have changed supplier to us because they believe in what we’re doing.”
Lifestyle Trust, which trades as Interactionz, started 50 years ago working with people with disabilities.
Making the transition from charity to social enterprise was challenging. Clausen says they were assisted by the sale of a building they owned on Sunshine Ave. “And we had a board and CE who were very visionary, and not risk averse.”
She was recruited from a business sector background three years ago and is now one of a four-strong leadership team.
“Back then we had good people and good systems in place but had no commercial experience or systems, we had no business team. So we built our team and resources.”
That gives them a completely different-looking team today from three years ago, but Clausen is pleased that staff and volunteers stayed with them.
“That’s what we’re super proud of from a business perspective; we took everyone with us on our transformation journey.”
The organisation now has two strong commercial streams, in training and visualisation, and has brought in $400,000 in revenue over the three years, significantly building its resilience.
“We have three streams of work and they are very different. Visualisation services has a commercial customer base of anyone, anywhere. Our training has a customer base of only community organisations anywhere and our mentoring work is with persons with disabilities – at the moment in our region.
“The work that we do in our training divisions is all about building capacity capability for community organisations.”
Clausen and colleague Ann-Marie Davis ran an Interactionz stand at the Waikato Business Expo in September, and say it drew a lot interest – aided by graphic recorder Andrea Villaflores creating a visualisation of activities around the event.
Interactionz also made a splash last year in the Westpac Waikato Business Awards when they were finalists in strategy, growth and planning, missing out on the night only to the supreme winner Montana Catering.
“We went straight for the commercial stream – to the hardest one we could because we wanted to prove ourselves and put ourselves through that process,” Clausen says.
This year they chose different categories and are finalists again.
Lynda Millington, Interactionz’s chief executive, who was appointed 20 years ago, had a vision that people in their disability support service would have a person-driven experience of life, not a service-driven one.
A new model of practice was created with quality practice leader Janelle Fisher, which has guided the organisation on the change journey of its disability support service. Millington, who is joined on the leadership team by Clausen, Fisher and operations leader Jennifer Calley, shares how the model has underpinned the shift from traditional disability support service to mentoring in a person-driven service.
“So began the transition from being a traditional institution-based support service, which is what we call the white van scenario, where you’ve got everybody in that white van being driven as a collective to go and join in a collective activity. Then you’ve got the blue van experience, which is fewer people – so people doing things that are more important to them, but they’re still being driven by that service provider.
“And then you get a car, people are in the car. And for the first time, you may only have three people in the car. And you’ve got one of the people up in the front, next to the driver.
“And the last scenario is that they’re actually the driver of a red Ferrari and that the service is the mechanic on the side of the road.
“We’ve transitioned our own service from being this traditional white van sort of service to being a person-driven practice.”
These days the organisation works also with other people on the margins including those in youth justice and migrant communities, and delivers its mentoring service to more than 100 people a year.
Clausen says the commercial streams mean even if their government funding were to dry up they could continue to work in the community sector.
“The only reason that we have these commercial services is because we want to continue to do great work with persons with disabilities or people who are on the margins
“We don’t do for people what they can do for themselves, we just help to explore and facilitate their good life with them.”
