Our Story

The story of White Box Enterprises – like the story of so many social enterprises – spans many years, long before the concept of White Box was scribbled on the back of a beer coaster.

In 2017, Luke Terry was granted a Westpac Social Change Fellowship, a huge part of his personal growth story. On his global tour of social enterprises, common themes kept appearing: enterprises were lacking finance, property, leadership, and wrap-around support. Jobs-focused social enterprises were thinner on the ground simply because the resources weren’t available – it wasn’t an attractive idea for entrepreneurs to take on the challenge.

Co-Founders Luke and Lisa Siganto knew the social enterprise business model held the power to create jobs and engage people in meaningful, long-lasting work. So together, they set out to start White Box Enterprises.

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White Box Enterprises is born

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We take our name from the Eucalyptus tree and seek to nurture and grow the jobs focused social enterprise sector. To Luke, the tree was a symbol of everything he wanted this new venture to be: a pollinator for the social enterprise sector and a source of support.

The plan was – and still is – twofold:

• To build two social enterprises a year, and;
• Replicate two social enterprises a year.

All of this with the aim of creating 5,000 jobs for overlooked and underserved Australians by 2030.

The grant capital came from a wonderful chain of events starting with a meeting with the Queensland Mental Health Commissioner, Ivan Frkovic, in which White Box was given seed funding of $200,000, with the amount matched by Minister Fentiman – now the Queensland Attorney General. With $400,000 on their side, the amount was then matched again by the Ian Potter Foundation.

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Then we hit the ground running

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A philosophy underpinning White Box Enterprises is to build a social enterprise off an ‘anchor contract’. In 2019 Accor offered White Box the opportunity to clean two hotels, after doing the numbers and seeing it as a viable social enterprise, Hotel Housekeeping was born and 30 people were employed.

At the same time, Jigsaw, a social enterprise revolutionising the way people with disabilities receive job training and employment, was looking to expand its locations out of Sydney. White Box Enterprises found the perfect space for them at Mt Gravatt TAFE together with funding for a manager to support their establishment in Brisbane. Mt Gravatt TAFE also became home to Mantua Design Studios and Hotel Housekeeping creating White Box’s first social enterprise hub.

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White Box the intermediary

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As White Box set out to build two and scale two, the organisation committed to build its capacity to find and negotiate property, to raise capital, to undertake business analysis, and to change some of the systems that were preventing social enterprises from scaling.

White Box has developed expertise in all of these areas for the benefits of its own social enterprises and for the benefit of the sector. The social enterprises White Box runs are beacon projects demonstrating the power and diversity of large-scale job-focussed social enterprises. Most social enterprises with ambitions to grow need access to the same property, finance and advisory support that White Boxes social enterprises receive. White Box provides support to clients in an integrated fashion whereby advisory may identify property and finance needs.

In essence White Box provides jobs-focused social enterprises with the tools to grow and scale.