As White Box Enterprises celebrates turning five, we wanted to reflect on the pivotal support that has enabled us to drive impact at scale.
One key partner in our journey has been The Ian Potter Foundation, whose core funding has allowed us to grow, innovate, and expand our mission of creating meaningful employment through jobs-focused social enterprises.
The truth is, White Box wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for The Ian Potter Foundation. It was one of our first supporters, providing not only funding but ongoing mentoring and guidance.
As Dr Alberto Furlan, Senior Program Manager at the Foundation, recalls, “It was pretty early days, our first grant was in April 2020, but the conversation started in 2019, so pretty much at the beginning of White Box.”
The initial multi-year grant was aimed at developing White Box’s social enterprise pipeline. Before the grant was completed, The Ian Potter Foundation extended its support with a large capacity building grant over five years in 2021.
As anyone familiar with social enterprise will know, core funding is notoriously hard to secure, yet it is one of the most valuable forms of philanthropy. It provides the stability to build a strong foundation, attract top talent, and invest in long-term strategies.
This shift to core funding marked a turning point, enabling White Box to explore new ventures and diversify income streams, all while continuing to create jobs and strengthen social enterprises.
White Box CEO Luke Terry acknowledges that having capacity funding to be able to do what we needed to do was “really special”.
“I think still today there are not many actors that are really dedicated to the work of trying and testing and learning,” Luke says.
“The Ian Potter Foundation was probably one of the first funders to start to take some big bets and go ‘we don't necessarily know what the outcome is going to be here’. And really that's what White Box is doing with our entrepreneurs at the same time.”
As Alberto sees it, they were riding a trend of philanthropy.
“Which is, as it should be, supporting organisations to do what they do best, without necessarily focusing on any specific project and holding them accountable to specific numbers. That’s why we provided core funding,” he says.
“Across our whole portfolio we have moved more into core funding and multi-year funding as the norm.
"It's a different way of granting, so rather than seeing the specific project, we look at the organisation as a whole. It is much better because it provides a certain freedom to organisations to use the funding as they see fit at the beginning, but also to adapt and change and allocate the funding where opportunities arise. And that's very important.”
For White Box, this has meant having the freedom to test new ventures, take strategic risks, and maximise our impact.
Alberto agrees this approach fosters innovation.
“In a dynamic organisation such as White Box, where you try different ventures, some work, some don’t. There is a necessity to move this funding where it’s more effective, sometimes on a weekly basis,” Alberto says.
The success of the relationship between White Box and The Ian Potter Foundation is underpinned by trust.
Alberto says trust is essential, but it’s not always a given.
“It's a two-way process. The grantees need to trust us, that we will follow through on what we say, and also trust us to be the kind of partner you can tell things to, especially when they're not going well,” he says.
"It’s also a process. There needs to be some mutual trust from the beginning, but it's a process that evolves. A process that needs to be nurtured by ongoing engagement and ongoing presence.
“But it's liberating because when you trust somebody, you don't have to check every five minutes.”
Reflecting on the enduring nature of the relationship, Luke highlights the strong board and legacy support and the depth of engagement that has grown over the years.
Dr Alberto Furlan, Senior Program Manager – Community Wellbeing, The Ian Potter Foundation.
"Something unique about The Ian Potter Foundation is that they regularly take their board members on site visits to engage on the work funded,” Luke explains.
“That sort of top-down engagement is rare across the philanthropic sector. It feels less transactional and more about wanting to work alongside us to drive systems change.”
The Ian Potter Foundation’s commitment to showing up—visiting projects, building relationships, and being present throughout the life of a grant—has been instrumental in White Box’s success.
“White Box is a leading organisation in this country in terms of creating and supporting the development of social enterprises that ultimately support people to be employed. Having employment almost invariably changes your life for the better,” Alberto states.
This shared mission aligns with the Foundation’s goals, making White Box’s success a reflection of the Foundation’s own impact.
"What you do is at the core of what we want to do. We achieve our success through our grantees. Your success is our success,” Alberto said.
"It's been great. We have learned a lot. We're continuously learning the good, the bad, the ugly, the elating, the wonderful, the exciting, and more rolled into one. It's a great relationship.
“It's been wonderful and really paramount to best practice in philanthropy, but also in human engagement.”
As White Box looks to the future, Alberto says the next chapter should be a focus on sustainability and continuing to grow, not in size, but in terms of impact.
“The next task for White Box is to be sustainable, to find other funders or partners, and as you have been doing with the royalties you’re getting from ventures like Australian Spatial Analytics and others, finding other sources of income,” he says.
“That's the next big step after the first five consolidating years, which must have felt like 15.”
As we celebrate our anniversary, we wish to say a huge thank you to The Ian Potter Foundation and everyone who has walked alongside us and invested in our mission.