The Smith Family CEO: “Everyone should have access to the same opportunities.”

The Smith Family CEO Lisa O’Brien has always liked learning about new environments.

Starting off as a medical practitioner who then specialised in human resource management, O’Brien soon found her niche when she helped establish Lou’s Place, a day time women’s refuge.

O’Brien said she knew after working at Lou’s Place that she had to work in the community sector.

“Everyone should have access to the same opportunities and I wanted to be involved in [making that happen],” she said.

Third Sector spoke to O’Brien about the importance of education, social impact measurement and the Learning for Life program.

Why is education such an important focus for The Smith Family?

The Smith Family has been around for over 90 years. Our mission has always been to provide support to disadvantaged children. We did this through passive assistance such as food boxes and emergency medical help.

Around 30 years ago we started to realise that the same families were going in and seeking support. We started to think about how we can make a sustainable difference. We wanted to actually create social change. The answer was clear – education was the way in doing that. We started to refocus our services around starting to give disadvantaged children an education so that whilst they might have been growing up in a poor household it didn’t mean that they would have to be a poor adult. Today education is all we do – we no longer do any of the welfare services. Unfortunately not enough people know this and many still associate us with welfare services. Part of the reason is because of the charity bins that we have – which is actually a social enterprise of ours.

How was Learning for Life developed? How do you feel about winning the recent award for the social impact measurement of Learning for Life?

The program was actually developed around [the question] ‘how can we support kids and get them to be engaged in their education?’ When you run a program you want to make sure it is making a measurable difference. We have been on a journey for the last five years to measure the impact of the program and this resulted in winning the SIMNA award. We were all thrilled! Our whole organisation was thrilled.

Has the recent budget affected education at all?

There was nothing that directly impacted on us. We have a view that education should be allocated on a needs based way. It also should be allocated to programs and services where there is a demonstrated effectiveness – that is just an overarching principal. I should note that there was funding for the youth employment program [in the budget] – we don’t work directly with that group but it is great to see that involvement from the government. We at The Smith Family rather take an early intervention approach and believe that disadvantaged youth should be helped and guided straight out of school. We should keep them completely out of the welfare service and out of the need for welfare services and help them get straight into work after school.

You are speaking about how to measure impact at our upcoming conference, why is measuring an organisation’s impact important?

I don’t think anyone should be spending their time or donated funds on something unless you know for sure somebody is better off because of that initiative. If you can’t show the difference you are making, how can you be sure of your effectiveness of what you are doing? It is about external stakeholders and being accountable for your use of funds and it is about everyone who works for the organisation knowing they are making a difference. No one at [The Smith Family] is working here for the money- they are working because they believe in the cause and it is important for them to see the difference they are making.

What inspires you as a leader and what are the biggest difficulties you encounter as a leader?

Certainly in this role what inspires me is the stories of the young people we support and the difficulties that they face. For all of them there is never enough money for anything and when you see these young children who grow up in these circumstances then have a great passion to make a better life for themselves it is absolutely inspiring.

Making less go further is always the challenge. We are only 30 per cent government funded- we highly rely on fundraising so that can be quite challenging.

You have driven a five-year plan to grow the effectiveness and reach of The Smith Family’s programs. What is the plan for the next five years?

We are actually working on it now. We are looking at what to do next. We want to build on this fantastic base that we have and look at what innovative [ideas] we can bring to make our organisation more effective.

Lisa O’Brien will be speaking at the Third Sector Conference taking place on the 18th and 19th of August. https://thirdsectorexpo.com/