Good Sammy leads with a commercial mind, social heart

Good Sammy has pulled itself out of a $4 million loss, with a big mission at heart.

The iconic Western Australian organisation supporting disability employment posted a $6.3 million turnaround in FY23 from the previous financial year.

The organisation recorded a net surplus of $2.3 million in FY23 and an operating surplus sitting at just over $400,000, recorded in its financial results announced last week, compared to a $4 million deficit in FY22.

When Kane Blackman joined the organisation as CEO in February 2022, amid COVID, the charity was operating at a significant loss.

“The financial year results that I inherited were quite dire, a $4 million loss in the 2022 financial statements. That loss was due to a number of reasons. There’s been some very challenging retail trading environments with COVID with fewer people coming into the stores,” he explained.

“We had to make some tough decisions to shut three of our charity stores that were performing poorly. We had to do a number of organisational restructures as well to get the right people in the right roles.

“We’ve finished the 2022-2023 financial year with over a $6 million turnaround. We've gone from a $4 million overall loss to a $2.3 million net surplus, which is a combination of the operating results, which was a $400,000 profit or surplus to add to our reserve.

“We’ve really shot the lights out on our financial results, and our mission delivery."

Creating employment for PWD

Good Sammy’s core mission is creating employment opportunities for people with disability.

“A lot of people didn’t know what the mission was. They would come in for thrifted goods, they would come in to donate, but they wouldn’t understand the mission was to create employment opportunities for people with disability,” Mr Blackman said.

“Good Sammy does that by running sustainable social enterprises where people can work and develop and train within, and then help those people through their employment pathways to obtain training and various education into other businesses.”

As a leading provider of disability employment in WA, Good Sammy employed 361 people with disability over the 12 months, a 32 per cent increase from FY22, bringing its workforce of people with disability to 52 per cent compared to 43 per cent in the previous financial year.

The charity created training opportunities through its Good Sammy Academy, supporting 210 people with disability to complete the program. It also gave 23 people with disability the opportunity to obtain open employment through its development pathways with companies such as Woolworths.

Commercial expansion

The iconic Western Australian brand is mostly known for its the bright yellow op-shops with the seal, with 27 stores across WA, a major revenue driver for the charity.

Good Sammy expanded its op-shop footprint by four stores this year, taking on two Anglicare WA retail stores in Morley and Maddington, opening a new store in Ellenbrook, and upgrading its Fremantle flagship to a 1000-sqm premises. 

“We’ve got an ambitious growth plan to increase those number of stores,” he said.

“We’re unique amongst other not-for-profits in that the majority of our revenue comes from commercial activities, which is our retail stores. Over 80 per cent of our total revenue, which was about $30 million a year, comes from commercial activities,” Mr Blackman said.

“Retail stores are really the engine room of the organisation. We had a million customers last year, so it’s a huge touchpoint on the community. It’s not just people chasing cheap, affordable second-hand goods, these are people and families who, with inflation pressures, are coming in for Book Week for their child and people coming in to get extra work clothes."

As well as foot traffic of one million customers through its stores, the charity diverted six million textiles and materials from landfill in the last 12 months.

As one of WA's largest Containers for Change program partners, recycling 20 million containers through its 20 refund points across the Perth metro area, Good Sammy acquired the largest container recycling facility in Balcatta from the City of Stirling during the financial year.

“Good Sammy is now recycling 350,000 containers in summer and 200,000 containers in winter a day, so we’re a significant recycler of containers,” Mr Blackman said.

“Each container is worth 10c to them but if you take it to a licensed recycler like Good Sammy it’s worth an extra 7c to us as a not-for-profit and we invest that in helping people with disability get jobs.”

Social enterprise mission

“The whole Good Sammy team, from the board, the management team and our frontline staff, have been really proud of the balancing of the head and the heart in the delivery of our mission. There's no mission delivery unless you've got the margin to back it up. So it's really just always getting those to balance," Mr Blackman said. 

“Our new five-year strategy focuses strongly on the growth of our social enterprises and innovative pathways to support people with disability to achieve their employment goals.”

Good Sammy expanded its social enterprises by opening its first cafe, Good Thanks, with the support of the City of Kwinana, employing and training people with disability and returning profits back into its services.

It will expand on this social enterprise and open a second cafe in a former Town of Cambridge youth centre on Cambridge Street in West Leederville in 2024.

The charity also started a gardening service, a social procurement model currently used by 30 corporate clients.

“By using Good Sammy they’re also creating jobs for people with disability, and it also creates job diversity for people who want to work outside and work with their hands,” he said.

For-profit to for-purpose

Before joining Good Sammy, Mr Blackman had sat on boards to fulfil a desire to give back to disability. His career had been in consulting, mining, oil and gas, private equity, and in financial services in the state government.

Towards the end of his tenure with the Insurance Commission of WA, where he was for almost 10 years, he started to think about turning his day job into for-purpose.

“When the Good Sammy opportunity came up, I was delighted because it ticked two boxes: it’s a business that has commercial principles, but it delivers a social outcome,” he said.

“I really want to make a change to the lives of people with disability and to society and I want Good Sammy to help deliver that change and I want to make my time at Good Sammy as meaningful as possible.”

Mr Blackman, whose son has a rare genetic disability called Angelman’s Syndrome, is on a mission to create meaningful employment opportunities for people with disability.

“Ever since my son’s disability diagnosis when he was two, I really wanted to shift out of a for-profit business into a for-purpose," he said.

“When I started in the role, the core things I wanted to do was I wanted to make sure the business was commercially sound and also that it was delivering on its mission.”