White Box Enterprises

About White Box Enterprises

White Box Enterprises operates as a pivotal social enterprise incubator in Australia, dedicated to creating large-scale, jobs-focused social ventures. Founded in June 2019 by Luke Terry and Lisa Siganto, the organization was established to systematically tackle the obstacles commonly faced when launching social enterprises, such as access to capital, affordable space, and strategic partnerships. Luke Terry's journey began after spending five years in the UK building social enterprises for individuals with mental illness and later founding Vanguard Laundry in Toowoomba, Australia. This experience revealed a gap in Australia for large-scale social enterprises that could offer award-wage employment, inspiring the creation of White Box.

The company's core mission is to create thousands of jobs for overlooked Australians, including neurodiverse adults, refugees, ex-offenders, and people with disabilities, aiming to mainstream social enterprise within the national employment framework. White Box functions as a builder, an intermediary, and a support system, providing advisory, financial, and property services to help new and existing social enterprises scale. Its operational model involves establishing mission-aligned subsidiary companies. White Box provides extensive start-up support, and once these new enterprises achieve profitability or specific revenue milestones, they pay a royalty fee back to the parent organization. This revenue model is designed to create a sustainable funding stream for White Box's core activities, gradually reducing its reliance on initial philanthropic and government funding.

Since its inception, White Box has incubated several successful ventures, including Hotel Housekeeping for refugees, and Australian Spatial Analytics (ASA), which harnesses the talents of neurodiverse adults and became one of Australia's fastest-growing social enterprises. Other initiatives include Beacon Laundry, a commercial laundry providing jobs for those facing barriers to work. A significant achievement has been its partnership with the Australian Government to deliver the country's first Payment By Outcomes (PBO) trial, where social enterprises are compensated for the employment outcomes they generate. Furthermore, to address capital barriers, White Box launched the Sustainable Employment Loan Fund (SELF), a fund providing flexible and affordable loans to jobs-focused social enterprises, with initial backing from partners like Westpac Foundation.