Australian indigenous social enterprise: measuring performance

Using an integrated framework for performance management of nonprofit organizations, this paper aims to present an analysis of the activities of an Indigenous social enterprise in the town of Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. The evaluation focuses on the social effectiveness of the organization and its ability to help generate income and employment and drive social capital creation.

The analysis is informed by data derived from “yarns” with social enterprise staff and semi-structured interviews conducted with key informants who were selected using snowball sampling. Data were transcribed and analyzed thematically.

The analysis reveals that the organization provides a successful community-based pathway for increasing Indigenous economic participation on local terms at a time of regional economic decline and high levels of Indigenous unemployment nationally.

The measured effectiveness of Nuwul highlights the need for targeted policy support for Indigenous enterprises and that social entrepreneurship is far more likely to be successful in a supportive government policy environment, a critical need for government-initiated policies to encourage the formation of Indigenous social enterprises that are entrepreneurial and innovative in their solutions to poverty and marginalization. Such policies should not only aid the establishment of Indigenous ventures but also facilitate their long-term growth and sustainability.

Although Indigenous entrepreneurial activities have been found to be effective in addressing Indigenous disadvantage in Australia, little is known about their community impact. The article provides original empirically grounded research on the measurement of Indigenous entrepreneurial activities and their wider community impact. The data show, against the backdrop of mixed results of government efforts to drive Indigenous economic mainstreaming, that the entrepreneurial activities analyzed in this paper are an example of more flexible and culturally appropriate pathways for achieving Indigenous equality in rural and remote regions of Australia.