While we think the Remote Laundries Project is awesome and worth investing in, we can’t expect funding bodies to get on board without evidence. So, we set about investigating how we could put a dollar figure on each of our laundry units; not how much they cost to build and run, but the value of the benefits to the community in which the units are placed.
Each year MBA students through the Melbourne Business School offer their skills to help a not-for-profit organisation, and this year AIG was one of a few chosen (lucky us!). We asked them to help design a model that would calculate the return on investment of each laundry unit.
Despite a few challenges along the way – namely a global pandemic – the students did an impressive job of coming up with a model that quantified the value of our project for people living communities, and we were pleasantly surprised by the result. Read about their journey on the MBS website.
Measuring the social and economic impact
Using the community of Barunga in the Katherine region as an example, five students collected information on community demographics, population, medical data including infection rates, and rate of employment. Using data from before the laundry was installed (Feb 2019) and comparing it to data post laundry installation, the group were able to work out the health, social and economic impact of one laundry unit be worth $500,000.
“We managed to find information from the Australian Government through our secondary research that helped us calculate our final figure, which was $500,000 in benefits for a single year to an Indigenous community, including treatment costs, employment and quality of life” explained one of the students Josh Robinson.
Why put a dollar figure on it?
Being able to quantify the expected return on investment provides reassurance that our project is valuable and is contributing to creating a better environment for people living in communities in the NT.
It also provides us with a tool to use when talking to prospective funding groups. Being able to define the value means investors will be more confident they are backing a project that will give bang for their buck.
Alexa Gutenberger explains “the student’s work is critical for the growth of this project because it gives confirmation of how valuable our project is, not only in health gains and employment opportunities we see, but in the broader impact of the project and savings for the government”.
What next for the model?
Testing the model some more with KPMG is the next step, and once we have the green light from them, we’ll start using it to encourage more government and corporate support for our valuable project.
Read the full story on the Melbourne Business School website.
