A disability charity's olive-farm bets left 87 disabled workers jobless

Endeavour Industries, a community-owned Hunter Valley disability services company formed in 1965 by a Cessnock parents and friends group, went into voluntary administration in June 2018. Its main business was a laundry in Cessnock, operating since 1969. When administrators Rapsey Griffiths took over, the company had a five-person board — but had burned through seven CEOs in five years.

The administrator's report, obtained by the ABC, showed long-term financial pressure from speculative investments: an ultimately unused block of land, a failed olive tree farm — gifted trees found unsuitable for the site and discarded, after years of upkeep yielded 'a couple of hundred dollars' worth of olives' — and a software developer suing Endeavour for nearly $1 million. The report also flagged a failure to prepare for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, whose hourly rates were 'extremely low compared to previous funding by the NSW Government'.

Governance added to the strain: after a loss of more than $2 million in 2014 — wages having risen by $1.13 million in a year — the board changed the constitution so members would be paid more than $20,000 each per year, the chairman double. On November 9, 2018, 131 Cessnock workers would lose their jobs, 87 of them people with disabilities, and 13 current and former workers housed in 12 purpose-built villas faced losing their homes.

The villa auction was passed in on a vendor bid, a result residents learned of a day later. 'We just want to know who's going to take us,' said Sally, a laundry worker. 'Nobody has ever said sorry to us about this, no one has put their hand up to be accountable,' said resident June.

Side ventures — olives, land, software — consumed reserves and management attention away from the laundry that actually employed the workers.

The organisation saw the NDIS funding change coming and did not restructure its cost base for it.

The board's response to a $2 million loss was to start paying itself, signalling priorities to come.

A mission business is not a venture fund: speculative side bets drained the reserves of an organisation whose only real asset was the employment it provided to people few others would hire.

The laundry closed on November 9, 2018. The administrator's efforts to sell the business came to nothing, and it ran disability employment expos and parent forums to help workers transition; the villas' fate rested with future buyers.