The men behind Orange Sky charity empire
They’re the two elite school-educated guys who shunned high-flying corporate careers to set up a not-for-profit charity washing the clothes of Brisbane’s homeless. Now Orange Sky has grown to have 29 vans and 1800 volunteers across Australia. Meet the two founders who have big expansion plans.
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EARLY morning sun burns lingering rain clouds from Brisbane’s skyline as a small group gathers around two distinctive vans parked on inner-city Ivory St.
Laughter punctuates the gentle hum of conversation as Orange Sky Laundry volunteers, distinguishable by their bright orange T-shirts, help their homeless friends – as the team uniformly refers to the people they assist each day – throw on a load of washing in one van or have a shower in the other.
Orange Sky Australia launches new custom-built van in Cairns
Orange Sky dreaming of a healthy future for remote communities as they roll out laundry project
Charity co-founder Nic Marchesi chats with a female friend about Aussies’ tendency to shorten words until they’re almost unintelligible, while best mate and business partner Lucas Patchett wanders over for a yarn with regulars Harry O’Callaghan, Bob and Wayne who’ve pulled fold-up chairs – orange, naturally – into the shade of an adjacent building.
Another friend Phil comes bounding across the road, big hands juggling two slices of bread bursting with snags and mustard from students staffing the St Joseph’s Nudgee College Big Brekky van. The Ecumenical Coffee Brigade van has already moved on.
It’s been a relatively quiet morning for the Orange Sky Laundry crew but indicative, nonetheless, of just how far the not-for-profit has come since Marchesi and Patchett, both 25, first took their prototype van, Sudsy, to a Brisbane park more than five years ago.
These days it takes quite a bit of scheduling – and a bit of luck – to get the 2016 Young Australians of the Year in the same place at the same time.
I spoke with Patchett by phone a week before Qweekend joined the Orange Sky Laundry shift, as he was due in New Zealand to visit their Auckland and Wellington vans; he ended up popping in before flying out that night.
A few days later, Marchesi headed to the Aboriginal community of Maningrida, Arnhem Land, to launch their third remote service.
The joint executive directors, awarded Order of Australia Medals last month, oversee a multimillion-dollar not-for-profit organisation with 37 full-time staff and 1800 volunteers operating 29 vans in 250 locations, across every state and territory of Australia and two in New Zealand.
In the past five years, more than 1.3 million kilograms of laundry has been washed and dried, and about 13,500 warm showers taken.
Not only do 40 per cent of Australia’s homeless people access their services, but volunteers and vans have also come to the aid of cyclone, flood and bushfire-ravaged communities.
International donations have flowed from the earliest days of operation as have requests for global expansion, and the duo hopes to see Orange Sky established in America “soon” – though just how soon, Marchesi and Patchett cannot say.
Former US president Barack Obama and wife Michelle are fans, meeting Marchesi late last year when he joined their intensive leadership program, while Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall became their first British volunteer during her 2018 visit to Queensland.
“Yeah, I pinch myself almost every day and awards [such as the OAM] are a part of that, but so is jumping on the website homepage and seeing all the orange dots on the map. Orange Sky Laundry is not by any means Nic and Lucas; it’s so much bigger than that. We’re just the idiots who had this idea and now there are so many people who have put so much hard work into Orange Sky,’’ says Patchett.
“One of the big things I’ve learnt along the way is how awesome people are and how many people are out there wanting to help.’’
This year is set to be another pivotal period for the duo. Another three vans are due in Australia and New Zealand, and they’re aiming to add an organisational record of $11 million worth of social impact value to the quality of life of those they help and for their volunteers.
Perhaps most significantly, 2020 marks the national and international market launch of their unique app Campfire, specifically designed to help charities more effectively manage their volunteers, collect crucial data and maximise the use of resources.
“Obviously I’m biased but this piece of software, I believe, can change volunteering but also change how people who need help are empowered to get help,’’ says Marchesi.
So, with so many big plans afoot, why are he and Patchett formulating their personal exit plans?
It took three days for Marchesi and Patchett to do their first official load of washing. In what was hardly an auspicious start for Orange Sky Laundry, Sudsy – their modified second-hand 2005 Volkswagen Transporter – broke down the first two mornings they parked in Spring Hill’s Wickham Park in October 2014, leaving Jordan, one of the first people they wanted to help, without fresh clothes, and the duo frustrated and embarrassed.
Patchett and Marchesi, who met and became best mates at St Joseph’s College, Gregory Terrace in Spring Hill, were raised in families with strong social consciences, and volunteered with charities helping the homeless throughout school and beyond.
Patchett was studying for a Bachelor of Engineering and Commerce at the University of Queensland and Marchesi was working as a business development consultant and television cameraman, when they came up with the mobile laundry concept.
British indie-folk musician Alexi Murdoch’s song Orange Sky, describing brothers and sisters supporting each other, was the perfect moniker – especially as “there’s lots of orange things you can buy,” laughs Marchesi.
“The third morning, Jordan was there once again. For whatever reason he was willing to trust us with his only possessions … and it finally all worked. That was a tipping point for us. Jordan went to school up the road from me, studied the same degree at the same university that I was studying at the time, he was about eight years older than me and had fallen on hard times.
“He had lost his job, disconnected from his family and all of a sudden found himself sleeping in a park and washing his clothes in our van,’’ recalls Patchett, who lives in Westlake with mum Jo, a management consultant, and younger sister Georgia, 21, an exercise physiology student.
His father, Wayne, 68, is a project management consultant. Marchesi – raised by parents Claire, a social worker, and Paul, an engineer, with older brother Matthew, 29 – lives alone in Fortitude Valley.
Within six months, Jordan had reconnected with his mother and left the streets.
“I remember thinking about him so much. This guy was almost a future projection of my life – same background, same family situation; all these things lined up but he was in a completely different scenario. We were very focused before we started about improving hygiene standards and that very tangible benefit of Orange Sky – which is still a massive part of what we do – but the almost unexpected realisation we had was that the conversations had the biggest impact,’’ says Patchett.
“It fuels us not to let people like Jordan down every day. There’s heaps of stories that we hear and that we’re part of on a day-to-day basis.’’
Within a year, what started as a weekend project with the help of family and friends, became a full-time job managing five vans in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney and Melbourne, 250 volunteers and donations from 26 countries.
Within 18 months, the duo won the national award and more doors started opening. They hired their first staff member, launched their first shower van and soon after had 10 vans in 66 locations, their 600 volunteers logging more than 1200 hours of conversations the people they’ve helped.
Everyone needs clean clothes but, arguably, this is Orange Sky Laundry’s most important offering – community connection; not just for the homeless but the volunteers and donors too. More than 233,000 hours of conversation have been shared since October 2014.
“The unique thing about Orange Sky is that it’s based around human connection,’’ says Marchesi, who, along with Patchett, strives to escape their Albion headquarters at least once a week to pull up an orange chair in a park or on the street.
“We have friends who are having the toughest time in their life, being lonely and isolated, but we also see that in our volunteers and our donors. We have a donor in Mount Isa who gives us a dollar a week from her pension and she feels like part of a community that is far greater than all of us. We’ve had [people] that volunteer in Hobart then move to Cairns, and volunteer there. We’ve had volunteers who are contract workers who move around Australia and are incredibly lonely in communities, and Orange Sky is their constant touch point.”
Success has not come without criticism. The entrepreneurs have been accused of enabling and normalising homelessness, undermining the dignity of people living rough and providing temporary comfort when money could be directed at affordable housing and services to end homelessness.
Marchesi glances at the people lingering around the two vans. “Absolutely on a very surface level, it can look like Orange Sky is washing someone’s clothes and making it easier to be homeless, “ he says.
“But what we know is being homeless isn’t easy and homelessness isn’t solved by clean clothes. What we’re dealing with are incredibly complex issues that involve a lot of people collaborating, and that’s where Orange Sky fits in.
“Orange Sky will not solve homelessness and potentially homelessness may never be solved, because if you start to look at loneliness, or isolation, or natural disasters, people are potentially constantly becoming displaced or lonely or disconnected.
“Where Orange Sky fits in is providing really basic necessities, building friendships and connecting people in with service providers, whether that be housing or a counselling service or so many different things.”
Orange Sky’s aim may not be to solve the complex problem of homelessness, yet Marchesi and Patchett have been able to help some of the people they meet to find jobs and get off the streets. Neville Owen signs a personalised “Welcome to the Team” note for every volunteer who signs up with Orange Sky Laundry, delivered tucked inside the official T-shirt and winter hoodie he screen-prints for each of them.
Owen, 49, then receiving a disability support pension, spent 18 months living on the streets of Brisbane and was one of the first to wander down to Wickham Park to see what the blokes in the orange van were all about.
“It was the highlight of my week, to speak to people living a normal life. They were working, they were doing what we all should be able to do. I really wouldn’t have anyone else to talk to, maybe only a few homeless people when I came across them,’’ he says.
Marchesi and Patchett invited Owen to help screen-print the group’s T-shirts. Fast forward 12 months and the “super-dedicated, super hard-work[ing] rock star” was offered a full-time job in the Orange Sky Laundry warehouse.
Owen has been part of the team for more than three years, rents a unit in West End and has joined a regular running group.
“Now when I’m walking around the street or riding public transport, I’m the one going to work. I have a purpose instead of just killing time. I have a lot of confidence now,” Owen says.
For the past four years, Orange Sky has also helped the homeless access training and employment through the Social Impact Washing program in Brisbane, Perth and on the NSW Central Coast – another program also expanding this year.
When the vans are not out on the streets, they’re used to launder uniforms, napery and the like for sporting teams, cafes, fitness groups and other not-for-profit organisations, to boost funds for Orange Sky. “We’ve lost a few sporting groups because we’re really bad at getting grass stains out,’’ Marchesi laughs. “We’re cactus at that.’’
While the laundry program provides a small revenue stream, Marchesi hopes new purpose-built technology designed by the Orange Sky team, about to hit the national and international market, will significantly boost the organisation’s bottom line. Campfire – which attracted a $1 million Google development grant in November 2018 – is a “Software as a Service” product based on Orange Sky Laundry’s unique operating system, designed to enable charities to record and track their mobile outreach service delivery.
It was born out of Marchesi and Patchett’s desire to monitor in real-time exactly what was happening in their vans, wherever they were. Who was volunteering? How many loads of washing were done? How many showers were taken? Who talked to whom, for how long? Was anyone injured? Did the vans break down?
“That data was really important for us to be able to grow and scale and operate,” Marchesi explains. “But what we also started to see was that other not-for-profits who had been around far longer than us would say, ‘Oh, how do you manage your volunteers and how do you operate?’ We’d say, ‘Oh, look at this special piece of software we’ve built’. Then we started to say, actually, as a sector, it’s something that is being done poorly, so we were talking for a long period of time about how cool would it be to actually share our software with other not-for-profits and help them operate more effectively and efficiently, but also help Orange Sky and the whole sector lift.”
Several local charities – Sunny Street, Footpath Library, Dig In, Make A Difference and We are Community – are already using the app, with a target of subscribing another 60 by the end of June.Campfire is free for organisations with fewer than 25 employees at the moment, with the overall pricing system based on the outcomes individual organisations can achieve by using the technology. All proceeds are reinvested into Campfire’s development to increase the social impact on communities.
“At the moment the organisation – be it Orange Sky or another – has all the power. They choose what volunteers they want, where the volunteer goes and where the service goes, and realistically these can be so far from the end user,’’ says Marchesi. “The idea is how can we empower [friend] Harry and [volunteer] Agnes to actually drive it – to say, well, actually, I want help on a Tuesday morning and I want to help on a Tuesday morning. That’s what Campfire is going to move to, actually empowering amazing people to do amazing things and build this community around it, but also start to be more effective with resources.
“My excitement for Campfire – apart from being a revenue stream for Orange Sky – is it can help more people to get the help they need and more volunteers to help in impactful ways.’’ Sunny Street co-founder and director Sonia Goodwin describes Campfire as “life-changing” for the south-east Queensland medical outreach service for homeless and at-risk people, due to go national later this year. Goodwin says it has dramatically increased efficiency around recruiting, screening and rostering their 250 volunteers.
“Our volunteers can also click on their profile and see they’ve done, say, 60 hours and been part of a team that delivered 600 hours of conversation, so people can see how they’re positively impacting their community,’’ she says.
Nic and Lucas, Lucas and Nic – their names are synonymous with Orange Sky Laundry and likely always will be. As a mentor told them in the early days, like it or not, they’re a package deal. For the most part, it seems both still like it – though each says their friendship has evolved alongside their roles in the organisation.
“I look after brand and fundraising and finance teams, while Nic looks after our operations and technical areas. The running joke is that I raise and count the money, while Nic spends it,’’ says Patchett, a live music fan and waterskier who likes to escape to Somerset Dam with girlfriend Matilda Wallensky, 25, a final-year psychology student.
“Orange Sky is so intertwined with our lives around friends and family and each other, and our time, so it’s an easy temptation when you go out to dinner or when we hang out to just talk about Orange Sky, but we have to separate that and have time just as mates as well,’’ he says.
“That mentor also told us that we should form a friendship constitution; we’re not very good at writing things down, so we have a verbal one. The main point is, if we’re pissing each other off, we just tell each other straight up.’’
Still, the future beckons. While he and Marchesi agree Orange Sky Laundry will always be a part of their lives in some way, shape or form, both are looking towards what comes next. Patchett would like to finish his degree, continue learning and having fun, while Marchesi simply wants to keep helping people. Neither are sure what the next career step will be.
“A good mentor talks about how you can’t do anything great in less than 10 years, and given we started when we were 20, I think 30 is a really good time to start looking at what does Orange Sky looks like without so much involvement from us. We didn’t start Orange Sky for a job, but it is our job now,’’ says Marchesi, an avid shed tinkerer who hates television and values time with family, friends, and partner Jessica Adams, 25, who works in marketing.
Patchett continues. “We’ve both said this isn’t something we’re going to do for the rest of our lives, but it’s also not something we’re going to walk away from and leave in a position where we don’t think it’s going to be successful in the future. I think what that looks like is people supporting and being part of Orange Sky – through donations, through core partnerships, through volunteering – because they believe in it, believe in the mission and can see the impact, not because of Nic and I.
“We want it to survive as long as it’s needed in the communities it’s needed for, support volunteering opportunities for people, and support people who are doing it tough. The biggest thing is that community makes it happen.” ■
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