How passion led this CEO to leave corporate

Giving back, being part of a bigger purpose, flexibility and salary-packaging benefits are some of the reasons often touted as why people work for not-for-profits.

But what about the people at the top? Beyond these reasons, what draws leaders into the charity world?

People have been seeking more purpose in their work long before the pandemic, but it certainly stirred the waters and got employees and employers alike to think about work differently.

Michael Heath, the chief executive officer of Activ Foundation, was at a turning point in his career when the pandemic hit. Among many others, he started to seek more purpose and think about work differently, deciding to leave the corporate world to join the charity in 2021.

Mr Heath previously worked as COO at Hawaiian, CEO of the St Ives Group and Perth Racing, and in senior executive management roles at the RAC. He has also been a director of several not-for-profit organisations, and became especially passionate about serving the WA disability community when his eyes were opened to wheelchair sports.

His involvement with disability sports started when his children did community service with wheelchair basketball at Rebound WA. ”That opened my eyes to how amazing the people playing these sports were. I also got to see how little funding there was for people living with disability," he said.

“I started to get more involved, doing some volunteering for a charity now called People Kind, and we got more involved with people with intellectual disabilities, visiting houses and getting to know the residents."

This led Mr Heath to start his own WA-based charity with a friend, called Wheelchair Athletes. “We started our own charity to raise money, which went into sponsoring wheelchair athletes because we realised how little funding there was going into Australian teams,” he said.

Wheelchair Athletes now sponsors six athletes representing Australia across a range of sports, including Commonwealth Games power lifter Ben Wright who has been involved with the charity from the beginning.

“When the role at Activ came up I thought this is the perfect opportunity for me to use my commercial background with something I really enjoy doing and do something which has a lot more meaning than just doing something for a commercial return. It makes it much easier to get out of bed on Monday and go to work. That’s a big thing for me,” he said.

“We have seen a great deal of people who have excelled in various industries making the move into not-for-profit, like I did, so we have this amazing team of really passionate, experienced and professional people working together to make a real difference, and their hard work is really starting to show.” 

Since joining Activ, Mr Heath admits the charity has been through “some pretty big financial difficulties”, not unheard of in the not-for-profit space. “We’re working our way through those things, it’s been tough from that perspective,” he said.

Activ Foundation recently published its annual report for FY23 and has managed to record a staggering $9 million turnaround in 12 months, taking the not-for-profit from a $10.8 million loss at the start of FY23 to a $1.8 million deficit at the end of financial year. 

Mr Heath said it took some difficult decisions and changes in strategy to keep the charity, which has a history spanning more than 70 years, afloat.

He reiterated that it's key to bring a commercial discipline to how charities are run to make sure they are getting to at least a break-even point and be able to circulate money back into the charity.

"The words ‘not-for-profit’, you can’t really call it that now, you have to make a profit to invest back in the business,” he said. 

“It requires a balance to invest back into the business and making sure we’re sticking to our vision of making a difference to the lives of people living with a disability.”

The charity is focused on raising money to improve the lives of people living with disability in WA through services including accommodation, training, employment, social enterprises, behaviour supports, community and more.

They do this with the with the help of corporate partners, the government, and fundraising efforts such as its Better Odds and Car for a Cause lotteries.

The Chevron City to Surf for Activ is proof of how fundraising events and corporate partnerships can help raise significant funds for its cause. "These are the sorts of things we need to do to raise money.

“The funds raised from this year’s event will go directly into renovating some of our disability accommodation homes and bringing them up to the same standard of accommodation that anybody would expect, with open-plan living, accessibility and connection to community. That’s what we’re really trying to do,” he said.

“We’ve had really good support from both the state and the federal government, but we need to be able to stand on our own two feet as well and not just rely on government funding.”

Mr Heath said spending time with the people the charity provides services for was the most rewarding side of working for Activ. “We get to improve the lives of the people we work with, and you can see how important that is to them so that’s really rewarding,” he said.

“You’re never too sure what your interactions are going to be during the day. I try to spend at least one day a week where I can get out and meet some of our customers. You’ll meet people who are amazing and do amazing things. They love to talk about footy and share their story with you and the things they’ve been working on and it’s great to have that interaction.

“We always say in our executive team, if you’re having a bad day just get out and talk to our people, you see what they’re dealing with and they’re doing it with a smile on their face.”