Entrepreneurs Lucas Patchett and Nic Marchesi help thousands every week by ‘giving it a go’, purposefully

School friends Lucas Patchett and Nicholas (Nic) Marchesi founded Orange Sky in Nic’s garage when they were both 20 years old.

Orange Sky is a not-for-profit organisation that provides free mobile laundry services, warm showers and genuine, non-judgemental conversation and connection to people experiencing homelessness, or doing it tough.

The duo hatched their world-first idea after helping out at their school's food van. From this early involvement in supporting people experiencing homelessness, they realised there was a need to provide simple, yet essential services to the community. Throwing two washing machines and two dryers in the back of an old van, their plan was to visit parks around Brisbane and provide access to free laundry services.

Seven years on, Orange Sky now operates 36 services (both laundry and shower) across 25 locations around Australia, supported by over 2,000 incredible volunteers. In New Zealand, they operate three services across Auckland and Wellington with more than 300 volunteers.

From day one, Lucas and Nic have referred to the people accessing their services as ‘friends’. By 2025, they hope to triple their current impact to support more than 40,000 friends, including people in remote Indigenous communities.

Lucas now heads up Orange Sky as CEO, and Nic has moved into the role of Chief Delta Officer, responsible for leading the Imagination and Innovation team. Former Young Australians of the Year, Order of Australia recipients and national finalists in the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2017 Social Entrepreneur award, Lucas and Nic inspire with their business nous, their spirit and their down-to-earth approach.

What are the innovations you’re most proud of?
Lucas: Orange Sky is built on having an idea, giving it a go, and seeing how it works. If it works, keep making it better. That applies to so many things we’ve tried, from our first van ‘Sudsy’, to now having laundry and showers on board.

Nic has been leading some amazing innovations. Just in the last six months, we’ve created a clothes dryer that reduces electrical consumption by up to 90% per shift and introduced the world’s first solar-powered laundry van which can produce more power than it uses, decreasing fuel consumption by up to 80% per shift.

Also, with the surge in COVID-19 cases around the country, we’ve introduced a new, flexible volunteering model where people can jump in and provide support if volunteers are close contacts or positive cases, or if they’re called away last minute. We are saving so many shifts that otherwise would have been cancelled.

Nic: It’s simple things, like the language we use, calling the people we’re helping “friends” rather than clients or customers. In our values, we talk about imagination and innovation, giving things a crack and believing in what we do. Keeping things simple, but meaningful, is the way we try and play.

What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning?
Nic: The opportunity to help people. We’re part of a cause where every bit of effort we put in hopefully drives a positive impact. For me specifically, it’s the opportunity to help more people through finding new ways to do things or accelerate what we currently do.

Lucas: There’s no better way to start the day from a motivation perspective, than being on shift and chatting to volunteers and people who are using our service, which then flows into the workday.

What have been your hardest days, and how did you get back on track?
Nic: Apart from working with complex challenges like getting vans to work in remote places, or dealing with a pandemic, there have been days when we’re not too sure if we’ve got enough money in the bank account. We’ve also had lots of days where we’ve realised there are so many more people we could be helping – and I think that’s our biggest challenge. All of it comes back to not being afraid of it. We try to celebrate embracing it and knowing the reason we can get through these challenges is because of good people.

Lucas: There was one specific moment in March 2020 when we made the decision to press pause on all our shifts across Australia and New Zealand due to the pandemic. It didn’t quite dawn on us until the week after, when we were used to seeing a couple hundred shift reports coming in every week, and volunteers sharing stories on washes and showers – to nothing. It was almost like starting from scratch. It was a really challenging day, but challenge is part of the Orange Sky DNA.

Who inspires you?
Nic: The people who trust us with their only possessions, who rock up to be part of Orange Sky. Our volunteers who are parents or who have other jobs; or are lonely and isolated, who push themselves to volunteer. Or our donors who are incredibly generous. At work, it’s our team, and Lucas inspires me through his ability to lead Orange Sky. Outside of Orange Sky, really close mentors and friends. Also, our parents – we’re fortunate to have parents who are incredibly generous, caring and trusting.

Lucas: What also inspires me is people’s stories. Like a volunteer I met recently, who has sold her events business to study psychology and be a counsellor. Or another friend who travels for an hour by train every Tuesday and Thursday night to use our service. She is so proud because we’ve used her imagery in billboards and people have reached out to her to say, I saw you in my local shopping centre. It’s those little moments of motivation.

What do you think is at the heart of the entrepreneur?
Lucas: ‘Entrepreneur’ in the typical sense of the word, means you can connect your passion with something, and that enables you to do that something every day. When I think about Nic and I, what connects us is that we’re both passionate about having fun, learning and helping people. We’ve found a mechanism to be able to do that every day, and it’s almost a self-fulfilling motivation, when you can connect all those things.

There are lots of different definitions of ‘entrepreneur’ as well. We think about people in our team as ‘intrapreneurs’, people who take their own patch and innovate and improve it and make it their own.

How has Orange Sky made a social, sustainable and purposeful impact on Australia?
Lucas: It’s first and foremost the people we are there to support. Initially we were focused on the tangible – health and quality-of-life improvements that come from actually washing clothes. Then we quickly realised a lot of the peripheral things were having impact – creating safe spaces, creating communities, having conversations, friendships, continuity and reliability.

Then from the volunteer perspective, there are lots of studies that show the mental health and quality-of-life benefits from volunteering. So, that’s another unintended consequence.

There’s the donor and supporter lens as well, and the team lens – having the team come to work every day to be motivated to help people; and supporters, who can financially support or can get engaged through their workplace.

Nic and I have laid the initial seed, but now lots of other people keep growing this movement and taking on different parts of it. Now, there are different branches that other people care for and make much better than we could ever do.