Greetings from me in my bedroom to you in your kitchen / living room / attic / broom cupboard / bedroom. I suppose I should really be doing this week’s newsletter via Teams or Zoom but I need to work out how to use them beyond chat conversations…

The serious part: Have I Got Social Enterprise News will be continuing as much as possible over the coming weeks and I’ll keep putting out all the information that I see that could be supportive to you and your organisation. If there is something that you think should be included, send it my way. Funding, online meet ups, working from home tips, podcasts – anything that you have found useful to help you going. If you have a specific request for support or a problem that you feel a HIGSENFY subscriber may be able to help with, let me know and I can put it out there.

Do keep sending any social enterprise news too. More then ever, we need to find some positive news to shout about. If you sent anything in the last week or so, it will be somewhere in my inbox and I’ll include it next week.

Stay safe…

@davemcglashan

Latest support + resources

• My colleague Sophie emailed earlier this week with details of how charities and social enterprises can try to manage the current situation. If you missed it, it’s up on our website and we’ll keep updating it as we can. You can find it here
• We’re also using our Twitter feed (@schsocent) to try and provide the latest support on offer. If you are offering online services, offers, or support for others during this time share them with using the hashtag #SocEntSolidarity and we’ll share them with our followers.
• Our friends at Good Finance have created a COVID-19 Resource Hub for Charities & Social Enterprises. As with all these things, I imagine it’s worth bookmarking it and checking in regularly as the situation evolves. You can find it here. 
• Digital agency Copy and Code are offering a free hour-long sessions to social impact organisations experiencing technical or communication challenges during the outbreak.
• The always excellent Madeleine Sugden has compiled detailed advice for comms around coronavirus. Once again, it’s being updated regularly. Bookmark it here.
• Matt Haworth has made his book The Digital Fundraising Book freely available to all. If you are looking at how you can migrate more of your fundraising online it’s well worth a look. There are also some great tips on building an online presence too. Read it here
• ‘While none of us can pretend we really know what’s going to happen, we can influence the future’ writes Social Enterprise UK’s Dan Gregory in a piece exploring the wider societal impact that coronavirus may have. It’s well worth reading.

A couple of bits from me

• As we move to an online world (for now) we’re going to deliver our one day workshops we can online. You can keep booking them rolex replica. If there are additional courses you think we should be running, let me know and we’ll do our best to put something together.
• With that in mind, i’m also keen to hear from anyone who has a workshop they deliver online that could be of interest to our audience – contact me by email and I’ll get back to you next week.

I’ve been ill this week and working from home so you may want to wash your hands after reading this email. Being unwell, I’ve obviously spent the week looking at the Guardian live coronavirus blog and checking the 111 website, doing that weird thing when you convince yourself that you’re in the worst situation possible and you’re probably only moments away from summoning an ambulance and going into A+E.

Fortunately, it hasn’t come to that. I did, however, learn one interesting snippet while doing my research though: ‘Covid 19’ fits perfectly into the song ‘Come on Eileen’.

You’re welcome…

@davemcglashan

And it’s live…

Applications are open for our biggest, funded programme, the Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland Social Entrepreneurs programme. It consists of 14+ days of learning, a business mentor, a grant and a peer-to-peer support network, run by SSE and jointly funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.  There are three levels for social entrepreneurs at start up, trade up or scale up stages of growth.

Find out all you need to know here

Ask yourself this

Have you every truly considered repayable finance, and what it means to you? And I mean really considered it. As in looked into your soul, wrestling for meaning and answers. If you haven’t, the time to do so is now: the Adebowale Commission on Social Investment are looking for views from social enterprises on repayable finance.

There is a ten minute survey to take here

Aha

Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank. Arm Wrestling with Chas and Dave. Monkey Tennis. None of these would be suitable applications for the Community Business Bright Ideas Fund (mainly because they are the ideas of a fictional television character). They also wouldn’t be eligible. However, community groups in England looking to set up and start running a community business are eligible to apply. On offer is tailored business development support, mentoring and visits and a possible small grant of up to £15,000 to fund development and start-up costs.

Apply by 7th April

To Hull and Back

First references to Alan Partridge, now to Only Fools and Horses. I should probably do more to cater to the youth demographic. If you do make it to Hull and it happens to be on the 17th April, you should make your way to The Social Enterprise Fayre, hosted by DropPoint CIC. It’s taking place at Hull Minster and promises a day of inspiration and the chance to shop for products brought to you by local charities and social enterprises. Further info is available in the link below. If you’d be interested in being a vendor on the day pop an email to [email protected]

Info here

All ears

I’m going to make a bold claim and suggest that these ‘podcast’ things might just take off. Don’t ask why, it’s just a hunch. If you’d like to explore this exciting new medium then SSE student Vic Turnbull has two workshops taking place in Manchester in the coming weeks: Get Started in Podcasting on 31st March and Nail Your Podcast Interviews on 8th April.

Both look really good

Culture club

Let’s bring some culture to this ragtag newsletter for once. Strike a Light are looking for 16 women in the South West working in the arts to take part in a paid leadership programme that includes work placements, mentoring and training. Beginning in June, the programme is open to women over 21 who are based in Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole, Plymouth, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, Southampton, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Gloucestershire, BANES & Bristol.

Find out more 

Record breakers

Biggest animal in the world? Blue whale. Longest river? The Amazon. Deepest ocean? The Pacific. And now there is a new record breaker: the world’s biggest impact investment fund for the creative arts, Nesta’s Arts & Culture Impact Fund. Take that other impact funds for the creative arts. Arts and culture organisations can apply for loans of between £150,000 to £1 million for a period of up to 10 years. Applications are now open.

Everything you need is here

A career at Year Here?

Year Hear are looking for a new CEO (£70k – £80k). The core of the job is propelling brilliant, compassionate, ambitious entrepreneurs, with the support of the great and the good of the UK’s social impact world. Based in London, they are looking for a social impact leader with commercial experience and bags of ambition.

Apply by 22nd March

Food for the Soul

A few weeks old but well worth a mention – Big Issue published a great piece about SSE Fellow Meg Doherty and her social enterprise Fat Macy’s.  As well as giving homeless people the experience they need to get back on their feet in the job market, Fat Macy’s centres on a housing deposit grant scheme that removes the biggest barrier for people locked out of getting a home of their own.

You can read the article here