Ambassadors are starting to blog (hoorah), mostly with some introductory posts about who they are and what they do. Great post up today from Peter Holbrook from Sunlight Development Trust which gives a window into their world of diverse, community-based services and products. Here’s his abridged history of Sunlight’s growth and development:

"Our journey goes something like this (abridged):

1. Understand the problem and identify possible solutions
2. Build a common vision with others
3. Consult in a meaningful way – check your assumptions and revise your vision – ‘action research’  works well
4. Get money – we got ours from the lottery
5. Get more  – we got more trusts and government regeneration funding
6. Yep we’re still short – we’ll need twice as much as we thought we might need.
7. We grew our aspirations by working with partners – keep as many useful people and partners with you as possible.
8. Don’t be afraid to lose some people and partners along the way, especially if they’re nasty, unhelpful or miserable
9.
Get lovely staff, volunteers and supporters – check us out – we do have
lovely staff and volunteers – probably the best in the whole wide world.
10. We got going – doing really good stuff – check out our website.
11. Crikey people like us!  We’re getting loads of awards.  The PM is coming to visit!!
12. Yikes we’re running out of money!
13. We need more money
14. What’s all this about social enterprise?
15. We’re doing social enterprise and making some money.
16. No one is telling us what to do with our earned money – much better and more liberating than boring old grants.
17. Goodness me… we’re still here (just) and err….growing."

Such a great (and realistic) view of how these things develop (particularly points 4, 5 and 6), though it obviously underplays the impressive work that Peter and his team do to make all this happen. Good honest stuff. Read the post (and the other posts) for more, and start commenting.