Category Archives: Social Enterprise

Thursday round-up: karaoke, kicking and kiva

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Ok, a brief round-up of some useful links and info, having surfaced for air from various bits of writing. Sadly, no photos or film from the SSE Christmas do last night as yet (which ended with karaoke), but perhaps in the New Year…All I'll say is that there was a version of Hallelujah which won't be appearing on X Factor any time soon. On to more important things:

– Starting unbiasedly with ourselves, SSE has contributed the Social Entrepreneurship chapter to the Philanthropy UK Guide to Giving. I think it's a useful one-pager for people looking for an introduction to this world.

– Voice 09, SEC's big event, is coming together. Check out the details online…and probably see you in Birmingham.

– Piece in the Times today on celebrities and social enterprise which is interesting-ish

– Good report on tackling worklessness by Blackburne House CEO (and SEC Chair) Claire Dove which pushes the need for (socially) entrepreneurial mindsets and self-employment

– Rod Schwartz continues to kick CICs, this time calling for action to change some of the regulations in light of the rapidly decreasing interest rates

– You may well have read the report on the Social Enterprise Ambassador programme shake-up (with two asked to leave); there's an interesting post + comments over on Rob Greenland's blog where I've contributed a fair bit

– The Spark programme for homelessness / social enterprise projects is renewed and open to new applications

– Third Sector covers the social enterprise debate / identity project

– Lord Mawson responds to the Queen's Speech and uses the opportunity to talk social entrepreneurship

– SSE Australia is happening; see here and here for more info

– I found this post, entitled Kiva is a menace very good in terms of how what seems to be an "internet-based" idea that can easily be replicated is actually much more particular, not least of which is that their leadership (I've met both Flannery's on different occasions) are so bloody good. Essential reading for those who are doing a "It's like Kiva meets MoveOn" type project

– NESTA are doing some interesting things in social finance

– And Nathaniel Whittmore continues to write great content on the Change.org blog; let's back his Make Social Entrepreneurship Support part of the National Service Plan (US) idea

– Check out Robert Mulhall, a Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Fellow (we love SEI), talking about his work on Irish TV

Till next time…..

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Social entrepreneurship in China: lessons from Beijing

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I've been in Beijing all this week working on a couple of practical projects and, yesterday, speaking at a Social Innovation and Third Sector conference organised by the British Council and the Ministry of Civil Affairs (or BC and MoCA as I'm learning to call them). There was some really interesting background statistics and information, not least the enormous rise in the registration of non-governmental organisations across the country: hundreds of thousands each year. The discussion of regulation was also fascinating, as new legal structures / processes have come into play, allowing for the creation of private foundations and also for very small local (primarily voluntary) groups to operate without the need for the full regulatory procedure.

Of course, small and local is all relative in this field: one conversation we were having about the importance of a social entrepreneur being connected / engaged with / from the community they are aiming to serve led one government-official to note that some of his neighbourhood leaders might come under that definition….and the neighbourhood they worked with and served? 125,000 people. Whatever one thinks of the Chinese government, they are practically the only route to scaling or replicating any sort of solution across this vast country.

But what inspired me most, given that we are in development with the Fuping Development Institute and the British Council about potentially bringing the SSE methodology to China, was the similarities between the social entrepreneurs and their voicing of the various barriers and challenges they face. There were some great examples and practitioners there: like the entrepreneurs who established Shining Stone Community Action and the 1+1 blind / radio project. In our breakout session (when I was still trying to gauge response to my presentation: always tricky to see how something has been received in translation / with a 10-15 second delay), such practitioners mixed with support agencies, government officials (some of whom were also extraordinarily entrepreneurial: overseeing pilot subsidies / exemptions for NGOs, increasing procurement from the third sector by 300% etc) and business leaders in heated and pretty open discussion.

And the key issues / barriers / challenges? Funding + earned income, personal/business support, government regulation / legal structures (on which people were split between they need to be heavily involved…and they need to get out of the way), connecting with each other to share information…and so on. Sound familiar? Absoutely. And while the UK is further along the line in many of these areas, and has learning and knowledge to transfer (including what hasn't worked), and while the constraints and challenges are different here, there is a huge amount of common ground. And what shone through, as ever, was the passion, dynamism and purpose of these social entrepreneurs doing extraordinary things in an extraordinary country.

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Monday round-up: Observer, organisations, opinion, Obama

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Obama
Round-up of recent news, views, links and opinions; at the start of the week for a change….

– Interesting article by Simon Caulkin in the Observer on EAGA, a partnership that works on fuel poverty and green service: Hot prospects for a company with a conscience:

"The company could be a poster-child for post-crunch capitalism, the
embodiment of Peter Drucker's definition of the socially responsible
business, turning 'a social problem into economic opportunity and
economic benefit, into productive capacity, into human competence, into
well-paid jobs, and into wealth'."

– More on the SROI vs. social auditing brouhaha, in New Sector magazine. Although there are many similarities as well as differences of emphasis. As Jeremy Nicholls put it, the aim should be to "keep credible, keep practical"

– Good overview report of the Social Enterprise World Forum

– This is an interesting discussion (on something called Social Velocity: nice!) here on scaling and communication, focusing on the US example organisation, FORGE…

– ….which also gets a mention in this post on clear, honest communication in the field of social entrepreneurship

– Pamela Hartigan, who co-wrote The Power of Unreasonable People, is writing a 5 part blog on Harvard's Center for Public Leadership on social entrepreneurship

– Am also a fan, US-wise, of Kevin Jones, and he has an article in Stanford Social Innovation Review laying out the landscape of social capital on the back of SoCap08

– Free photocopying for charity? What's not to love?

– Can social entrepreneurs really have work-life balance and succeed? Social Enterprise Ambassador Craig Dearden-Phillips thinks not

– Back in 2004, in my previous job, TheyWorkForYou made the shortlist of an award I was running. MySociety, the organisation behind that site (and many others), recently celebrated its 5th birthday. David Wilcox has a good overview here, whilst founder Tom Steinberg looks to the future here

– We were also delighted to hear SSE Fellow Amanda Roberts on Radio Five Live Breakfast this morning, standing up to the smug-tastic Nicky Campbell about why her organisation's therapeutic services were right for the children of Lambeth; I can't find it in the 3 hours of Listen Again (!), but I can point you to her website: Bud Umbrella

– And finally, looking ahead to the big event of tomorrow which is of course…..CAN's 10th Birthday, joining us in reaching a decade in age! Congrats to all current and previous staff involved.

Oh, OK, here's a post for the Obama fans amongst you:
Barack Obama and the Spirit of Social Entrepreneurship

Enjoy the late night coverage…………..

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The Top 5 social entrepreneurship debates…in the world…ever

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Debate
Part of me thinks I should blog about the new £6m Bank of Scotland social entrepreneur awards, announced this weekend in the Times. Obviously all new money and publicity for the movement is welcome…but my excitement lessened slightly on reading that the awards were for 2 organisations and of that £6m, only £600k was actual cash: the rest is loan, admittedly at very friendly rates in this credit crunch age. Is this what we need in the social entrepreneurship world? Possibly, I guess: will be interesting to see. But with CAN's Breakthrough, Impetus Trust, Venture Partnership Foundation, UnLtd Ventures, Ashoka, Schwab, Futurebuilders et al all concentrating on scaling up/recognising a small number of organisations, is this the best use of £600,000 for social entrepreneurship? Let's hope one of the awards goes to a new outstanding organisation that hasn't benefited from similar sources……

So, instead, I thought I'd discuss a post on the (relatively) new Social Entrepreneurship blog on Change.org (US non-profit social networking site), which I've been enjoying of late. Nathaniel Whittemore posted up what he considered the Top 5 Controversies in Social Entrepreneurship. These were as follows:

– Individual vs. collective
– Definition
– Scale
– Symptoms vs. causes
– Non-profit and for-profit relations

Reading those, and thinking of the posts over the last two and half years and 327 posts (oh yes), I thought that was a pretty decent stab at what lies at the root of most debate and argument across the sector. I guess the symptoms vs. causes one (i.e. are social entrepreneurs ever going to achieve systemic change, addressing the causes) is probably one that is less relevant here; the 'philanthrocapitalism' debate has been predominantly held in the US to this point.

My other point would be that some of these contain more than one debate; the definition debate is about social enterprise vs. social entrepreneurship (structures vs people), but also about earned income vs. structure (eg. 50% earned income means you are…), and, further about Ashoka-Schwab-Skoll social entrepreneur vs. UnLtd-SSE social entrepreneur….although the latter is also about heroic individual vs. networked changemaker, and about scale as a criterion of definition.

So, with large hat tip to Nat for the idea, my 5 would be:

– Scale: by which I mean the "can (lots of) social entrepreneur-led organisations in this movement scale and still retain what made them work in the first place?", but also the "do you have to scale to be a social entrepreneur?" question

– Importing private sector practice: slightly different emphasis from Nat here (who discusses the profit imperative), as I think the large issue is the effective and appropriate use of business and private sector practice, be this in venture philanthropy, evaluation, mergers & acquisitions etc

– Definition: in the UK, particularly, this is a social entrepreneurship and social enterprise question; always sounds semantic squabbling, but is much more important than that: ultimately, it's about where resources are most effectively invested to create social change. All the CIC debate etc is about people vs. structure, ultimately….

– Role of individual: puncturing the myth of the 'heroic individual' is a common thing for us, pointing out that successful social entrepreneurs need to inspire, engage, motivate, network and build effective teams and supporters; but also pointing out that community groups don't spring out of the ether as a fully-formed group…there is always an individual who is the catalyst or spark-plug

– Public service delivery: again, more UK-specific, I think, but you can't move for conversations and debates about whether social enterprise should be responding to the public service delivery agenda (see today's slightly terrifying headline: "Let social enterprises run the NHS") or whether, seeing as they are also meant to be entrepreneurship, innovation and risk, they should in fact be meeting needs NOT being met by public services; not to mention the independence from government, reliance on funding issues…..

So what do you reckon….have I missed an enormous elephant in the social entrepreneurship room?

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Friday round-up: capitalism, CICs, Camfed and collars

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Matthew Thomson, CEO LCRN
Quick pre-weekend round-up.

– I covered the Enterprising Solutions Awards earlier in the week, but there was also some good coverage in the Times which is worth checking out

– Whilst we're on awards, huge well done to former SSE Director of Learning Matthew Thomson (pictured left), who is now CEO of London Community Recycling Network. They won the Innovation award in the Third Sector Excellence Awards; congrats to all the other winners and nominees as well, including SSE witnesses and friends Craig Dearden-Phillips, Afrikids, Toby Blume and..er…Duncan Bannatyne.

– Amongst countless "we need a new form of capitalism….now is the time for social enterprise" speeches and articles (to which I will no doubt contribute at some point….), this one by Charles Leadbeater struck me as one of the more interesting/thought-through:

"For most people the next year will not feel like a search for a brave
new economic model: it will be more like hand-to-hand combat to keep
hold of what you have……In all likelihood we will get a mix of subdued capitalism, social capitalism and ugly capitalism, even within the same cities."

– Social Firms UK do consistent, high quality work under CEO Sally Reynolds, and this is a thoughtful piece by her about why the model is important, particularly in the current climate

– Another kick for CICs; in this case from Apprentice winner Tim Campbell…..

– Jeff Trexler is never short of strong opinions; see what you make of this post: "The social enterprise movement has yet to grasp the extent to which it is as much a
product of the bubble as subprime loans and credit-default swaps–it's
not just a coincidence that do-gooders started talking business when
business was good"

– Great article on Camfed in the Financial Times; Camfed was started by SSE Fellow Ann Cotton.

– Harvard Business School Global Business Summit Explores Future of Capitalism might be a title to send me running away, but there's some interesting stuff in here about what is needed to foster social entrepreneurship. Interesting to see business leaders still pushing venture capital and private equity models in this context as a route to solving social problems

– Lucy Bernholz, network queen of US philanthropy, has seen the future, and it looks like this

– I must mention Social Innovation Camp, to which SSE is a Community Partner: check out the site and send in your ideas…..deadline for submissions is coming soon!

– Lots of stuff being lined up for Global Entrepreneurship / Enterprise / Make Your Mark / Unleashing Ideas etc week (slightly confused branding, methinks…)……and SSE staff and representatives will be covering as much ground as possible: particularly on the 20th November which is Social Enterprise Day (coming just behind Christmas and birthday here, of course). Check out Unleashing Ideas for a sense of what's happening around the world.

– And finally, check out this story in the Huffington Post about how a book about "Green Collar" workers reached the bestseller lists. Just try not to wince when you read the bit about how revolutionaries are being replaced by "solutionaries", which must be officially the worst thing done to the English language this year….

Cheers!

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