The Mawson Chronicles (part 2)

Posted on January 24, 2008 by sse

Recently, I mentioned in a post the article in the Guardian which featured an excerpt from Andrew Mawson’s new book, The Social Entrepreneur. He critiqued New Labour pretty strongly, and this prompted a response the following week in the same paper’s Society pages, both from the current Minister for the Third Sector, Phil Hope (see here) and in a response from Lynsey Hanley, who is the recent author of a book on Estates.

The minister largely rebutted the critique of government, and detailed some of their activities in the field of social enterprise, saying they were constructive rather than destructive. Hanley’s response trained its sights more on social entrepreneurship itself, and had a sideswipe at the Bromley-By-Bow-Centre on the way. The crux of her argument is in the following two paragraphs:

"It will take an avalanche of involvement, commitment and money to
convince people living in places like Bromley-by-Bow that their lives
will change. No matter how many new enterprises "the social
entrepreneur" gets off the ground, such an approach is piecemeal. A
landscape gardening business, for instance, is not going to become a
major local employer; neither is a dance studio or a hairdresser’s.

It’s
not expected in wider society that everyone should want to set up their
own pottery business, so why should it be used as a model for
transforming poor people’s lives? The idea of social entrepreneurship,
while appearing to generate a third way between the state and the
market, is no better than a charity-sector version of Dragons’ Den if
it is presented to entire communities as "the only way" to do things."

It’s an interesting debate, and I found myself agreeing both with parts of what Mawson wrote and with Hanley’s response. I think both found themselves at extremes in order to make their point, with Mawson giving off a slightly top-down arrogance (this is the way to do it, government doesn’t understand) and Hanley throwing out the baby with the bathwater (social entrepreneurship won’t solve much; physical regeneration is the key).

My response ended up in the Guardian letters page yesterday, so here’s what I wrote:

"Lynsey Hanley is undoubtedly right to point out that social
entrepreneurship is not the right approach for all regeneration, nor a
panacea for all community problems (Comment, January 16), but she risks
throwing out the baby with the bath water. Social entrepreneurship
should not be construed as something "exclusive", or something imposed.
Indeed, it should provide an opportunity for people from all
backgrounds in all areas to contribute to a wider change.

Our
experience demonstrates that, in tandem with interventions from
government and physical regeneration agencies, social entrepreneurship
can help transform communities through job creation, increasing skills
and confidence, and meeting unmet needs. Not a cure-all, agreed, but
more than a spangly sticking plaster."

So there you go. Hope to review Lord Mawson’s book at some point, when things settle down a bit here (aka never).

The history of social innovation and enterprise (an impossible task)

Posted on January 24, 2008 by sse

Our intern, Thor, who you will have read blogging here from time to time, has been looking into the history of this movement as part of his work / project while he’s with us. Which reminded me of this post that I wrote for another blog some time ago. Thought it might be of interest….:

It’s quite a common question to those of us who work in the world of social innovation and entrepreneurship: who was the first social entrepreneur? Or, when was the first social invention? The obvious answer, of course, is to say that such people (and ideas) have occurred throughout the ages. People like Robert Owen, Florence Nightingale, Gandhi, Michael Young (see here also) and the Rochdale Pioneers: social entrepreneurs and innovators one and all. But that only takes us a couple of centuries back: what about those social innovations that are so fundamental now that we don’t even think of them as such: the school, law courts, democracy. The latter is famously dated back to Athens (around 510 BC), but law courts and schools date back to 2400 and 2500 BC in Sumeria. The names of those forward-thinking Sumerians are sadly lost in the sands of time, but the campaign for their recognition starts here.

It does help put today’s work in perspective though. The term "social entrepreneur" may not have come into regular usage until the 1970s and 80s (its first use is believed to be in 1958, according to the mighty Wikipedia), but it’s fairly evident that entrepreneurial people wanting to use their skills and traits to make social change have existed for many centuries. Lecturing charities today on how they should start to trade and become self-sufficient seems less relevant when Oxfam started the first charity shop back in 1947 (and they were only copying the Salvation Army and Red Cross who ran second hand clothing shops before that). Similarly, pointing to the co-op movement (which was enshrined in law in the UK in the 1850s and 60s) as a new dawn ignores the mutualism prevalent in Europe at the time, and the craft guilds and friendly societies which existed since the 11th century.

Perhaps this helps make a wider point about (social) innovation and how we should think of it: not innovation in the sense of brand new Eureka ideas (innovation as novelty) but as a continuous process of refinement and incremental improvement, with the occasional bound forward. We are building on the ideas and actions of those who came before, responding to their innovations, and building upon them. But we are also responding to the problems and challenges that some of their innovations have created: advances in medicine mean a growing, ageing population; advances in transport have pollution as a by-product. This helps explain why those who have said (at various points in time), "everything has been invented", are utterly wrong: the need for innovation, particularly social innovation, will never go away.

As John Cage, the US composer puts it, "I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas; I’m frightened of the old ones".

Virtual Social Networking, a blessing or a curse?

Posted on January 18, 2008 by sse

Here at SSE we find the internet quite useful and employ our blogging skills quite routinely, as you can see. There are countless tools to choose from, web 2.0 or not: along with the blog, we utilise e-newsletters, the facebook group, online resources, an extranet, and more recently an online bookstore. As Brett Bonfield reported recently however, virtual social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo etc) can both be a blessing and a pain to non-profits. Bonfield gives some hints…

Who is likely to get the most value out of social networking sites? To
answer this question, Idealware spoke to a number of nonprofit
technologists working with social networking tools. We searched beyond
the success stories to discover tales of only middling success, or even
of disappointment. What resulted were two sets of guidelines: first,
how to know if social networking isn’t right for you and second, some
of the ways that social networking might benefit your organization.

Bonfield provides a quite useful check-list to go through if you are in doubt if using the web is valuable to your organisation. It should come as no surprise that not all social entrepreneurs find networking sites online helpful, as using the resources correctly is a skill-set that constantly needs updating and development. More importantly perhaps, not all groups that social entrepreneurs target have access to the internet nor find use in online features.

While online sites are good for networking and information sharing, it is sometimes hard to see the obvious benefit a social entrepreneurial organisation can gather from the web. Some SEs base their whole operations online, while others ignore its usefulness completely, finding other ways to get by. As a whole though, it is hard to get away from the fact that tools like blogging, e-news letters, resource sites, facebook groups are very convenient for the social enterprise sector, with their low cost and high (potential) reach.

Could virtual networking work to you org’s benefit? I recommend you take a look at the check list!

Funding, the arts, and balance.

Posted on January 15, 2008 by sse

Leafing through the weekend papers, there’s a lot of reporting going on of the Arts Council cuts in funding, and how they are affecting arts organisations in different ways. Admittedly, the bleeding-heart liberal, left-leaning, cappuccino–supping papers I read are arguably more likely to cover theatre types getting angry, but coverage on the whole shebang, on legal threats, on literature translation, and much more seems quite a lot over the course of two or three days. Where was the media when the Community Champions fund, one of the few providing grassroots support to individual community activists, was ditched? [the CC fund provided up to £2000 to over 10,000 people and had a pretty impressive record of outcomes and impact too].

The message also seems confused: one article lambasted the amount spent on opera, whilst another pointed out how a regional opera company was having its funding cut as an example of a poor decision. Ultimately, you have to feel some sympathy with the funders: their overall funding is increasingly constricted (falling lottery sales + Olympics), and there are often no "right" answers in these cases. Whilst calls for ‘arts’ people to run these funds have some validity, the nuts and bolts of effective grant-giving is as much about measurement, monitoring and administration as about informed decision-making.

Clearly, the process could have gone better (pre-Xmas with little response time) and could, possibly, have been more transparent. But the coverage has seemed quite unbalanced. This article, for example, with the calming title of "the final reckoning", details 6 arts organisations facing cuts. All worthy ca(u)ses, particularly the two theatres, it would seem to me. But none facing extinction, and some facing a reduction of around a fifth or sixth of their annual budget: substantial, but how many third sector organisations enter a financial year with all their funding and budget secured? Indeed, the experiences of these arts organisations will chime with many in the third sector….though the amount of coverage / campaigning in the media is markedly different. And where is the coverage of the organisations (700+) receiving an increase in funding from March, and the details of what greater impact they can now have?

From an SSE point of view, it’s clear that this could affect students and Fellows who work in the arts sphere, of whom there are quite a few. On the other hand, several current students in London, and (shortly) in Liverpool and East Midlands have places funded by a programme which is supported (amongst others) by the Arts Council. Crucial support at a key stage of their journey in changing people’s lives through the arts.

Swings, as they say, and roundabouts: and no black and white answers.

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