Luke FitzHerbert

Posted on January 15, 2007 by sse

I was going to blog today about a couple of things that the ever-reliable Senscot newsletter reminded me of (namely, the widening of the definition of a social firm, and the Triodos ethical women awards), but then, reading the paper on the way home, I read the obituary of Luke Fitzherbert, and that all faded into the background.

For those who don’t know, Luke was a stalwart of the voluntary sector, created the original guide to major trusts for the Directory of Social Change, a voice of sanity and reason…and a remarkable fount of knowledge on fundraising, administration and transparency in the sector. He was also immensely influential, particularly on campaigning for greater rigour and clarity from grant-making trusts and foundations. He was an expert witness several times on SSE programmes, most recently at our Dartington residential in 2006 (one of the few venues he could cycle to, as he liked best to do). He gave fantastic advice and distilled wisdom to those present, with his normal inspirational mix of passion and integrity: as ever, he enthused about the small and the local, about helping those who need help most, and about the practical possibilities of making change with or without funds.

[He also gave great advice and help to one of our students in particular, Dave Pitchford of Intelligent Giving: you can read Dave’s tribute on the IG blog]

The Guardian obituary in the Society section last week was followed by one in the main section today. It makes me sad that I was too busy to notice this news last week, and also sad because it reminds me of the loss of another great iconoclast of the sector, my former colleague Nicholas Albery. Also a great user of human-powered transport (though walking, rather than cycling in his case), and who also died tragically in a traffic accident.

I only met Luke a couple of times, so don’t profess to have known him well. If you did, and wish to leave a tribute, you can do so via the DSC website…where you can also make a donation to a fund in his honour. The ever-growing page of tributes and condolences demonstrates the impact he had on a huge number of lives, and how sorely he will be missed.

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What is a system social entrepreneur?

Posted on January 8, 2007 by sse

Stumbled across an interesting new blog just before Xmas, entitled The Shaftesbury Partnership. It’s a name that conjures up any number of interesting possibilities, but is in fact a kind of ethical business consultancy working primarily with what it calls “system social entrepreneurs”. The people involved include Nat Wei, co-founder of Teach First, and programme director of Future Leaders (recently featured in the Guardian).

So what is a system social entrepreneur? I think it’s worth pasting up their entire post on this:

“Social entrepreneurs are those who take
aspects of entrepreneurship most commonly but not exclusively
associated with the private sector, using it for social good. In its
most enhanced form, the business model underlying such entrepreneurship
includes an element of income self-generated from the social economy.

There are two main types of social entrepreneur (though on rare
occasions both types can appear in one person): community social
entrepreneurs and system social entrepreneurs. Community social
entrepreneurs are locally based, working at grass-roots level. System
social entrepreneurs have both the skills and the inclination to grow
initiatives to national size, affecting the entire system. System
social entrepreneurship tends to take a strategic top-down approach
working on issues that governments and the public see as some of the
most intractable and challenging, but by working with community
entrepreneurs on a grass-roots level it hopes to make real impact as
well on the ground reaching parts that governments and other
traditional agencies find harder to reach.

For large-scale social improvement (in the public sphere and
elsewhere), both community and system entrepreneurs are needed, working
together to address poverty.”

It is the differentiation between ‘system’ and ‘community’ social entrepreneurs that I find most interesting here. Some might argue there is an element of elitism here (note that community social entrepreneurs don’t have the ‘skills’ or ‘inclination’ to take things national / scale up, according to these definitions; giving them the opportunity to learn those skills, and gain confidence and ambition to use them might be a thought), but there is also more than a grain of truth. Certainly Teach First and Future Leaders have been strategic, top-down approaches to addressing unmet needs, and appear to be working well (I met Brett Wigdortz, the CEO of Teach First, at a conference recently and was impressed breitling kopior with him and their work). But the division seems slightly too stark to me here, and perhaps over-emphasises the ‘rarity’ of community social entrepreneurs who start local but grow to become national.

Think of Anita Roddick who started with one shop in Brighton, or John Bird, who started with a monthly publication in London. Or, more recently, Colin Crooks, who started Green Works with one small local outlet. Whilst it is true to say that the majority of SSE Fellows are what might be termed ‘community social entrepreneurs’, there are certainly a fair proportion who would probably balk at that term. Also worth noting that our recent evaluation (by the New Economics Foundation) addresses this point:

“Sometimes SSE fellows are described as being simply local community activists working for local people solving local problems. This evaluation aims to contribute to the debate as we find that whilst social entrepreneurs are working locally they often face challenges produced by processes beyond their immediate sphere of control. Some fellows are seeking to counteract disempowerment by ‘scale jumping’ to assert their specific concerns and actively seek to shape and change public policy at local and even national and international levels.

There is also danger that the ‘local-people-solving-local-problems’ view may strengthen a dangerous assumption that social enterprise is the panacea that will solve social ills on the ground, thereby relinquishing responsibility for addressing these ills directly, or more importantly their underlying and systemic causes.

The SSE programme is designed and delivered in a way that is sensitive to the diverse needs and attitudes of the students who are striving to achieve positive change for communities. The spirit of the SSE experience is in the way it seeks, through the endeavours of its students, to reverse trends of social exclusion, poverty and disempowerment at local, national and international levels. SSE guides students through a process of personal transformation, organisational development and by supporting a community of social entrepreneurs as part of a network that can work on a long-term basis to create wider and lasting change.”

The other interesting point for me is that the description of a system social entrepreneur here sounds very much like strategic social innovation, rather than person-led social entrepreneurship involving risk, opportunism, personal responsibility, challenging the status quo and so on….but then perhaps going down that road is too stark a differentiation from my side as well. The bottom line is that we need entrants to this movement from all backgrounds, working at all levels to solve complex problems; and working together where it brings benefits and improved results.

Optimism, links and learning for 2007

Posted on January 2, 2007 by sse

After a slightly cynical last blog post of 2006 (albeit an attempt to raise a smile or two), this blog starts 2007 with relentless optimism coursing through its veins. Well, it could still be alcohol, but I’m pretty sure it’s optimism. So, here’s some great reading to start the year:

– firstly, Yahoo have been running this thing called Yahoo for Good! using ‘charity badges’ which are basically online donation widgets for your blog or website; they guaranteed to match fund the badge raising the most money up to December 31st to the tune of $50,000. The winner, by quite a distance, was the Sharing Foundation via Beth’s Blog, which raised pretty much $50,000 (at time of writing) from 745 donations: fantastic work, and outpunching the mighty Worldchanging as well in the top 10.

Charity badges (and a badge contest) are a great web fundraising idea, and I look forward to it being rolled out in the UK, by Yahoo or someone else: well done to all who took part.

– next up, you can read 50 of the brightest minds in the business world detailing their advice for how to succeed in 2007 (at CNNMoney.com); this includes Sergey Brin on simplicity, Richard Branson on ‘how to say no’, Stephen Covey on ‘striving for moral authority’, Muhammad Yunus on ‘big rewards from small ideas’, Malcolm Gladwell on ‘teamwork’ and, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Howard Schultz (the Chairman of Starbucks) with ‘dare to be a social entrepreneur‘, although he’s really making a point about treating your people right, as well as your customers. Anyway, much inspiration for the year ahead here.

– Springwise are doing lots of top 10 business ideas of 2006 lists, including the top 10 eco business ideas of 2006, which includes Greentomato cars, the eco-cab firm in London (one of the directors, Jonny, is a friend of a friend, and they’ve had an amazing year), carbon offsets by SMS, and a ‘zen approach to the cleaning industry’….all good stuff

– I don’t know how I’ve managed to avoid blogging about it before, but Kiva is pretty outstanding as well; see this article on Salon for an intro/explanation (via Audeamus), or their founder’s blog on Social Edge

– also worth noting an article on Grist (a fine resource itself) by John Elkington and Mark Lee about what big business can learn from social and environmental entrepreneurs, which includes the marvellous description of Muhammad Yunus as the "social entrepreneur’s social entrepreneur" for the replication of his Grameen model…

– a top 8, just to break the rules, of lessons for those wishing to scale (from the Global Social Benefit Incubator)

– and finally, for those of you with book tokens to spare after the Xmas period, enjoy the Entrepeneur’s Holiday Bookshelf which has recommendations from business professors . I particularly enjoyed the recommendation of Moby Dick for its lessons of bad management: "It’s the story of an entrepreneur who violates the trust of all the
constituencies that support him…financial backers, employees, and
customers. It’s the original story of how not to do it"

Happy New Year.

The Third Sector and Social Enterprise in 2007

Posted on December 21, 2006 by sse

I’ve been inspired by Rob Greenland’s spoof of what will happen to social enterprise in 2007, so have decided to have a go myself:

JANUARY: The New Year starts with a celebration as the first combined ‘Cooperative Community Interest Company Limited Liability Firm Trust Association by Guarantee with a trading arm’ is officially established. The social enterprise, thought to be the first to simultaneously hold more than eight legal structures at the same time, will focus on developing new acronyms for organisations in the third sector. Its first piece of work is its own name: COCOCOLILIFITAG or CocoLili, for short.

FEBRUARY: A flagship conference is held, attended by the great and good of the sector. Entitled "Definition not delivery: the importance of pontification", the event includes seminars on ‘Make meetings your entire life’, ‘Partnership as a route to entropy’, and ‘Keep it simple stupid: the art of doing nothing’. Five sub-committees are set up on the back of the event to research joint working, silo defining, and deciding what the committees’ names should be.

MARCH: Several luminaries of the sector are injured after a meeting room implodes after a consultation on how many consultations it takes to consult a consultant.

APRIL: The words ‘public service delivery’ are reported to have officially become a mantra for those who worship the god ‘Procurement’. Social enterprise employees and medium-sized charity workers are heard to be muttering the three-word incantation as they go about their business. Social psychologist Professor Timothy Snaffle said, "It’s extraordinary how those three words have become so central to these people’s lives in such a short time. We’ve also started to hear variations on the prayer involving the word ‘Compact’ and ‘commissioning documents’ ".

MAY: A branding consultation is held on what a fairtrade-type brand for social enterprise might look like. Several days are spent sitting on strangely-shaped beanbags in a room with a blue-sky painted on…until it is decided that the logo should be a hand giving a thumbs-up. The Thumbs Up initiative is launched with a great fanfare, and several members of the public notice.

JUNE: Jamie Oliver is appointed as Shadow Minister for Social Entrepreneurs by David Cameron. A by-product of this is cookbook sales funding the party, ensuring the proportion of earned income allows the Conservative party to be called a social enterprise. Labour follows suit, reconstituting itself as a CIC.

JULY: During a heatwave, a social enterprise called ‘A Breath of Fresh Air’ cashes in with solar-powered mini-fans which go down a storm across the UK.

AUGUST: Confusion reigns as someone introduces a fourth bottom line. Financial, social and environmental are joined by ‘technological’. Social enterprises rapidly adjust their balanced scorecards to evaluate their technological return on investment (TROI), and the number of references to web 2.0 in business plans proliferates exponentially.

SEPTEMBER: Non-profit research experts ENC (Emperor’s New Clothes) release an evaluation which estimates the value of the sector’s values at £1.2bn. This contribution is said by commentators to be ‘undeniable’, ‘incalculable’, ‘immeasurable’ and ‘invaluable’ in subsequent commentary.

OCTOBER: At the Social Enterprise X-Factor finals, controversy reigns after it is revealed that one of the finalists is a registered charity. Louis Walsh is said to be "flabbergasted".

NOVEMBER: The NHS is now officially a social enterprise, after 50% of the PCTs changed into social firms. The government announces that the country should be proud of this amazing achievement, making the UK’s healthcare system the largest social enterprise this side of the Chinese army (which is a co-operative, of course) and the Indian railway (itself a development trust association).

DECEMBER: The Social Enterprise Awards To Outstanding First-class People And New Team Success awards are won by the NHS, with the Conservative party a close second. In his keynote speech, Muhammad Yunus says, "I have no idea what a keynote is, but I am delighted to be here and support these awards. These fledgling institutions demonstrate the power that can be unleashed by social entrepreneurs in their communities. Now we must see if they can scale up".

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