Will a new toolbelt help social entrepreneurs?

Posted on August 11, 2010 by sse

The SE Toolbelt is an online information platform aiming to provide social entrepreneurs with practical resources that have been developed by their peers. It boasts 1000 or so items of various shapes and sizes on its data base, and these are grouped broadly by business topics and sectors.
From the School’s point of view, you can imagine an ideal scenario where someone with a fledgling project could find a precedent, capitalise on pre-existing market research and a functioning business model, and adapt them to a new enterprise. More developed organisations could research approaches to scaling best practice or SROI in a format that is, in principle, an extension of, or addition to, the peer learning process.

Thumbing through the available materials, however, I’m sceptical of the claim that SE Toolbelt “brings a grassroots practitioner perspective to the fore”. The site is a library of business school-esque articles on topics from Marketing and External Communications to Risk Management – interesting in themselves, but part of the top-down academic approach that the site is hoping to challenge.
It is easier to see a way for a collection of case studies to find their way into the SSE programme, supplementing live witness sessions with further examples.

At the moment though, most studies are based in North America, or hot beds of social enterprise in the developing world, particularly India. There is relatively little based in, or coming from the UK, which means students will always be dealing with a different legal system, funding structure, cultural and social context etc. But this doesn’t stop entrepreneurs in the UK getting involved, and it may be that as the site grows it will become increasingly relevant. Like any online platform, Toolbelt will be useful if it’s used.

[Richard is currently interning with SSE, helping on a wide variety of projects. You can also follow @SEToolbelt on Twitter]

Is trust the most radical and efficient thing we have?

Posted on June 30, 2010 by sse

A little while back, I wrote a post about whether a trust-based society could help square the public service delivery circle: the idea being that, in a time of fewer resources but greater need, removing middling tiers of bureaucratic infrastructure from top-down projects could help more resources reach the grassroots and allow more delivery and impact to take place. That a 'contract-based' society that emphasises monitoring rather than measurement, accountability rather than transparency, is actually a hindrance to genuine devolution. (On that subject, there's an interesting piece worth reading on whether we there is now a risk of a new 'transparency bureaucracy' being created….).

There is an updated version of the paper SSE's chair Charlotte Young has written on this subject, downloadable as a pdf, which asks (and begins to answer): How Can Social Entrepreneurs Help Build A Big Society (pdf)

I was reminded of this reading this article yesterday by Aditya Chakrabortty about A Revolution in Global Aid which describes how cash is starting to be simply, well, given to the poor. No large infrastructure projects with government-NGO-private sector partnerships, but a devolving of money straight to those who need it. On the one hand, cash transfers like this sound ridiculously naive (as some of the comments below the article say), but it is actually about focusing on the best use of resources, about challenging the status quo, about being aware of the risks but being prepared to be radical. And about focusing on the outcomes, rather than on the intermediary processes and bureaucracy.

So, without wishing to sound like a hippy seeking to hug it out with all and sundry, I do wonder if trust could be a core part of the answer to the question that so many are asking in different ways: how can we deliver more for less? how can we achieve more efficiency but increase impact? how can we use the current circumstances to foster innovation at the grassroots? how do we create a big society?

And trust comes in different forms: not just trust from official bodies that money will be spent in a particular way, not just the trust that needs to return in those official institutions (political, financial), not just the trust to be (re)built in communities and between neighbours, not just the trust each social entrepreneur needs to build in their own work and those who support them, but also the trust in oneself to create and be part of change. As a wiser man than I put it (the playwright Chekhov), "You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible".

[hat tip as ever to the utterly brilliant Indexed blog for the image]

Charlie Kalsi: social entrepreneur from Hampshire

Posted on June 23, 2010 by sse

It's always a pleasure to go out to the various franchises around the country and meet the social entrepreneurs that are moving their projects along, and seeking to change things. Our Hampshire SSE
has been running since the autumn in Portsmouth and are recruiting for the next programme already. Here's a video of one of their current students which demonstrates the support it's been giving to those looking to start up a social enterprise, a social business or a charity.

HSSE Case Study – Charlie Kalsi from Shedlight on Vimeo.

Deep impact: the how, who and why of social enterprise measurement

Posted on June 11, 2010 by sse

It was a full day of impact measurement on Wednesday this week. Which for an evaluation + metrics geek such as myself, is a day of utter joy….

First up, I did my "Introduction to social impact measurement" workshop with the new SSE Cornwall cohort of social entrepreneurs. The starting point for us is to help them get a full understanding of the story of how they make a difference (their "theory of change"), before diving into indicators, tools and methodologies. As well as demystifying some of the measurement jargon…

What's always interesting about the process of mapping that story out (a methodology unapologetically cribbed + developed from the new economics foundation) is that it is also an incredibly useful planning tool, and also leads to better communication of the project or idea. The message I emphasised was the importance of measurement in the current climate: funding or investment or contracts without strong evidence will be extremely scarce. So it is more crucial than ever. And there are no excuses for not measuring our social impact; a point I was also making in this video (quickly!) at Chain Reaction's Stronger Communities get-together on the Big Society.

Having come back from Penzance on the longest-train-journey-in-the-world (possibly), I headed down to the Garden Museum for the SE100 awards event, wondering who would win. Read more about the winners and the event here. It is an excellent initiative which recognises growth in turnover, but also has impact measurement built into its very core. Congrats to Mow and Grow, FRC Group and Create Leeds, and to all the nominees. And congrats to Tim West and the team at Social Enterprise Mag (along with all their various partners + sponsors) for pioneering the index. As Doug Richard noted in his closing words, when a sector or movement has an index, it's getting serious. And for me, an important development to have the recognition of awards tied to demonstrable evidence and proof of success: again, incentivising others to grow their impact, and measure that impact. Which, as Peter Holbrook and Nick Hurd said, is exactly what will be required in the current economic situation. I'm hopeful that some of those Cornwall SSE students, and others around the UK, will be applying for the trailblazer award next year.

It is well worth reading the full SE100 documentation, which includes some interesting discussions about the Future Jobs Fund (which was crucial to Mow and Grow's growth), regional breakdown of the 100 organisations, and several really good practical case studies of how impact can be grown and measured.

Finally, it was interesting to note the announcement on the same day by Nick Hurd of the end of Futurebuilders in its current form. Future revenue from the fund (i.e. in loan repayments) will be used to give grants to stimulate the creation of groups and initiatives at a local + neighbourhood level; to be called "Communities First", according to a speech by Francis Maude. On the one hand, I largely agree with this decision: in the manifesto pulled together by social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneur support agencies, we called for freer, direct local investment in locally-based social entrepreneurs through seedcorn grants and support (see here for detail); we recommended this because "many start-up and fledgling social entrepreneur-led initiatives are
responding to needs in their own communities not being met by any
current, commissioned public service provision" and that freer local investment is key to "encouraging innovation, active citizenship, and devolution of power"; I think this has much crossover with what is being proposed.

On the other hand, as we're discussing impact, the evaluation of Futurebuilders is worth a look (full report pdf here). Reading it for me, I don't think there's much doubt that it became more efficient, in its second incarnation, at giving out funds and selecting appropriate organisations for those loans (conversion rate, disbursement etc). Indeed, the evidence for impact on organisations' financial health and ability to deliver public services is strong; that for social returns and outcomes much less so. And there are some strong findings about the fact that these were new, 'unbankable' loans not being made elsewhere, providing new capital (i.e. they were highly 'additional')

Around 19% of loans went to smaller organisations (income under £100k) which is higher than I thought. Though it is interesting to also see that those organisations only won 10% of the contracts that FB investors gained (large orgs with turnover over £1m gained 46% of contracts by value). One assumes that all this has been fed into the decision-making process, otherwise (in effect), why do it: certainly, the evaluation's conclusion notes that social investment of this type will have to be looked at again in the context of more constrained social finances. And it is perhaps a decision also as much about policy emphasis (on social capital, community responsibility, and so on, as opposed to a relatively restricted version of 'public service delivery contracts') as about the type of investment (grant rather than loan). It will be fascinating to see what form the Big Society Bank takes, which Nick Hurd has stated is top of his agenda, and how it builds on all the experimentation and experience of the full range of social investors, including Futurebuilders.

Social enterprise + social entrepreneurship links of the week (to 23/4/10)

Posted on April 26, 2010 by sse

In times gone by, I used to scan through the SSE bookmarks on del.icio.us for what we had been noting and reading during a week gone by. Now, increasingly, it's looking back through the tweets on the SSE Twitter account as well. Anyway, here's a few of the more interesting links of relevance and interest: from last week:

– Probably the most read set of articles was McKinsey's selection on social entrepreneurship to coincide with the Skoll Forum. I found "It takes a network" the most interesting of those, particularly Raj Kumar's closing thought that:

"In time, the social-enterprise community may find that measuring scale
and impact at the network level (rather than at the level of the
individual enterprise) is a more accurate measure of the true scale of
social change and a better way for investors to gauge the return on
their social investment."

– SSE Fellow Junior Smart made the Independent's list of 100 People making Britain Happy

– Ben Metz wrote a challenging post on the Guardian blog ("Let's be honest about social enterprise") about how the UK should be more honest about what it's got wrong as well as right, and the need for a co-ordinated international approach. It also took at a few sideswipes along the way at some existing schemes, which prompted comments and other fall-out (which you can find on Ben's follow-up blog post). I don't agree with it all, but am inclined to agree with Rod Schwartz's comment ("If we are unable to look at ourselves critically we will be forever sub-par, inadequate and amateurish")

– More sessions up for the forthcoming SHINE unconference and also opportunities to volunteer; buy your tickets soon…..

– The Guardian and the Social Enterprise Coalition did some good work comparing the various 'social policy' and 'social enterprise' aspects of the manifestos; worth reading David Wilcox and Rob Greenland on the Conservatives' #bigsociety stuff especially, of which more soon.

– New nfpSynergy research found that small charities were more trusted and perceived as less wasteful than larger ones, though more likely to be amateurish.

– More business school graduates say they want a career with ethical / social purpose. Open to comments on whether this is a good or a bad thing :0)

That's all for now. Will leave you with this cartoon which some of you may find appropriate ;0)