Ok, so what with the pressures of Shine, a swathe of documents to write, and two new programmes starting, things have been a little busy. Also been covering some ground of late: Liverpool, Nottingham, Leeds and so on….all good stuff. Particularly enjoyed the board meeting at EMSSE: great to see the progress the organisation has made under Fergus Brazel, with much assistance from the board; and also enjoyed delivering my measuring social impact session with the cultural social entrepreneurs in Liverpool. What a great bunch they are, and look forward to seeing their progress over the coming months.

Anyway, here’s a long overdue round-up:

– Adele Blakebrough, CEO of CAN, is stepping aside to spend more time with her family (whilst retaining an involvement in their Breakthough investment fund). CAN and SSE started at a similar juncture around 10 or 11 years ago, and have worked together on direct delivery of support, on the founding of UnLtd and, more recently, on promoting the policy agenda for social entrepreneurs. Adele is a unique, engaging and inspiring presence in the sector, and that energy and passion will be sorely missed. She’ll be welcome as an expert witness here anytime ;0)

– At the recent Good Deals conference, a couple of things stood out for me: the first was the social enterprise ambassadors launching their first campaign, called More For Your Money, about the added value the movement brings; the second was a typically rabble-rousing effort by (ambassador) Nigel Kershaw about the need for incentives to attract investment (interestingly mentioning that 3 of the 1706 CICs have received inward investment of this type)

– OTS is investing about £350,000 on developing a standard for measuring SROI; it’s a thorny, complex area, but if (even limited) consensus can be achieved, the benefits could be substantial….watch and wait.

– At a recent ACEVO conference, Baroness Glenys Thornton (formerly chair of Social Enterprise Coalition), mentioned her beginnings in this world, which is relevant to us / our founder:

"I was very fortunate when I was a young woman to work for one of the
20th century’s social entrepreneurs – Michael Young. He’s a person who
gave birth to many of the great ideas we take for granted today, like
the Open University and the School for Social Entrepreneurs. The thing
he taught me was that you mustn’t be afraid of coming up with ideas and
testing it to see if it works. He was always prepared for ideas not to
work."

From what I know from those who worked with him, that certainly rings true.

– And on that note of ideas not working, here’s a cheery little piece called the Six Signs of NonProfit Decline., which includes both the obvious ("1. Loss of all or a significant portion of support from a key funding source") and the less obvious ("3. Sudden and dramatic expansion of services"). Interesting to note, and put alongside your organisation, or those in your sector….

– And finally, for those who missed my session at Shine (where were you?), here’s my How and Why to blog set of slides….feel free to use (with credit!):

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It’s been a busy few weeks here at SSE HQ: on top of our biggest graduation event ever, it is reporting season (aka the end of the financial year), which means spreadsheets and outcomes till the cows come home. It has been nice to look back at one three-year grant and see how closely we have delivered on what we said we would (it helped fund network development / franchise package)….though I am pretty much in the fifth circle of box-tick, form-fill hell by now. Still, worse to have no funding to report back on, so I’ll cut the carping.

Alongside that, I’ve presented to Finnish and Chinese visitors, delivered a policy and lobbying workshop up in Birmingham (and re-found an SSE Fellow: hello Parminder), and put in motion the changes to our extranet. Also, preparation for the Skoll World Forum of Social Entrepreneurship. Alastair, our CEO, and I will be presenting on the ‘fringe’ at 8am on Thursday, I am led to believe. Those who’ve suggested we deserve our place there for comedy reasons should know that there is nothing funny about an 8am presentation….ever. If you’re coming, come along and see how much caffeine I’ve managed to down.

I’ll also try and write up some thoughts here as the event goes along. This will be my 5th forum (yes, I’ve been to every one), and it’s certainly changed a bit over the years. For a start, it was free the first time (thankfully, as I was running a tiny non-profit at the time), but is now a price that would make Rob Greenland blanch. And after Ben Kingsley, Robert Redford and Al Gore in previous years, ex-president Jimmy Carter is making an appearance this year. SSE is going, largely because of networking, particularly in relation to potential international partners; and because there’s a lot of interesting thinking to get a handle on (if I can follow it). It’s useful, particularly, to get a sense of how people view what you’re doing when coming to it completely fresh with none of the baggage and politics (i.e. from abroad)….and also for us to remind the ‘scaling up’, systems-changing brigade that social entrepreneurship is also about inclusion, opportunity, and grassroots, local, sustainable change. (I will be taking the soapbox).

So, no time for now to review Andrew Mawson’s book, the Social Entrepreneur (teaser one line-review: lots of Mawson, but also lots of passion and insights, + is very readable in snappy, bitesize chunks; worth buying), or to look forward to the first UK Ashoka Fellows (announced / revealed on Friday), or to tell all about the forthcoming Shine unconference (Facebook grp).

And no time, indeed, to discuss how SSE was present when Stephen Bubb (chair of Adventure Capital Fund, taking over Futurebuilders) met Richard Gutch (outgoing chief exec of current Futurebuilders) at the recent ACEVO conference for the first time since the surprise switch was announced….though I can confirm that hell did not freeze over, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse did not appear….