Friday round-up: Ferrero Rocher, Facebook, and Fellows

It’s Friday, it’s 6pm, it can mean only one thing: the weekly round-up of news….

– On Monday, the Ambassadors will be announced…watch this space for Ferrero Rochers etc.

– Here’s a big catalogue of measurement and evaluation tools and guides and kits and blah for the 3rd sector

– What are the top 12 nonprofit Facebook apps? These are. Now you can clutter your Facebook page with worthy stuff as well as pirates and zombies.

– If the entry before didn’t make sense, SSE Fellow Jude Habib is running a web 2.0 seminar (pdf) for third sector orgs…

– Apparently, there was some shenanigans in the world of politics this past week or two. Amongst the copycat and namecalling antics, the sector remained pretty much as was.

Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize, don’t you know…..

Good books and magazines for social entrepreneurs? Any suggestions? Happy to add to our SSE Links / Resources pages

– I missed this article about SSE Fellow Michelle Baharier’s Cooltan Arts project the other week. Great stuff.

– Inheritance tax isn’t the big property issue: estate agents’ (realtors, US readers) carbon footprint, that’s the issue. Which makes Pedal to Properties a work of genius.

On which note I bid you farewell and a happy weekend……

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Natural death for a new life; or why to walk your talk

No matter what interaction I have with SSE students, about evaluation, online stuff, replication, publications etc., only one thing seems to stand out for some of them: that I used to work at the Natural Death Centre. This did not, as one friend ‘jokingly’ introduced me at a party once, involve me "putting people down", but giving independent funeral advice to the public, particularly around ecologically-friendly funerals. It’s a wonderful, tiny organisation that deserves much more support; and it was a great experience working there.

I mention that because last week was the farewell / celebration drinks of a long-term volunteer at NDC, Billy. Farewell and celebration because, after over 5 years as a volunteer, he’s got a job at a funeral directors in Kilburn. Over the years, along with many others, Billy kept us going, sane, amused, caffeinated and, most of all, able to do what we did (as well as doing the majority of the crossword). What was great about the evening was also seeing three other volunteers who we’d taken on at the NDC: Jo, who is now a marketing executive at RNID; Paul, who works for HTEN in Hackney; and Mike, who now runs the NDC. All now fully employed in the third sector, along with Steph, my former colleague, who is now involved with an initiative called Bags Of Change (like a loyalty card crossed with a bag for life: check it out).

As I went home, it occurred to me anew that my old organisation embodied one argument we’ve been making about social enterprise/entrepreneurship: that it’s as much about the change that comes about through and within organisations as the change that is delivered by them to beneficiaries. Which is why scaling up social impact is not just about bigger organisations. The NDC, largely funded by sales of its own in-house publications, has helped thousands of people with independent advice and practical help over the years. But its impact has also been through its organisational values and culture: as Billy put it more eruditely than I could, "an empathy and understanding towards people" that extended inwards as well as outwards. And his journey (volunteer, publishing graduate, Helena Kennedy Foundation mentor, funeral assistant) is just one example of that.

We got a lot of things wrong at NDC (‘we’ meaning ‘I’) and learned a lot in the process, but one thing I do think we got right, and for which I claim no credit at all, is instilling a culture of support, of certain values, and of understanding, that remains to this day. Being sincere, genuine and authentic in the way you operate can bring benefits that are sometimes not instantly obvious; but sometimes, as at Billy’s drinks on Friday, they become all too apparent.

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Innovation Exchange launch

SSE was just at the Innovation Exchange launch (website launches for real on Friday) which was at NESTA. NESTA have decided to stump up £200k development cash for the InnovEx programme as well, which was announced at the event by their chief exec Jonathan Kestenbaum.

He was followed by Glenys Thornton, who talked of "relating ambition to the lived experience" and said many a thank you, as befitted her role as chair of the exchange.

Next up was Valerie Hannon, Director of the Innovation Unit (who, along with ACEVO and Headshift, are the three constituent partners). She explained the nuts and bolts of the approach and how it would work…namely 2 Innovation Networks (to start with) around particular themes (living independently and excluded young people) followed by 2 Next Practice Programmes to further develop ideas / projects. With a mix of investment, development, advice, challenge etc. One key point is the emphasis on the supply as well as the demand side (aka commissioners and funders). The two themes were selected because they were a) high up in public priorities b) had high innovation potential in the 3rd sector and c) had the potential for investment.

We then heard from 4 individual innovators.

Julie Dent talked about her work within and without the NHS (including, memorably, kimono-style gowns to ensure "old men’s bottoms" aren’t on full display). Her tips for success included the question of ownership and that more money may not be the answer.

Colin Crooks, of Green Works, discussed how they’d addressed market failure and how "accidental networking" had helped them achieve what they had. in classic entrepreneurial style, he also put a call out to invest in a new strand of work….

Hilary Simon, of the Southwark Pensioners Centre, emphasised the need for long-term planning and sustainability, and how a people-centred approach could help develop services from the bottom-up.

Then Neil McIntosh of CfBT explored the difficulties of remaining innovative whilst selling services to government. The answer? Being true to your mission (and, crucially, having the resources to allow you to stay true, scale up, be bold, and do research). He also had a direct message for government to get their people moving in the right direction…

Which led neatly on to Phil Hope, Minister for the Third Sector, who I found quite engaging (first time I’d seen him speak) and sound. He had a nice line about having spent the weekend delivering 6,000 leaflets, "somewhat unnecessarily as it turned out" to open, and then continued from there. Nothing revelatory, but detailed various policies and programmes (social investment bank, 3 yr contracts, full cost recovery) and drew attention to the 3rd sector’s history of innovation, which he put down to its independence of mind, value-driven purpose, and dogged optimism. He ended by saying that 3rd sector orgs could now choose to be a campaigner, a deliverer or an innovator….or a combination of all three.

It’s an exciting initiative, but everyone was keenly aware that everything seems exciting at this point…the devil will be in the detail of the delivery. It was a good turnout, with a good mix of people (government, funders, support agencies, second tier policy networks, think tanks etc), so join the website on Friday (no doubt a link will appear on the blog) and watch the space….

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Friday round-up: Give Big, play Footsey, scale up, drink Fairtrade McDonald’s coffee…

As the champagne corks pop for the weekend, here’s the round-up of news and links:

– Bill Clinton’s been in town promoting his book, Giving, but of equal interest might be The Big Give website for potential donors….

Social enterprise is on the curriculum in schools from September 2008. Those of you who did Business Studies at school will no doubt have your own opinions about whether this is a good or bad thing….

SSE is heading up to Footsey later in October: see you there, people….CAN are also having a ‘Scaling Social Enterprise‘ event on October 30th; we’re on our residential, but looks like a good event

– The evening before Footsey is the Enterprising Solutions Awards, which should mean a few hangovers on the train to York. Word on the street is that it’s ‘cocktail dress’ (!), so look forward to the great and good being suited and booted.

– The 3rd Sector Minister has been out and about visiting two well-known social enterprises in the East Midlands.

– Get Sustainable Funding in Wales

–  Fairtrade in NY Times and (coffee-wise) used by McDonalds

Have a good weekend…..

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Page 3 shocker: social entrepreneur pleads with government

Excuse the tabloid-esque headline, but I was a little shocked to find Camila Batmanghelidjh, erstwhile social entrepreneur-founder of Kids Company, on page 3 of the Sunday paper, pleading with government for money. Kids’ Company are widely recognised as a hugely successful organisation delivering exactly the kind of outcomes that society and government want: helping teenagers and children who have been neglected or abused, and helping them avoid getting into further trouble / into a cycle of crime and exclusion.

Batmangehlidjh’s desperation certainly comes across in the article, referencing her own personal commitment / risk (re-mortgaging her house twice, running the organisation for 11 years) and detailing how much she wants to return to the front-line of helping the children. As she puts it:

"The kids and staff want me back at street level. What am I doing,
walking around going to cocktail parties and doing handshakes and photo
opportunities for money?"

Which is something that scale / profile can bring to an organisation…problems as well as benefits. It is translating the higher profile and recognition (which Batmanghelidjh has raised incomparably) into funding and benefits to the organisation that is so important and, sometimes, so difficult. And using the media in this fashion is an interesting tactic: how will the government react to "a long-term funding package" being demanded of them in such a public arena? Particularly, as their spokesman puts it, "We are in the process of finalising the budget for the next three years. These concerns are a little premature." (aka, we’re pretty likely to fund them anyway). Given that countless charitable organisations are trying to close a deficit for the end of the financial year / next year’s budget, and they would all like a long-term funding package from government, some might ask why should Kids’ Company be a special case? Or, to be really cynical, is this as much about keeping the profile high?

You will get no disagreement from me that the organisation should be supported: its work and its leader are widely recognised as delivering effectively, and having a real, tangible impact. But will the Observer do a supporting editorial for every charity/social enterprise in a similar position, many of whom have nothing like the profile? Lobbying government is different from trying to badger or bully it and, as some of the comments underneath the editorial suggest, it could raise questions about the organisation, however unfair (is she the only person out of 181 staff doing any fundraising, and asking over 20,000 sources on her own?). As well as raising questions about this method of campaigning: as one comment puts it: "if this leader reflects the direction that the discussion is heading,
I’d advise fundraisers put aside their lottery application forms and
simply phone Max Clifford instead"

On the flipside, there will be those that argue that this is the most effective way for the organisation to translate its and its founder’s profile into sustainable funding, and that lots of charities use the media to campaign and challenge government on a regular basis. It’s also putting a very relevant debate on the table (fundraising / bureaucracy / complex funding sources / local vs central govt etc) for wider discussion and awareness. Which is welcome. And maybe the criticism comes from organisations which would love a similar profile and reputation?

Ultimately, we’ll see how it turns out; I’d imagine they will get another 3-year government funding package, particularly given their work hits one of the key priorities, and given the evidence from the evaluations that have been conducted into their impact. But I wonder if the long-term effects of this move might not be wholly positive.

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