Category Archives: Voluntary Sector

The perils and delights of public service delivery

Posted on by

Public service delivery: those three words dominate the third sector’s relationship with government at present. Contracts to deliver education or health services (etc) clearly bring great opportunities for organisations, be they small community groups, or substantial social enterprises. But, in the manner of a swift SWOT analysis (or an OT analysis), contracts also bring threats or challenges.

Third Sector magazine’s supplement this week features "10 Ways to Better Contracts":

1) Make sure partnerships are beneficial to both parties
2) Share project risks fairly
3) Agree a reasonable timescale
4) Insist on full cost recovery
5) Make sure the bureaucracy is manageable
6) Agree only to projects that fit your mission statement
7) Highlight the added value you can provide
8) Maintain autonomy
9) Clarify staff roles
10) Monitor project progress

Later on they lay out a further six principles to help organisations on their way in this area. These are:

a) Know where to look
b) Full cost recovery
c) Use your charitable status to your advantage
d) Don’t feel intimidated
e) Know your limitations
f) Understand employment law

Some of these clearly align (4 and b, 7 and c, 3/5 and e) but I think they give a useful overview. Key ones from our experience both as an organisation, and helping others founding/running their organisations, are 5 and 6. The bureaucracy, particularly for smaller organisations, should not be underestimated, and can prove a significant administrative burden; partnership can ADD to these layers of bureaucracy as well. Avoiding mission drift is key: the temptation is always there to bend to fit contracts, which can skew or twist your core service and the way it is delivered. It can also take an organisation into areas where it has less expertise and experience. Being clear about where your expertise lies, and what parts of a contract (or method of approach) are most relevant to your organisation can lead to fruitful negotiations at the start of the process, rather than down the line.

Partnership is an interesting one as well: it can help form a coalition of parties whose skills and experience mesh well together, and provide smaller organisations with the ability to tender for bigger contracts than they could on their own. Successful partnerships should clearly add value, reduce unnecessary duplication and broaden reach (as we would argue our franchise system does for the SSE Network). But their are also significant risks: unclear governance, muddled purpose, blurred accountability, time-heavy meetings/administration, compatibility issues, dilution of activities and so on.

There’s much else to say here, and I would point people to ACEVO’s Full Cost Recovery site, NCVO’s work on the Compact and public services, and SEC’s pamphlets on public procurement for more useful information.

 

Share Button

Events in the sector – June/July 2006

Posted on by

OK, quick round-up of some conferences/events coming up that might be of interest:

– first up, for those of an academic learning, the 3rd Social Enterprise Research Conference is taking place at London South Bank University on the 22nd-23rd June; see the list of papers here

– on the same day, the 23rd, Community Links are hosting the Living Values conference, at which their report on values in the sector (aiming to "encourage boldness") will be launched; should be an interesting and timely event, and you can read a snippet from the report (pdf) via their website

– Social Firms Annual Conference, snappily titled ‘Shaping the Future: Supportive Employment, Successful Businesses", is on June 26th at my alma mater, Warwick University

– and, finally, the CICs – One Year On event is being held on July 10th; it promises to both celebrate and debate a year of the Community Interest Company…

If you have the time to go to them all, you’re clearly not working hard enough ;0)

Share Button

Supporting social entrepreneurs: views and counterviews

Posted on by

Excellent thought-provoking piece by Craig Dearden-Phillips on his blog, titled "The Way We Let Down Young Social Entrepreneurs". A few quotes/interesting points:

– three things are a barrier to success: funding, expert support, and personal development (aka "looking after yourself")

– "becoming a social entrepreneur means half the pay, twice the hours and
a lot less prestige than if you take a job at SEC, Unltd*, Business
Link, Scarman, CAN or whoever"

– "The social enterprise support structure is diverting investment away from real entrepreneurs and has become self-serving"

– "I haven’t yet met anybody
from the [social enterprise development] scene who has set the world on fire with their own social
enterprise"

You can see my reply below the post, but to summarise, I think Craig has some fair points…and ones I agree with less. Craig’s critique centres around the need for investment (different and more numerous forms of), but also points out the need for expert support (from people who understand what it is to set up something themselves, and who understand the sector) and the need for the individual to have personal support; to look after themselves, and not be isolated.

I don’t really disagree with any of that. I question whether more investment would solve ongoing problems of isolation, personal development and expert support…and that programmes that address all of these are needed to help the entrepreneur and their enterprise flourish and make lasting change….

Share Button

Scaling your replicable pilot franchise

Posted on by

In the world of social enterprise, a consistent mantra is the need to replicate, franchise, scale up…which somewhat overlooks the fact that some social entrepreneur-led organisations and initiatives are fit to their particular sphere or community….and nowhere else. Some projects are best kept at a certain scale (a size or catchment they may have been shaped to) and, also, to a certain duration (has anyone thought through what happens if every new project is eternally sustainable?).

Couple of interesting things worth a look in this context.

– An online discussion about "Why you shouldn’t scale up", in relation to E. F. Schumacher’s seminal "Small is Beautiful" concept; particularly interesting is the concept of scaling up ‘strategies or ideas’, rather than necessarily scaling up organisations and organisational frameworks….

– CAN’s new Pilot toolkit, which "takes you through three key stages of planning, monitoring and evaluating, providing the room and space for all the key players in your organization to contribute to its success"; you can download the Guide here and the Project Map here (both pdfs). It’s an interesting tool which SSE fed into…and could be used in various ways. It came out of their Beanstalk programme, which was set up to focus on social franchising, but widened to more general replication…..

– Also see an article about a (UK) social franchise that failed in Stanford Social Innovation Review: An Enterprising Failure (pdf); [see here for a brief description of Paul Harrod, one of the founders of the social franchise, Aspire, running a seminar in Oxford recently]

This topic is of interest to SSE not only because we are a social franchise (for various reasons: to avoid re-inventing the wheel; to bring expertise and experience to bear; to create genuine partnerships with local and regional organisations; to avoid parachuting in people from outside the area; to create a strong and vibrant network etc.), but also because it is a question that many of our students and fellows face….how to have the greatest impact / be most effective? Lean and mean, large and powerful? Or small and beautiful….

Share Button

Social entrepreneurs: hard heads and high minds

Posted on by

Just a quick note to point out that Third Sector magazine has a feature on social entrepreneurs this week, which provides an interesting overview of the field of social entrepreneurship, and features SSE heavily (indeed, the title of the piece comes from our "for the high minded and the hard headed"strapline). As ever, featuring SSE heavily only makes it a more interesting read ;0) You can also view the article via the main SSE website.

There is also an interesting article by the indefatigable Laurence Demarco on the Senscot website (here), which also raises the question of placing too much emphasis on ‘heroic individuals’. This is something that sometimes gets thrown at the school, and we do believe in the capacity of the individual entrepreneur to lead and drive change (and that people make a model a success, and not the other way round), but our ethos is also firmly on group learning, peer support and networks of development.

That is why we feel the cohort of students going through the year-long programme are so important: for it to be a true learning journey, a colelctive experience and for those relationships to develop. More on different models of leadership another time….

Share Button