The Bubb enters the fray…

Just a quick note to say that Stephen Bubb, legendary CEO of ACEVO has entered the (non-profit) blogosphere, starting with a suitable low-key post with hardly a name dropped….oh, ok, maybe the odd minister or two…and the Queen. Couple of sideswipes at others, talk of a dog and we’re away.

Anyway, promises to be an interesting read, if it continues regularly and, more seriously, it’s good to have the organisation that represents leaders in the third sector showing a bit of leadership in this area……. Check it out here.

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Kids Company: Sex Pistols or the Clash?

Last summer, maverick Kids Company founder Camilla Batmanghelidjh launched a media campaign to achieve further government funding for her organisation. My post at the time ended with the words "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….But I wonder if
the long-term effects of this move might not be wholly positive".

Sure enough, last week it was announced that Kids Company was going to receive £12m over the next three years; one organisation amongst five sharing £27m (44% to Kids Co.). Which is no doubt good news for Kids Co and the other four organisations (if not the other 85 who submitted an expression of interest), and signals a real investment in delivering appropriate services to young people across the board. (It also means that Camilla’s threat to strip in Parliament won’t happen).The reason I’d written that "the long-term effects might not be positive" was because I felt that this was not a sustainable way of working for the sector: as someone put it at the time, should we all enlist Max Clifford, rather than fill out applications?

Interestingly, Craig Dearden-Phillips of Speaking Up (one of the other funded organisations) has written a blog post which reflects what I imagine to be a wider view from the youth sector: it’s titled "Why Kids Company Excite Me….But Scare Me Too", and gives a real insight into those views, so I’m going to quote a couple of chunks of it:

"While part of me rejoices at an exceptional character like Camilla
facing down Government, part of me is a bit unsettled by it too. Should
a talent for PR and platinum inside-connections get you this quite this
much money? A lot of people are privately spitting feathers. Yeah,
sure, some are jealous but others just feel this kind of largesse to a
small organisation serving a few hundred kids across a few postcodes to
be grossly unfair. And they do have a point: How, I wonder, does a
community group on a council estate in Hull closing its doors in April
feel when they see Camilla playing the government (and, indeed, the HM
Opposition) like a salmon?"

Craig goes on to tackle their approach to impact measurement, replication, funding and, of course (and related to all of these), founder syndrome:

"My final point is about how KC needs to redefine the role of Camilla.
KC is the creation of its brilliant founder who has unbounded
commitment and energy. To get out of the starting-blocks, the drive and
hands-on approach of someone like her is absolutely necessary. Beyond a
particular point, however, it is damaging. Once out of the baby phase,
leadership needs to be shared-out, the entrepreneur needs to step into
an outward-facing role and the `grown ups’ need to be allowed to get on
with the serious business of running an operationally and financially
sound organisation. Believe me on this point because I have got form!
As a Recovering Founder, I know the pitfalls of `Founderism’. From the
bits I have heard from people who have been at KC in the past, the
organisation shows all the signs of Chronic Founderism. If KC is to
grow and help more kids in more places, Camilla needs to start a Twelve
Step Programme for Founders – now. I can recommend a good one…"

I won’t add much to that, as I think it speaks strongly enough. We will see what happens in three years’ time and whether, as Craig puts it in his conclusion, Kids Company "do a Sex Pistols – and crash and burn in a self-indulgent heap. Or, like
the Clash, evolve into something incredibly special and lasting".

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Friday round-up: audio, aggregation, and alltop

It’s been a while since the last round-up, and lots to link to and write up.

– Will write more about this shortly, but the Ambassadors have started to blog….and there is an uber-feed you can sign up to for all of them combined (http://feeds.feedburner.com/SocialEnterpriseAmbassadorBlogsFeed). Early days, but starting to happen….

– Details of the next Social Enterprise Research Conference announced

– Free audio file from Stanford Social Innovation Review from their Social Entrepreneurship Day, which I shall be listening to on the way home…

– Podnosh has an interesting post on "Why should leaders blog?"; check comments also…

SSE graduation in London on March 14th (a week today); if you haven’t got an invite, and think you should have, then get in touch.

US article about entrepreneurship and social change (in the Tennessean, no less)

– Updated research from CAF on Social Enterprise in Practice; haven’t had a chance to read, but looks very interesting both on the challenges to the sector (quote from PR: "Social enterprises are unlikely to achieve financial sustainability and it is unreasonable to expect them to do so") and on what is needed in terms of measurement and support. Will follow up on this……

– Sally Reynolds is held in high esteem in the sector for her work leading Social Firms UK, and they continue to take an approach focused on quality and delivery; new trade directory of social firms is now online, and their Star Social Firm quality mark is also taking hold. Interesting to hear her discuss the other day how they could develop quality standards for social firms because they are more tightly defined / structured (see definition of What is a social firm?) than the diverse and varied spectrum of social enterprise.

– Related to that spectrum-like nature, NCVO are "unhappy with the government definition of social enterprise", according to this Guardian article on their new ‘civil society’ approach. I do hope we’re not entering a period of definition debate………

Social Enterprise Magazine has relaunched (more developments on website to follow), and, IMHO, looks a country mile better in design, focus and content. Massive congratulations to all involved in making it happen and promoting it so effectively: Tim, Claudia, Deniz and the team. Look forward to encouraging our students and Fellows to read and get engaged with it….

Greed offsetting. Really?

– Interesting Business Week article on the profits (social and financial) of CSR

– And finally, for all your non-profit blog needs, here’s Nonprofit.alltop.com; single page aggregation is the future?

Have a great weekend, one and all….

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Nonprofit blog exchange: King Jason

Sporadically, I take part in the Nonprofit Blog Exchange Virtual Event, which basically involves nonprofit / third sector blogs writing about each other to create networks and promote the movement more generally. This time I’ve been allocated King Jason’s blog. No, not a little-known monarch operating as a trustee, but a web designer and IT specialist working in the nonprofit sector over in Australia. Called Jason King.

It appears that Jason used to be in London, not unlike myself, and given that SSE is also looking Australia-wards currently, this seemed all too appropriate. Having overseen the redevelopment of SSE’s website last year, these types of resources can be invaluable…particularly when there is little resource / capacity / knowledge within a (relatively) small organisation. It’s amazing how important IT is to an organisation these days and yet, how often little attention (and money) is given to it. Jason has a good example on his blog of an organisation whose website went down overnight: Quick decisions when a charity’s website went walkabout. I’ve seen even large organisations in our sector be undone by things as simple as domain name renewal, never mind the complications of DNS, MX records and the rest (which I seem to spend half my time sorting out).

But there are some great resources out there, if people get to know about them. Primarily, I’d mention the ICT Knowledgebase in the UK, and Idealware and TechSoup in the US. But it’s useful to get a more grassroots-y, personal view of things, which is where blogs like Jason’s can come in. Particularly as the format lends itself more to interaction and asking questions. If you’re working on a third sector website, or on a redesign, then checking out Jason’s post on Give your website a health check is a good start to ensuring accessibility and its status for search engines, for example. And commenters have left some extra tips as well.

Certainly I’d recommend it to anyone with responsibility for their charity or social enterprise’s website, especially if they are in Australia, as he’ll inevitably be more connected to events and resources in that location. Keeping informed and keeping connected are what it’s all about in this sphere, and anything that helps you do that has got to be valuable.

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Intern-ment

Whilst reading about Derek Conway and the other MPs paying their own family for internships and work experience (even the Third Sector got briefly drawn in), I got thinking about how this related to the use of interns by third sector organisations, particularly in the fields of policy and research. As regular readers of this blog will know, SSE recently had an intern over from St Olaf College in Minnesota, which was pretty much an unqualified success. Using volunteers in this way can clearly make a substantial difference to an organisation like SSE whose capacity is still relatively small, if growing. And (I think) it can be a genuine win-win, with significant personal development, learning and contacts/networks for the intern in question.

The problem, which we have debated a fair bit internally, is how to ensure that this doesn’t run counter to our other principles: namely, the need for diversity in the third sector, the need for entrants and new leaders to come up from the grassroots as well as from the ‘grad-routes’. For, inevitably, for someone to take a full-time three-month position at an organisation in (usually) London, unpaid with (possibly) some expenses, they have to have support from elsewhere. This is usually parental, either in the form of direct monetary support, or in the form of free rent & board. Or they are in university full-time and can afford not to work during some of their holidays. Generally (and this is a generalisation), these means of support skew the potential intake to those with a more privileged or well-off background.

So how can we ensure internships go to a real cross-section, to the best people regardless of background? Clearly, bursaries and sponsorship is one way: some universities arrange placements and support expenses, such as identifying cheaper accommodation or directly paying expenses. In Thor’s case, this meant that he could afford to not do his restaurant manager job for a month in the holidays, and come to SSE.

But how to also extend these opportunities further out? Our neighbours Operation Black Vote recently won an award for an interesting shadowing scheme which focuses on political internships / work experience, precisely to avoid the old-boy networks we see continuing in those establishments;  these might provide a useful model; or something along the lines of this scheme, Leaders Together. Maybe there is a case for something similar in the third sector: funded internships that take the burden off the organisation and the individual to find the money to make it possible, and allow for a broader, more diverse intern network. Happy to hear of any such initiatives or ideas: there could be a social enterprise in this….

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