Category Archives: Voluntary Sector

Dartington, Second Voice, Internet-Free Day and Steve Lawrence!

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Four weeks of immersion into the world of social entrepreneurs go quickly, especially here in Bethnal Green. Just when I’ve gotten used to the tube rush in the morning, the tea routine at SSE, meeting new and brilliant social entrepreneurs virtually every day, then the month is almost over.

I do still have a  week left here, but it will surely go by fast with the SE Ambassadors coming in next week for a training session, the block program having their monthly classes, and finishing up the work I’ve been helping out with here. In the past week I had the chance to go down to Dartington Hall and see the place where Michael Young first found much of his inspiration for his great work. I would highly recommend taking a trip down there, magnificent place!

Another interesting event I was able to attend was Tom Donaldson’s presentation for the Young Foundation staff about his Second Voice device. Although not yet completely off the ground, something tells me we’ll hear more about this product in the coming years.

As a side note, keep an eye out for Nick Temple on BBC World today, where he will be representing the Global Ideas Bank about Internet-Free Day.

Last, but not least, we’re fortunate to have a visitor here at SSE this week. All the way from Australia, Steve Lawrence has come to study the school’s concept first-hand in order to get a real sense of how SSE works.Steve, a veteran in the sector and very much a social entrepreneur himself, founded Work Ventures about 28 years ago. Do check out their site: an amazing organisation. During his time here so far, Steve has sat in on a few witness sessions, met students and staff, and is very optimistic about the prospects for the SSE methodology overseas.

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Funding, the arts, and balance.

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Leafing through the weekend papers, there’s a lot of reporting going on of the Arts Council cuts in funding, and how they are affecting arts organisations in different ways. Admittedly, the bleeding-heart liberal, left-leaning, cappuccino–supping papers I read are arguably more likely to cover theatre types getting angry, but coverage on the whole shebang, on legal threats, on literature translation, and much more seems quite a lot over the course of two or three days. Where was the media when the Community Champions fund, one of the few providing grassroots support to individual community activists, was ditched? [the CC fund provided up to £2000 to over 10,000 people and had a pretty impressive record of outcomes and impact too].

The message also seems confused: one article lambasted the amount spent on opera, whilst another pointed out how a regional opera company was having its funding cut as an example of a poor decision. Ultimately, you have to feel some sympathy with the funders: their overall funding is increasingly constricted (falling lottery sales + Olympics), and there are often no "right" answers in these cases. Whilst calls for ‘arts’ people to run these funds have some validity, the nuts and bolts of effective grant-giving is as much about measurement, monitoring and administration as about informed decision-making.

Clearly, the process could have gone better (pre-Xmas with little response time) and could, possibly, have been more transparent. But the coverage has seemed quite unbalanced. This article, for example, with the calming title of "the final reckoning", details 6 arts organisations facing cuts. All worthy ca(u)ses, particularly the two theatres, it would seem to me. But none facing extinction, and some facing a reduction of around a fifth or sixth of their annual budget: substantial, but how many third sector organisations enter a financial year with all their funding and budget secured? Indeed, the experiences of these arts organisations will chime with many in the third sector….though the amount of coverage / campaigning in the media is markedly different. And where is the coverage of the organisations (700+) receiving an increase in funding from March, and the details of what greater impact they can now have?

From an SSE point of view, it’s clear that this could affect students and Fellows who work in the arts sphere, of whom there are quite a few. On the other hand, several current students in London, and (shortly) in Liverpool and East Midlands have places funded by a programme which is supported (amongst others) by the Arts Council. Crucial support at a key stage of their journey in changing people’s lives through the arts.

Swings, as they say, and roundabouts: and no black and white answers.

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GenY: The future of Social Enterprise?

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It seems that the job market is approaching a generational crossroads. Rosetta Thurman  reports that the idealistic baby boomers that once started the non-profits that
blossom today are leaving their jobs to retirement. But who is going to replace
them? Generation Y perhaps? (The Internet generation, born roughly between 1976-2000).
They are young, ambitious, highly selective and are now gradually entering the
job market for the first time.

In China, at least 550 million people fit the profile,
almost double the entire U.S. population. In America however, Generation Y
number about 70 million, still a sizable group. Recent news reports from the
Iowa Caucuses indicate that these youngsters are a
force to recognize,
virtually handing Barack Obama the momentum in the U.S. presidential race.
These echo boomers are techno sawy, they demand change, they are financially smart and they want
to make a difference from day one. At a glance it may seem that the growth of
social enterprises and entrepreneurship should explode any day now, and I
admit, the environment is ripe for harvest. It seems though that the harvesters
are sleeping and unless they act on the momentum the Gen Yers will shift their
attention somewhere else.

Idealism is no longer a word only associated with hippies
and environmentalists but rather a powerful influence on today’s youth.
However, idealism by itself normally does not survive the transition into adult
life unless it becomes real. It is kind of like believing in Santa Claus down at
the local mall; one day your bound to catch him during a smoke break in the
back alley. For many young people, idealism works the same way. You grow up and
realize that it was all a scam and that you cannot matter or make change in the
big picture.

In our day and age, secondary schooling normally work as
this wake-up call. For hours on end I learned about hunger and drought, the
AIDS epidemic, war and terror, ethnic strife, climate change and poverty. At
first I was determined to fix it all, until one day I gave up, thinking I
couldn’t do anything that would make a difference. In schools, students are
shown the big picture but never the solutions, which are almost always small
and local. Schools should of course continue to teach reality, but someone has
to show young people that there are solutions – and that’s where the third
sector comes in!


I am lucky to intern at SSE where I get to witness first-hand the many local solutions that exist. The
social sector has the potential to grow immensely now that GenY is growing up,
but only if it provides opportunities for idealism to continue to exist in today’s
brutal reality. The sector must reach out to GenY and show young idealists that
solutions are real, and many. The first step in this process should be to
transform idealism from an abstract term into tangible, visible and practical
examples. Luckily for us, idealism doesn’t take smoke breaks and doesn’t wear a
fake beard. The question remains however, how can the sector reach out to the younger generation, now ready to enter the job market?

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Transparency and giving well….

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Regular readers will know that I often cite the delivery, quality, transparency mantra as important foundations for any socially-beneficial enterprise seeking to operate in today’s world/markets. Two of those, quality (including measurement) and transparency, have collided in a huge furore over a US-based philanthropic funder/evaluator called GiveWell. You know when the founder of an organisation has to title a blog post "I had a lapse in judgement, did a horrible thing, and I apologize", that things are not good.

Basically, one of GiveWell’s founders was caught asking himself a question (with a fake ID), then responding (with another ID) promoting GiveWell. He was also subsequently tracked using various aliases to promote GiveWell elsewhere online and, according to some posts, give their competitors a kicking. Not good, particularly when the organisation has shouted from the rooftops about the need for transparency and openness. This has made the reaction (see GiftHub and the original Metafilter post for the gruesome details) all the stronger and more vicious, alongside the fact that many seasoned professionals in the field had already been rubbed up the wrong way by GiveWell’s perceived arrogance and naivety (the two founders are recent converts from hedge fund management, and their initial response was to offer the MetaFilter community money by way of an apology).

The laundry continues to be aired in public too. The much-respected blogger Lucy Bernholz is on GiftWell’s board, and has posted here asking what she/the organisation should do.  Having put itself forward, as Jeff Trexler puts it, as a model of accountability, it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

What’s interesting about this, I think, is not only the importance of walking the walk as far as transparency is concerned, but also about really understanding the internet and its power (constructive and destructive). If people thought that this blog was being used to advertise products, or had press releases placed with it, it would damage the credibility…as would any suggestion that we were making up comments on this blog or other people’s. At the same time, people expect the blog to represent and inform about the work of SSE and its students and Fellows, amongst other material, in as fair and objective a way as possible. We don’t always get the tone right, and sometimes have strong, subjective opinions, but trying to manipulate the audience is never an option, as GiveWell are discovering.

Incidentally, our new intern Thor does exist and is not a figment of my imagination. He’ll be giving the unvarnished, barely moderated truth in his month-long stay with us here….

[UPDATE: the GiveWell founder has been demoted to Program Officer, according to this official statement from the organisation’s board]

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Measurement and scrutiny of the third sector

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As I mentioned in passing in a previous post, there’s been significant debate recently about the need for greater scrutiny and to hold charities / third sector organisations to account. It’s not a new debate, and it’s by no means unique to the UK (this is a hot topic in the US also, as you can see here), but has been kicked off afresh largely by a speech by Martin Brookes, head of research at New Philanthropy Capital, at the RSA, which was reproduced in Society Guardian: Measures of Success. It also then featured on the Guardian blog, and in a comment piece in Third Sector (and bits and bobs in the letters pages of both this week).

Brookes’ argument, in condensed form, is as follows: the performance of charities is not scrutinised and assessed (enough), with the Charity Commission only regulating / assessing whether they are ‘legitimate’ charities; this is because a) we don’t care (we’re assuaging guilt by giving), b) we see ‘charity’ as a big homogenous group, c) they are different / on a pedestal, or d) it’s too hard to do; assessing performance matters, because there are social needs to be addressed and limited money to address them; the status quo can’t stay as is; so we need a new, independent institution (alongside the Commission) to assess and improve the performance of charities…..

Reactions to this have been varied. NCVO’s Chief Exec Stuart Etherington gave a very strong critique (close to condemnation, in fact):

"This is a headline grabbing stunt by Martin Brookes, which is a pity as
he is blowing the hard won reputation of New Philanthropy Capital.
There is already serious regulation of charities and considerable
efforts have been undertaken by the sector to improve their performance
in this area. There is not a shred of evidence to support Mr Brookes’
assertions.

Setting up such a body would be regulation gone mad and would
severely damage civil society in this country and have precisely the
opposite effect of his intentions. I hope that New Philanthropy Capital
will distance itself from such ridiculous proposals and focus on
assisting charities to have the greatest impact for the people they
support and serve."

OK, so I think we know where he stands. More measured (excuse pun) was Adam Sampson from Shelter who, in this comment, effectively said "yes, you have a point, but how it’s done needs careful thought". In a comment under the blog post, Colin Nee of Charities Evaluation Services agrees with the main points (need to improve measurement / performance), but argues that improvement should come from within (skills / training etc) rather than from without (regulation). Others have also tended to agree with the general thrust about performance, assessment and scrutiny, and disagreed more with Brookes’ suggested model. As one letter put it (quoting from memory), "Brookes has a touching faith in the independence of non-departmental public bodies from government", and others too have said that the thought of another quasi-governmental body fills them with dread.

SSE has a keen interest in this area for several reasons:  generally, because we’re part of this sector; organisationally, to provide accountability to funders/investors and to demonstrate the quality and impact of what we do more widely (see outcomes / impact); via the programme, to support  evaluation / measurement amongst SSE students; and, last but not least, because an SSE Fellow set up an organisation, Intelligent Giving, which operates in this space. SSE worked with the New Economics Foundation on its measurement work, and I now use their methodology to introduce evaluation to the social entrepreneurs we work with; this is on the basis that the earlier they can start to think about measurement, and incorporating it into their work, and understand how it works and why its important, so much the better.

[As an aside, it’s interesting to note that Lisa from NEF also had a piece in the same Society Guardian last week, There’s little profit to be made from savings which discusses their work with Camden Council on outcomes-based commissioning as well as the perils of the efficiency agenda. She connects the two by saying that "any longer-term view of efficiency in terms of services for people must
harness the skills and assets of local people, rather than purely
relying on market-based contracting of professionals to "do" services
"to" people". Well worth reading and important to boot.]

My opinion on the Brookes-stoked debate? Well, I think performance and assessment is an area of vast importance; not just for charities but also, as we’ve consistently argued, for social entrepreneurs operating across all sectors, in order to demonstrate the quality of what they are doing, prove its impact, and improve their own ways of working. As sector boundaries become more blurred, knowing this information/data and communicating it clearly is all important: for differentiation, for accountability and so on. For those who trade, it is consumers / contractors who will use this information as much as funders/investors.

Whether this requires another public body is more questionable. Funders and (more slowly) individual donors are increasingly demanding evidence / evaluation, and this is only set to continue to grow. Whether consistency can ever be brought to the massive variety of metrics involved, even within sectors, is the big question. NPC’s own techniques (largely brought with them from commercial financial services / Goldman Sachs) have been criticised by some for not being nuanced / cognisant enough of the differences between the third sector and the commercial business sector. And that’s from a position where they currently don’t say whether any charity is "bad", but only recommend those who are "good".

Of all the positions/reactions above, Adam Sampson’s makes most sense to me. There does need to be greater scrutiny, and greater performance assessment. But we should be realistic about the limitations of what such auditing can do; it is rare that any evaluation/assessment gives "the whole story" of what an organisation does / how it operates. Sampson also draws attention to the role of the third sector in innovation, and that recognition of "honourable failure" may be as important as "worthy predictability". This is particularly relevant in our world, where social enterprise is judged a) by its enterprising nature (innovative, entrepreneurial, risk-taking etc) and b) by its sustainable model (earns income, less grant-reliant, endures etc), without any seeming realisation that the two are sometimes in conflict. Such conundrums are what makes this area such a complex one.

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