Phew. It’s Friday. This week I managed to send an email to 1600 people addressed to <test first name> instead of their actual first name so I’m pretty keen to put this week to bed and start again on Monday.
Loads of news for you to read through this week (so much so that I don’t have a proper icon for number 11) so I’ll leave you to it. Have a great weekend!
Let’s start with some good news: four SSE students and Fellows are in the running for £50,000 as part of the National Lottery People’s Project. Good luck to Frankie (Betknowmore), Catherine (Inspero), Emma (Artistic Spectrum) and Harriet (The Horse Course). You can find out more about each of their organisations on our website. Please vote for them too…
A healthy dose of realism from David Floyd in his latest blog post ‘I started a social enterprise to save the world but all I ended up with was a failing t-shirt business‘. Some interesting comments too, including some discussion of SSE.
Wren and Greyhound, (not a pub, but a third sector consultancy run by Graham Reekie) have published ‘A Lasting Difference‘ a new toolkit to help organisations improve their sustainability. (Read it and then book onto our Transition to Trading course to become super sustainable).
Nominet Trust will be opening their Social Tech Seed programme for applications on March 14th and have a number of pre-application events in the coming weeks. The programme is open to projects ‘that harness the power of the internet to tackle a pressing social challenge’.
SSE Fellow Rianna Raymond-Williams has published Issue 7 of Shine ALOUD magazine, focusing on Self-Love and Confidence. There is content on being assertive, power dressing, pleasure, managing personal hygiene and more. I’d better get reading.
If you are an early-stage, education based social entrepreneur then take a look at the Teach First Innovation Booster, a jam-packed (and free!) day of workshops, 1:1 clinics and networking to help you develop your idea, taking place in London on Saturday, 14 May. Come get advice from top experts in areas such as selling to schools, financial management, impact measurement, investment, HR and branding.
It ain’t all sunshine and rainbows in the world of social investment I’m afraid. Jo Tilley-Riley of Big Society Capital takes a look at the gritty reality of social investment. It’s a bit like The Wire.
Do you think funders are getting smarter or more stupid? That’s just one of the questions that Foundational Thinking would like you to answer (anonymously!) in their survey about grant-making trusts and foundations. (We’ve got some funders in for a workshop today and they all seem like very smart people. And the ones that fund us seem particularly smart too. Maybe there is a correlation…)
A new social enterprise has launched to help organisations delivering a public benefit gain access to affordable professional communications advice and support. Campaign Collective will focus on clients in the charitable and not-for-profit sectors, helping them to create, build and deliver successful marketing campaigns. Profits will be used to subsidise support for micro charities and community organisation.
Good news for SSE Fellow Simon Gleinster and his organisation Noise Solution who have won a share of a £1 million contract to help deliver out of school provision. Noise Solution is a social enterprise pairing professional musicians with people in challenging circumstances.
Finally, if your Friday night is going to involve banging tunes and cutting shapes then make sure to have a look at Conscious, a new CIC set up by SSE Fellow Jacqueline Sear which raises money for humanitarian causes through music, including events and an online radio station. Keep it tidy.
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What’s on at SSE
- Working with Corporates, SSE London, 23rd March
- Transition to Trading, SSE London, starts 31st March
- Unlocking Social Investment, SSE London, 14th April
- Get Ahead in Sales – Birmingham, SSE Midlands, 19th April
- Action Learning Facilitator Training – North East, SSE Yorkshire, starts 21st April
- Crowdfunding for Charities, Social Enterprises + Communities – Birmingham, SSE Midlands, 3rd May
