Tag Archives: government

Social enterprise and entrepreneurship links from September

Posted on by

Rackspace-1010-05j-550x353 Slightly delayed due to the SSE residential, but here's my round-up of interesting, relevant and topical links in the world of social enterprise and entrepreneurship from September:

– Not officially September, but as I'm late, two events from early October worth following up on were SoCap 10 and SBC10. Check out the tweets (#socap10 #sbc10) and videos etc online if you couldn't be there like me.

– Stats + definitions: a generation hangs their head as the debate continues…. new research questioned how many social enterprises there are, which also prompted a call for clarity of definitions

– More forward- (and outward-) looking was Pamela Hartigan's interview on Dowser.org explaining why you don't have to be a social entrepreneur to make change, but it's good to know what they are…

– I'm pretty much in whole-hearted agreement with many of Malcolm Gladwell's points in this New Yorker piece on the limitations of Twitter + Facebook in creating change

– Global social entrepreneurs were excited by the Unreasonable Institute and Echoing Green applications opening. SSE is a pipeline partner to Unreasonable, so we're looking forward to seeing who they get on board this year; hopefully some SSE Fellows will be encouraged to apply

– Suffolk was the county on everyone's lips as they announced their intention to outsource "virtually all" services to social enterprise….

– …while Suffolk councillor (and social entrepreneur) Craig Dearden-Phillips wrote openly about the need (and lack?) of financial incentives for social entrepreneurs

– Sean Stannard-Stockton took impact into a new holistic era, beyond reductive metrics (on Social Edge)

– Big Society-wise, I have mostly been enjoying Karl Wilding (NCVO)'s neat overview presentation, Paul Hodgkin (SSE Fellow / Patient Opinion)'s article on importance of conversation + technology, and Radio 4's Analysis programme on Big Society (hat-tip to SSE colleague Ian Baker for the latter)

– Jonathan Jenkins (from UnLtd Ventures / Advantage) is as good as anyone on social investment, and this article on the need for angel investment brings out some of the key points, and the key current problems, of this emerging market

– David Robinson, one of the most quietly effective leaders in the social sector, writes about (and welcomes) the first pilot Social Impact Bond

– Social Entrepreneurs Ireland held their latest awards event, which I heard was fantastic: round-up and article on the event here

– Rod Schwartz got a good debate going about mergers, partnerships and egos in social enterprise

– Paul Light is a US professor who's been beavering away at social entrepreneurship for many years; he knows his stuff, as this Just Means interview makes clear

– The Social Enterprise Ambassadors programme had its closing event: details and photos on the website

– Tim Harford, who I'm a fan of on More or Less, has written a couple of interesting critiques of 'nudge' theory (behavioural economics stuff); see Nudges are for Markets, not Nations and To Nudge is One Thing, To Nanny Another

– And finally, because everyone loves a list, Inc.Com's 10 tips for managing a one-person sales force (a concept familiar to many of our students…) and this great post of 15 excuses for not making ideas happen.

Presumably no. 16 is writing a blog post to delay other work. On which note, over and out.

Share Button

Brief thoughts on the Social Impact Bond (and the future of funding)

Posted on by

Bond
Yesterday I found myself at NCVO listening (and responding) to draft recommendations from their Funding Commission, which is looking at funding in the sector for the next 10 years. I won't dwell too much on that, but would recommend reading the Emerging Recommendations paper to inform your thinking for the short and long-term.

Social investment and bringing private / commercial / new sources of money into the sector both feature amongst its pages, and the Social Impact Bond (SIB) is also named as one of the financial models that might helpe achieve this. It is an ingenious model, that encourages private and social investment (through social AND financial return), mitigates risk (and upfront investment) for government, and provides that crucial upfront money for the providers in question. And it focuses the sector, quite rightly in my view, on measurement and proving their impact: delivering outcomes they say they will.

Today is the official start of the first pilot, which will tackle reoffending in Peterborough which has been widely covered in the media this morning: nice to hear the sector on Radio, TV and in the mainstream press. And one hopes it is a great success.

At NCVO, I happened to find myself opposite Toby Eccles from Social Finance the organisation behind the bond pilot. So I took the opportunity to ask my main question on SIBs, which I previously raised in our Big Society recommendations paper (pdf), which is "what about the less-easily monetisable outcomes, particularly those (such as social capital, trust, confidence etc) which are crucial to the Big Society agenda?" The risk being that this new money focuses on the easily quantifiable / monetisable stuff (for returns etc), at a time when funding and investment is shrinking across the board.

Toby rightly pointed out that they had to prove the concept, and do it with a fairly chunk-able, solid area (reoffending is such an area where costs, savings etc are easy to quantify) before moving on to other more complex and nuanced areas in a few years. And that SIBs are only one part of the piece. Which makes a lot of sense to me, and I hope that SSE and others can engage and participate in helping forge + create new SIBs (and other financial models) in other relevant areas of social policy.

The challenge, as I see it, is two-fold.

One is that "in a few years" might be a timescale that doesn't stack up in the current climate for a whole range of organisations, if government puts emphasis on this particular model (which is so attractive in the current economic circumstances). Particularly if the Big Society Bank, as the NCVO recommendations currently say, is primarily used to help underwrite these new models. Because, as the recommendations also make clear, there are also other crucial areas that need investment or attention: financial literacy (including investment readiness), early-stage grants (a la Communities First etc), impact-first investment of other types, increasing entrepreneurialism, skills for scaling/trading, attracting philanthropy and corporate support in other ways, and so on and so forth.

Secondly, therefore, how do we ensure that the various funding initiatives and funders (Big Society Bank, Big Local Trust + other Big Lottery programmes, Communities First, Social Impact Bonds, Venturesome, UnLtd, venture philanthropy, trusts + foundations etc etc) are complementary and meeting as many of those needs as possible, in the toughest climate in years? And in the years to come.

From the recommendations, and those thoughts, I take a few things away: as practitioners, social entrepreneurs and social enterprises, we can: measure impact better (more robustly, transparently, quantifiably as possible), improve our understanding of different types of donors (and the quality of asking + relationship management), increase our knowledge and understanding of finance (and of those we work with), and engage in the conversation about new financial models.

Which should be enough to keep me going for now…..

Share Button

Deep impact: the how, who and why of social enterprise measurement

Posted on by

MeasureIt was a full day of impact measurement on Wednesday this week. Which for an evaluation + metrics geek such as myself, is a day of utter joy….

First up, I did my "Introduction to social impact measurement" workshop with the new SSE Cornwall cohort of social entrepreneurs. The starting point for us is to help them get a full understanding of the story of how they make a difference (their "theory of change"), before diving into indicators, tools and methodologies. As well as demystifying some of the measurement jargon…

What's always interesting about the process of mapping that story out (a methodology unapologetically cribbed + developed from the new economics foundation) is that it is also an incredibly useful planning tool, and also leads to better communication of the project or idea. The message I emphasised was the importance of measurement in the current climate: funding or investment or contracts without strong evidence will be extremely scarce. So it is more crucial than ever. And there are no excuses for not measuring our social impact; a point I was also making in this video (quickly!) at Chain Reaction's Stronger Communities get-together on the Big Society.

Having come back from Penzance on the longest-train-journey-in-the-world (possibly), I headed down to the Garden Museum for the SE100 awards event, wondering who would win. Read more about the winners and the event here. It is an excellent initiative which recognises growth in turnover, but also has impact measurement built into its very core. Congrats to Mow and Grow, FRC Group and Create Leeds, and to all the nominees. And congrats to Tim West and the team at Social Enterprise Mag (along with all their various partners + sponsors) for pioneering the index. As Doug Richard noted in his closing words, when a sector or movement has an index, it's getting serious. And for me, an important development to have the recognition of awards tied to demonstrable evidence and proof of success: again, incentivising others to grow their impact, and measure that impact. Which, as Peter Holbrook and Nick Hurd said, is exactly what will be required in the current economic situation. I'm hopeful that some of those Cornwall SSE students, and others around the UK, will be applying for the trailblazer award next year.

It is well worth reading the full SE100 documentation, which includes some interesting discussions about the Future Jobs Fund (which was crucial to Mow and Grow's growth), regional breakdown of the 100 organisations, and several really good practical case studies of how impact can be grown and measured.

Finally, it was interesting to note the announcement on the same day by Nick Hurd of the end of Futurebuilders in its current form. Future revenue from the fund (i.e. in loan repayments) will be used to give grants to stimulate the creation of groups and initiatives at a local + neighbourhood level; to be called "Communities First", according to a speech by Francis Maude. On the one hand, I largely agree with this decision: in the manifesto pulled together by social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneur support agencies, we called for freer, direct local investment in locally-based social entrepreneurs through seedcorn grants and support (see here for detail); we recommended this because "many start-up and fledgling social entrepreneur-led initiatives are
responding to needs in their own communities not being met by any
current, commissioned public service provision" and that freer local investment is key to "encouraging innovation, active citizenship, and devolution of power"; I think this has much crossover with what is being proposed.

On the other hand, as we're discussing impact, the evaluation of Futurebuilders is worth a look (full report pdf here). Reading it for me, I don't think there's much doubt that it became more efficient, in its second incarnation, at giving out funds and selecting appropriate organisations for those loans (conversion rate, disbursement etc). Indeed, the evidence for impact on organisations' financial health and ability to deliver public services is strong; that for social returns and outcomes much less so. And there are some strong findings about the fact that these were new, 'unbankable' loans not being made elsewhere, providing new capital (i.e. they were highly 'additional')

Around 19% of loans went to smaller organisations (income under £100k) which is higher than I thought. Though it is interesting to also see that those organisations only won 10% of the contracts that FB investors gained (large orgs with turnover over £1m gained 46% of contracts by value). One assumes that all this has been fed into the decision-making process, otherwise (in effect), why do it: certainly, the evaluation's conclusion notes that social investment of this type will have to be looked at again in the context of more constrained social finances. And it is perhaps a decision also as much about policy emphasis (on social capital, community responsibility, and so on, as opposed to a relatively restricted version of 'public service delivery contracts') as about the type of investment (grant rather than loan). It will be fascinating to see what form the Big Society Bank takes, which Nick Hurd has stated is top of his agenda, and how it builds on all the experimentation and experience of the full range of social investors, including Futurebuilders.

Share Button

Learning by doing: a social entrepreneur’s take on Big Society

Posted on by

LearningRevI've been reading a few of the responses to the Big Society vision outlined by the new government. For example, you can get Stephen Bubb's take at ACEVO (pdf), and Martin Brookes et al's perspective at New Philanthropy Capital. Both worth reading if you get the time, raising some interesting challenges.

But a response that resonated with me from our work here at SSE was one that came through to me on my TheyWorkForYou alert (timely, seeing as we are now in a new era of open data): Lord Mawson, who founded (with others) CAN and the Bromley-By-Bow Centre, put forward his thoughts in the House of Lords in the Queen's Speech debate. You can read the whole thing here, but I've selected a few sections that stood out to me from the social entrepreneur / practitioner's perspective. Seeing how this was picked up and covered once I'd tweeted it round, it seems that others also found it relevant. Key points? Back people, not structures; encourage "learning-by-doing" environments; cross-sector partnerships; don't reinvent, but build on the work of those who have innovated.

Lord Mawson:

"We all know that it is crucial for a new Government to lay solid
foundation stones on which real change and development can grow. Real
change is elusive and may not come to fruition until a Government have
left office. Effective innovation can take a generation and requires
committed individuals to champion it. It is rarely captured in a policy
document, written by what my colleagues affectionately refer to as "the
bright, young things". Real change has to be grown and deeply rooted in
communities, otherwise, as I suspect that new Labour is discovering, it
will be blown away like the sand when the first gust of wind comes
along.

[….]

"…What are the lessons? How do you create a big society and lift the game
in education, health and welfare? First, I would suggest that this
Government support organisations that already have a successful record
of reforming public services. Do not reinvent the wheel, but build on
what works. They should back success and learn from their many years of
detailed practical work. Do not, as new Labour so often did, take their
best ideas, pass them to the Civil Service machine and exclude these
experienced innovators. Let them take the wheel. Support them and enable
their efficiency. Do not think that it is now the Government's job to
take control. It is not. They should take the long-term view.

[…..]

"I would ask the Minister how he will practically encourage new
environments where people 'learn by doing'. Will he get his hands dirty
by planting the seeds of enterprise in the fertile soil outside the
comfortable but dry world of theory? If this new generation of
politicians is to gain any understanding of how the real world works in
practice, and not hide in the bubble of Westminster, I would humbly
suggest that each Member of Parliament should become involved in one
project in their constituency to play their part in building the "big
society". Do not pontificate about it: do it. Legislators might then
begin to understand the relationship between legislation and practice
because attempting to deliver a new school, health centre or service is a
practical nightmare nowadays, given the number of contradictory hoops
laden with half-baked ideology that practitioners like me have to jump
through. The confusion that exists between delivery and democracy is a
minefield. The micro is the clue to the macro. Learn from it and gain
the public's respect in the process.

[……]

"the idea that devolving power to local authorities will deliver a
plurality of outcomes is not always correct either. Local authorities
are not neutral when commissioning services. They often have an aversion
to selecting innovative approaches because they do not understand them.
Many of their staff have only ever worked in the public sector. They do
what they have always done, but change the wording on the forms to
please the Government of the day. Look carefully and you will still see
the same bodies under new clothes. Local authorities are often the least
likely to choose an innovative approach to service delivery…

[….]

"Partnership is a great thing and the present financial crisis is the
time to embrace innovation. Never miss the opportunity presented by a
good crisis. If you are to deliver, I would humbly suggest that you do
not rely on structures or theories, but on people. Back the best people,
be they in the business, public or social enterprise sectors, and,
funnily enough, you will be fair to everyone."

———–

On reading it all again, I'm also struck by his focus on relationships, and trusted relationships as the foundation of useful, productive partnerships. This was also something that came up continually at the Chain Reaction Stronger Communities event last week, and seems central to painting the right pictures on the canvas of Big Society.

Share Button