The School for Social Entrepreneurs

Divine, not Ferrero Rocher....

As Thor mentions in his farewell post, the SSE hosted the Ambassadors programme yesterday. Always good to see all these amazing people: such a diverse bunch with diverse opinions, ideas, interests and organisations. I won't repeat what Thor says in terms of what the day was about, but was a good day with a positive vibe. Clearly the programme is already having an effect on the profile of those involved, and gaining them access / giving them influence to promote the movement.

I had the graveyard slot, introducing the blogging (and why we're using them on this programme), and thought the powerpoint I used might be  interesting. Having done a session with our students recently about how to avoid death by powerpoint (which started with the laptop not working), I tried to listen to my own advice. Here's the presentation, as inspired by GapingVoid and 10 ways to a killer blog:

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Also, finally, a huge thanks and sad farewell to our intern Thor, who's been with us for a month that has flown by. Thor now heads back (via home in Norway) to St Olaf College in Minnesota, hopefully having enjoyed the experience here at SSE, and full of ideas for what could happen over there. We're really hopeful that the links both with Thor and St Olaf will continue and develop over the months and years.

Ambassadors day and goodbye

The last days have been quite busy here at SSE. The Ambassadors came to Bethnal Green yesterday for the second gathering of the group since the programme kicked off this fall. SSE hosted the session and Alastair did a bit about how people can learn from the Ambassadors' journeys, and how peer learning can be embedded in the programme. Later in the day Nick introduced the nuts and bolts about blogging. From the view of the audience, it seemed that the group enjoyed learning about our philosophy and it really hit base with some. And for those of you who have seen Ali and Nick in action before, you know they can be quite enjoyable to learn from!       

?WhatIf! was also present and James Baderman adeptly handled the co-creation bit, while nef introduced the evaluation part of the day. The day seems to have sat well with the whole group and they all seemed to leave in high spirits and positive about the coming months! This day was sort of the apex of my internship, as today is my final day with SSE.

After a month here in the Young Foundation complex, I think both SSE and I part ways on a positive note. Now I will go back to Minnesota and St. Olaf College to further research how to embed social entrepreneurship into an academic institution, without losing the value of "learning by doing". It will be interesting to see how different the US sector is from the UK, but I look forward to these new challenges that surely will present themselves in this process. What I first and foremost will take from SSE is the importance of the grassroots social entrepreneurs - their efforts slowly push society on a grander scale towards progress. These people may not always scale up or be famous or get honoured by awards, but they are still real and they still cause real change. How this matches with the strong individualistic culture in the US will be interesting to find out, but it's a crucial question, I think. 

For now, adios.

Friday round-up: Gates, Cotton, Black, and Schwartz.

Few more items to round-up from another exciting week in the world of social entrepreneurship....

- I'd been meaning to blog about the Economist's supplement on CSR this week (which I'll try and come back to), but then it was superseded by this piece on social entrepreneurs. Well worth a read: related, as it is, to the Schwab forum in Davos about the movement, and to the book Pamela Hartigan and John Elkington have written on the subject: The Power of Unreasonable People.

- SSE were represented in Zurich (not by this blog, sadly :0) ), and were happy to see Ann Cotton, SSE Fellow, get one of Schwab's five World Social Entrepreneur awards. Congratulations to Ann and, as she would say, the entire team at CAMFED. Read more here.

- At the big daddy version of Davos (the World Economic Forum), the big news was Bill Gates talking about his concept of 'creative capitalism'; you can read the whole article in the Wall Street Journal: my summary version is "companies should create businesses that focus on building products and services for the poor, thinking innovatively about the poorest and bottom billion".

- Closer to home, we must report that Liam Black, one of the foremost social entrepreneurs of his generation, has left Fifteen. Non-acrimonious according to reports, and the sector will no doubt be paying attention to what he does next: a book and a new business idea are on the horizon....

- Rod Schwartz has a good post about corporates and ethical purchasing on the Catalyst Fund Blog.

- Somehow, I missed this before: the first Office of Social Entrepreneurship opens in the US, in Louisiana. See also "America Forward", pushing the movement to the various presidential candidates...

- Voice 08, I think I mentioned before....looking like it will be the biggest and (hopefully) the best Voice conference so far. See if you can spot the Coalition's promotion of it on their website ;0) SSE will be well represented, including our Liverpool SSE staff and students....hope to see some of you there.

- CAN Mezzanines have got their 100th customer, and a potential fourth venue...congrats all round

- Scotland has mirrored England's Office of the Third Sector by merging its charities and social enterprise teams. It made sense here...I think it makes sense there too.

- The OTS themselves are seeking organisations who've actually used a Social Return On Investment methodology to measure their impact. See here for more details and who to contact.

- SSE welcomes all the Ambassadors next week, and we'll blog about all of that and how it goes: an amazing bunch of people to bring together....

- And finally, this made me chuckle: for those of you with little desk space; the collapsible home office

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

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.

The Mawson Chronicles (part 2)

Recently, I mentioned in a post the article in the Guardian which featured an excerpt from Andrew Mawson's new book, The Social Entrepreneur. He critiqued New Labour pretty strongly, and this prompted a response the following week in the same paper's Society pages, both from the current Minister for the Third Sector, Phil Hope (see here) and in a response from Lynsey Hanley, who is the recent author of a book on Estates.

The minister largely rebutted the critique of government, and detailed some of their activities in the field of social enterprise, saying they were constructive rather than destructive. Hanley's response trained its sights more on social entrepreneurship itself, and had a sideswipe at the Bromley-By-Bow-Centre on the way. The crux of her argument is in the following two paragraphs:

"It will take an avalanche of involvement, commitment and money to convince people living in places like Bromley-by-Bow that their lives will change. No matter how many new enterprises "the social entrepreneur" gets off the ground, such an approach is piecemeal. A landscape gardening business, for instance, is not going to become a major local employer; neither is a dance studio or a hairdresser's.

It's not expected in wider society that everyone should want to set up their own pottery business, so why should it be used as a model for transforming poor people's lives? The idea of social entrepreneurship, while appearing to generate a third way between the state and the market, is no better than a charity-sector version of Dragons' Den if it is presented to entire communities as "the only way" to do things."

It's an interesting debate, and I found myself agreeing both with parts of what Mawson wrote and with Hanley's response. I think both found themselves at extremes in order to make their point, with Mawson giving off a slightly top-down arrogance (this is the way to do it, government doesn't understand) and Hanley throwing out the baby with the bathwater (social entrepreneurship won't solve much; physical regeneration is the key).

My response ended up in the Guardian letters page yesterday, so here's what I wrote:

"Lynsey Hanley is undoubtedly right to point out that social entrepreneurship is not the right approach for all regeneration, nor a panacea for all community problems (Comment, January 16), but she risks throwing out the baby with the bath water. Social entrepreneurship should not be construed as something "exclusive", or something imposed. Indeed, it should provide an opportunity for people from all backgrounds in all areas to contribute to a wider change.

Our experience demonstrates that, in tandem with interventions from government and physical regeneration agencies, social entrepreneurship can help transform communities through job creation, increasing skills and confidence, and meeting unmet needs. Not a cure-all, agreed, but more than a spangly sticking plaster."

So there you go. Hope to review Lord Mawson's book at some point, when things settle down a bit here (aka never).

 

The history of social innovation and enterprise (an impossible task)

Our intern, Thor, who you will have read blogging here from time to time, has been looking into the history of this movement as part of his work / project while he's with us. Which reminded me of this post that I wrote for another blog some time ago. Thought it might be of interest....:

It's quite a common question to those of us who work in the world of social innovation and entrepreneurship: who was the first social entrepreneur? Or, when was the first social invention? The obvious answer, of course, is to say that such people (and ideas) have occurred throughout the ages. People like Robert Owen, Florence Nightingale, Gandhi, Michael Young (see here also) and the Rochdale Pioneers: social entrepreneurs and innovators one and all. But that only takes us a couple of centuries back: what about those social innovations that are so fundamental now that we don't even think of them as such: the school, law courts, democracy. The latter is famously dated back to Athens (around 510 BC), but law courts and schools date back to 2400 and 2500 BC in Sumeria. The names of those forward-thinking Sumerians are sadly lost in the sands of time, but the campaign for their recognition starts here.

It does help put today's work in perspective though. The term "social entrepreneur" may not have come into regular usage until the 1970s and 80s (its first use is believed to be in 1958, according to the mighty Wikipedia), but it's fairly evident that entrepreneurial people wanting to use their skills and traits to make social change have existed for many centuries. Lecturing charities today on how they should start to trade and become self-sufficient seems less relevant when Oxfam started the first charity shop back in 1947 (and they were only copying the Salvation Army and Red Cross who ran second hand clothing shops before that). Similarly, pointing to the co-op movement (which was enshrined in law in the UK in the 1850s and 60s) as a new dawn ignores the mutualism prevalent in Europe at the time, and the craft guilds and friendly societies which existed since the 11th century.

Perhaps this helps make a wider point about (social) innovation and how we should think of it: not innovation in the sense of brand new Eureka ideas (innovation as novelty) but as a continuous process of refinement and incremental improvement, with the occasional bound forward. We are building on the ideas and actions of those who came before, responding to their innovations, and building upon them. But we are also responding to the problems and challenges that some of their innovations have created: advances in medicine mean a growing, ageing population; advances in transport have pollution as a by-product. This helps explain why those who have said (at various points in time), "everything has been invented", are utterly wrong: the need for innovation, particularly social innovation, will never go away.

As John Cage, the US composer puts it, "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas; I'm frightened of the old ones".

Virtual Social Networking, a blessing or a curse?

Here at SSE we find the internet quite useful and employ our blogging skills quite routinely, as you can see. There are countless tools to choose from, web 2.0 or not: along with the blog, we utilise e-newsletters, the facebook group, online resources, an extranet, and more recently an online bookstore. As Brett Bonfield reported recently however, virtual social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo etc) can both be a blessing and a pain to non-profits. Bonfield gives some hints...

Who is likely to get the most value out of social networking sites? To answer this question, Idealware spoke to a number of nonprofit technologists working with social networking tools. We searched beyond the success stories to discover tales of only middling success, or even of disappointment. What resulted were two sets of guidelines: first, how to know if social networking isn't right for you and second, some of the ways that social networking might benefit your organization.

Bonfield provides a quite useful check-list to go through if you are in doubt if using the web is valuable to your organisation. It should come as no surprise that not all social entrepreneurs find networking sites online helpful, as using the resources correctly is a skill-set that constantly needs updating and development. More importantly perhaps, not all groups that social entrepreneurs target have access to the internet nor find use in online features.

While online sites are good for networking and information sharing, it is sometimes hard to see the obvious benefit a social entrepreneurial organisation can gather from the web. Some SEs base their whole operations online, while others ignore its usefulness completely, finding other ways to get by. As a whole though, it is hard to get away from the fact that tools like blogging, e-news letters, resource sites, facebook groups are very convenient for the social enterprise sector, with their low cost and high (potential) reach.

Could virtual networking work to you org's benefit? I recommend you take a look at the check list!

Schwab Award (UK): Belu Water wins

SSE attended the Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year award at the British Museum   Monday night to hear Reed Paget of Belu Water be crowned winner of that title for the first time in the UK. The Independent, the competition's media partner, reports it in this article. It was a slightly curious event, with a relatively small audience (50 or so?) in a very rarefied setting; Pamela Hartigan, who is the driving force behind Schwab, couldn't make it because she was ill, and I think she was missed as someone to provide a uniting thread for the event.

Nevertheless, if social entrepreneurship had glitterati, they were out in force: chief execs of UnLtd, Ashoka, CAN, Training for Life, Big Invest, Big Issue, Eden Project, The Hub, and so forth. Most interesting conversation for me was to find out about one of the nominees, Matt Scott from Cosmos Ignite Innovations. Check out the website; it's a great innovation.

The importance of a citizen base

In my second full week with the SSE I've become increasingly aware of the many SSE Fellows who are out there, still keeping their projects sustainable and still causing positive change. On the tube this morning I was reading the Global Ideas Bank's  "500 Ways to Change the World" and it really occurred to me how many different people have original solutions to various problems. While the book was edited and compiled by Nick Temple (Network Director at SSE) , the content was created by people who have recognized a fault  in  society and  have an idea  to fix it : 'ordinary' people suggesting social innovations.

The fact that so many want to help, and have such ideas, bodes well not only for the future of the SSE model, but also similar projects such as Ashoka's much welcomed CBI Initiative. While not in Britain quite yet, (although on the way: it's made it to France ) the Citizen Base Initiative seeks to alter "old funding strategies" and aims at helping citizen sector organisations to think differently about utilising resources, revenue streams etc, so that they can become more self-sufficient/more vibrant/less dependent on erratic funding. CBI tries to help the citizen sector break from traditional funding bodies and the state.

In essence, It's about a wider view of stakeholders and how they (your organisation's citizen base) can help access different types of resources, and help provide support. Very much in line with the view that social entrepreneurs create change through building networks, teams and movements, rather than as heroic individuals (see previous post on this subject)

Funding, the arts, and balance.

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.