The School for Social Entrepreneurs

O2, social enterprise, and hitting the mainstream

Amongst all the hullabaloo and fall-out from the launch of the Social Enterprise Mark (see previous post for our take), most commentators missed what I think could be a much more important announcement made at Voice 10 last week: that O2 are committing to providing services and raising awareness of social enterprise to its customers and staff. Or, as they put it, "this is the age of social enterprise, and O2 is welcoming it with open arms". See the page on their website for more.

Obviously for this to be more than just standard CSR verbiage, O2 will need to follow through on that commitment, but I'm encouraged by what I've heard about the number of practical offers and initiatives to follow in the coming months, and the fact that the conversations are with the core business team, not the CSR department; the proof will be in the eating, as ever. The exciting thing is that, rather than looking inwardly at percentages of traded income and dividend levels, this is an example of getting the word out externally to a much bigger audience: through high street retail outlets, a website with reach far beyond any in this sector, and to staff (c. 30,000) and customers (nigh on 20 million) in huge numbers. A massive opportunity for the movement, potentially.

The Social Enterprise Ambassadors programme has often been criticised, sometimes rightly, sometimes (I've felt, admittedly as a partner in its delivery: disclaimer!) inaccurately. But its original brief was to get the word out and raise awareness to new audiences: young people, commissioners, and the commercial business sector. This is a great example, led by Sam Conniff of Livity, of just that kind of work. Alongside the job swaps being organised between ambassadors and leading corporate executives (working with organisations such as Google, Disney, Tribal, Coutts, Rok and more), and speaking engagements across the country, and the current mentoring competition, real progress is being made.

Transparency and (green) social entrepreneurship

So on Day 2 at the SSE residential, 140 social entrepreneurs packed into the Great Hall at Dartington to hear from Colin Crooks, social entrepreneur and founder of Green-Works, the furniture recycling social enterprise It takes quite an individual to hold that big an audience engaged and attentive for nigh on 2 hours, but Colin made it look effortless. And he demonstrated one of his key values, transparency, in virtually every sentence and every answer.

He split the witness session into four sections: Start-up, structure, people and new developments, drawing frequently and vividly and openly on his own experience. Below are my efforts at a transcript / bullet points of what he covered along the way, and the questions asked in each section. Hopefully it makes some sense, and you can take some nuggets of advice and wisdom.

START-UP
- Hates waste: of things, of products, and of people; used to just rail against it ineffectively before finding social enterprise
- Worked in plastics factory for 40p an hour
- Went to university age 24 + saw wasted talent there...society was wasting that talent
- I pick up things in the street and drive my children mad
- Glad to be in a place that gets environment + sustainability (Dartington)

- Started a paper-recycling business which went OK, but collapsed when the price of paper collapsed. Price collapsed by 35%; margin was 8%.
- Brutal experience, extremely unpleasant, and learned a huge amount.
- Paid off debts (£100,000), got married to an "extremely patient" woman.
- Elected to be a councillor in Lambeth (West Norwood); by accident... (18.9% swing); See things as a councillor (schools, hospitals, charities, residents association) that you would not normally see
- Lots of organisations that had “shocking furniture”; one meeting with 30 people...with no furniture
- Next day, went into major blue chip company that was throwing away 600 desks and chairs
- "Idea was obvious to me: so I rented a van... moved 600 desks over 4 months"; that was the beginning of Green Works: an intermediary role to solve market failure: I will take this furniture off you at a timetable that suits you, and I will provide / sell that furniture to organisations that need it (via a massive warehouse)

- But very hard: steep learning curve; have to take it all within 24 hours....
- £23,000 turnover after year 2...not getting paid; van + volunteers; was it going to take off?

- HSBC: invited in to HSBC’s major bank in old City of London; cabinets for sticks, gloves and hats
- Start talking about HSBC’s new building at Canary Wharf (Colin used to be a window cleaning manager)...filling the entire building with 7,000 people + closing down 17 smaller buildings in City of London; and new furniture for Canary Wharf
- Want us to take away 7,000 desks in 6 months; took me 3 seconds to take the risk and go for it
- £500,000 contract for a business turning over £23,000: the original business destroyer contract (if they pay a day late etc...); this is mad, this is too early....optimistic side won: gotta go for it
- Demanded sum up front + water-tight contract to allow him to get bank support + warehouse

-  Peter Weatherstone (@First Fruit) signed and sealed a deal with him; to employ homeless people + get warehouse...on first meeting; his turnover was £75,000
- “That’s why I love being a social entrepreneur and in social enterprise; because we did it on trust, on wanting to achieve the same thing”
- Got pro-bono legal advice from Lovells: and ripped up the normal HSBC supply contract: November 7th 2002: signed the lease...+ first trucks rolled in
- 3,000 tonnes of furniture over the next 6 months; 52,000 items of furniture (including 1,000 hat stands) “The most amazing experience of my life: I’ve never enjoyed myself so much ever”

- Story shows you two things about starting up:
1) If you really believe in what you’re doing, and you believe you have the skills to do it...then do it; (but make sure that it is in line with your mission)

2) You cannot do it on your own; and there’s no reason why you should; huge diversity of skills and expertise needed to make it happen; the sum of the parts greater than the whole

Questions
- Is there competition now? Huge, intense competition; lots of people + orgs emerged; mostly delighted (because GreenWorks couldn’t cope with it all); some competition using dodgy tactics

- What are your personal key values...and how do you apply them? You can stamp your values through your organisation like a stick of rock as a social entrepreneur. For me, it is never divert to landfill; absolute integrity and transparency; + giving people a chance. Challenge to apply those, but we make them part of the interview, induction and review process in the organisation

- How challenging to forge relationships? You do create an energy around you; all you can talk about is the enterprise (breakfast, dinner, pub, friends, networks). Word of mouth got us HSBC. Relationships are the key things, but need to have an authenticity; you have to do a lot of networking, and kiss a lot of frogs...but find some princes on your wavelength who get it. Don’t try and force something that isn’t naturally happening. “If it doesn’t come naturally, you’re doing it wrong”

- How do you ensure furniture is re-usable? We collect everything, regardless of its state. And none of it goes to landfill

---

STRUCTURE

- I really believe in a not-for-profit model...company limited by guarantee: need directors + understand you are no longer the owner.
- First year: £2000; second year: £23,000; at first, friend + wife was enough. Needed more challenge as things went on (not just yes-men).
- Guy from Centrica: instantly professionalised us: get the numbers and know the numbers (disciplines + structures).
- 3 person board grew to 6. Bringing in particular sets of skills. People we knew or knew of.
- Recruited people who are do-ers. No "Lady Mucks and Lord Fauntleroys", but people who open their phone books and help us. And push and probe and challenge me. Advice that I couldn’t buy.
- Decent balance: I give up control of salary and (some of) strategy, but they were recruited to help me achieve my mission. And therefore I’ve found that hugely rewarding....
- Frankness is the key to making that board work; be honest when I don’t know the answers; you can be superman outwardly, but need to be open and trusting to the board. Then they will help you, not beat you up. If I tell them all the answers, how are they going to help?

Questions

-  Is your structure succession-proof? Probably could do with tightening up. Biggest concern with integrity of business + some of those things I hold.

- Where do you recruit trustees/directors from? Advertise some vacancies on NCVO, SEC, SEL....and they are people who are looking for this kind of thing. It’s also about being networked, and networking your networks. [we are a charity and a company limited by guarantee; so the directors are also trustees]

---

PEOPLE

- I’ve made a lot of mistakes and got a lot of things wrong; and some right
- Sometimes you know instantly if you’ve got it right (Chris); just got on with it; applied himself intelligently...etc. for 4 days; then took him on when I dislocated my knee
- Best single recruitment I ever did: and it was backing enthusiasm and intelligence and attitude
- You have to be direct and clear with people (which some people find tricky)...you have to call the line, otherwise people cross it

- Recommends Good To Great (section on there: get the right people on the bus) by Jim Collins; get the right people on the bus and make sure they are in the right seat; and the bus journey may change...so the people may need to change (or change their seats). Need to know what skills you need, what part of the journey you are on, what skills you don’t have and what skills you need to get in...

- I’m out of my depth a lot of the time...and I don’t always know how to do it; I freely admit that.
- Brought in a load of more experienced people: didn’t get the dream, didn’t get the mission... didn’t get it in their belly, even if they did on their spreadsheets; and it nearly destroyed us. £200-300k spent on people taking us nowhere. Very much harder to get rid of them.
- Learning is: Do not recruit in a hurry...if you don’t think the person is right, go round again. Frustration of getting the wrong person in is infinitely worse than taking time getting the right person. 
-  Regular feedback from day 1. Direct, straight and true.
- If it’s not working out, the sooner the better in terms of getting rid of them / parting company

Questions

- When did you draw up an HR plan? When we got to around £1m. Intensely different business then and at £2m. But before that, keep the momentum going; do stuff. Instinctual.

- What was the problem with the ‘wise heads’? Was it about the money primarily for them? Yes. Not just about the money; it’s also about doing what’s right. They knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.

- How did you start to dismiss these people or agree to part? A frank conversation, normally. Pointing to history + some examples. Ask them "What do you think we should do?"

- Who are the key players in the business? Changes all the time. Depending on circumstances and what stage of the journey the organisation is at.

---

NEW BUSINESS / DEVELOPMENT

- You have to keep revitalising, keep developing, keep it new.
- Done some of the biggest ever contracts for recycling furniture in the UK. So looking also for some new things
- Went to Sierra Leone; met an MP starting a library there; offered her furniture; most amazing place I’ve ever been...most amazing people; so we are working to revitalise a whole community by providing them with furniture etc.
- Needed: nowhere to store books (mud floor, palm roof). So sent out a load of metal cabinets. Quadrupled them number of books in Sierra Leone; and all are stored in metal cabinets by age group. 
- Also, back in the UK, have set up a fully computerised joinery workshop. Taken four years to get right. Because we are a warehousing business, not a manufacturing business. Finally turned into profit in the last 6 months.
- About the right people, the right partnerships and taking the opportunities
- Keep refining and revitalising the model...and to do all of that against the odds. And, to some extent, at times, against the opinions and advice of trustees + directors.
- Seeing the benefits of those two things has given me another level of energy for the future

[cue APPLAUSE]

Should third sector leaders be non-executive directors?

It's crazy time here at SSE....having recruited two new staff in three new regional SSEs, we're now mid-recruitment of three posts at SSE-UK here in East London. And we have been rewarded with our largest pile of CVs ever......

Whilst thinking about recruitment, I thought I'd draw attention to a different area of recruitment that has a broad relevance to the third sector. As many have pointed out, the failure of our financial institutions is also a failure of corporate governance which is, in turn, a failure of non-executive directors (NEDs). David Walker's recent report on corporate governance acknowledges this, and suggests doubling the number of days that NEDs contribute to a company per year.

This does seem an inadequate response, though. As The World of GingerbreadGirl points out:

"if you use the same people you will have the same answers, the same approaches, and the same problems - whether or not you cut their pay, double their pay, cut their days, or double them. If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you always got."

She suggests that every board should have to have one NED that has never been an NED before...in order to cut down on the cronyism, (old boy) networks and lack of variety that has affected the ability of non-execs to perform their role over the last few years. Matthew Cain follows on from this with some sensible questions that should form a basic check on whether a person can be an NED who will bring value to the corporate governance process. And points out that NEDs aren't a panacea to this problem, which is surely right.

But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed.

So how does this relate to "our" world? Well, firstly because the same applies to charitable boards: as Eleanor at NPC points out in her post (with the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin title of Networks aren't the answer for boards: get some fresh blood for a change),

"Trustee boards in the charity sector in the UK face remarkably similar problems. Most (around 80%) recruit new board members from their networks. 'Word of mouth' is great for getting people who you know and trust, but it means that you are looking in a very small pool of people"

This is surely true. We work hard with SSE students (and Fellows) to think hard about different types of governance structure, and about the make-up of their boards (if they have them). And that challenge of being aligned to the mission, but not too close to it; of being trusted, but not uncritical; of being a good mix of skills, but also a good team... etc

Secondly, and to return to GingerbreadGirls' original point about widening the pool of talent, surely there are people from the charity and social enterprise sectors who would add credibility, acuity, insight and experience to some corporate boards? This is something we've been looking at on the Social Enterprise Ambassadors programme and was called for at an event the other evening by leading charity lawyer Stephen Lloyd, who was reported as saying:

"that at least one non-executive director of all quoted companies should have extensive experience of the social/voluntary sector to add a new perspective to board discussions"

Again, getting leading charity or social enterprise directors as non-exec directors is by no means a panacea, but it would surely bring a fresh pair of (credible) eyes to the table, combined with experience of running a significant organisation. And would also foster better understanding in both sectors about the differing demands and natures of each.

[Writing this post as part of Bloggers' Circle, an initiative to share posts cross-blog and get interesting posts more widely-read.]

Wednesday round-up: divide, diffusion, diversity... and DBERR

A quick round-up of posts, links, tweets (oh yes) and information, before heading up to Leeds this morning.

- First up, SSE Chair Charlotte Young has been awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion for 2009. Charlotte has been involved in SSE since its inception, helping design the original make-up of the programme that has lasted till this day. Congratulations from all here.

- And, to further get the SSE news out the way, SSE is the lead partner in a social entrepreneurship consortium that has been awarded £500k from the Department of Communities and Local Government's Empowerment Fund over the next three years. Other partners involved in the delivery are CAN, Changemakers, Training for Life and UnLtd, with Ashoka UK as advisory partner. All power to the network mindset...and congratulations also to Social Firms, Bassac, Operation Black Vote, Urban Forum and the Young Foundation

- The social enterprise summit announced at Voice 09, between Peter Mandelson (of DBERR) and Liam Byrne (of Cabinet Office) and assorted social enterprise luminaries, is happening on May 12th, with four regional roadshows beforehand for people/organisations to feed into; here's to concrete outcomes!

- Other aspects of the OTS Recession Action Plan are coming to fruition also; the Modernisation Fund website is now up and running for interested orgs (in partnership / merger / collaboration): check it out here

- Third Sector reports on the ongoing divide between Liam Black and Jonathan Bland / Social Enterprise Coalition. Interesting article and interesting quotes from other commentators also, which summarise many of the debates in this field in microcosm; SSE naturally sits on the, to quote Matthew Thomson, "social enterprise is a state of mind, not a legal form" side of things, but welcome the (public) debate

- Business Week agrees with Liam, anyway; it's selected some leading US social entrepreneurs, and every one of them has a for-profit structure....some great organisations here, regardless of your viewpoint

- I met Margaret Moran MP yesterday, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on social enterprise, and we discussed the need for diversity in the movement; see this article in the Times, Race to diversify social enterprise, for more

- Some good conversations about scale and replication been happening on a couple of US blogs. Nat Whittemore has an excellent round-up: Scale vs. Diffusion redux

- What return do philanthropists look for in a recession? 

- Nice interview with social enterprise ambassador Tim Campbell in the FT

- It had to happen....Twitter goes mainstream: should your non-profit jump on board? (though there is something a little stalkerish still about "x is now following you" appearing in your inbox....)

- The financial crisis is killing philanthropy in Ireland, apparently....with some notable exceptions

- Great post on the inequalities of internship by Jamie Veitch at New Start

- And finally, along the line of stories that say "ethical businesses sell out to scale up" (cf Body Shop, Green & Blacks, Ben & Jerrys), Innocent smoothies have sold a stake to Coca-Cola; read the founders' letter here; it was interesting to read on Rob Greenland's blog that one of them had recently said that, as Rob reports, "they're more innocent-like than they've ever been - because they now have to work hard at making the values mean something.  When they were small, it just happened.  Now they have to work at it." Which is an excellent point, I think; presumably that working hard just got a whole lot harder as well (check the 348 comments to date on this post). Although their transparency / response is still impressive (see Innocent Investment video Q + A).

Tuesday round-up: Shirky, Scotland, Shoreditch

Much linkage to get involved with this morning....a bit of a mish-mash, but hopefully of some use:

- Voice 2009 will be in Birmingham; for the flagship social enterprise event, another big venue: the Birmingham ICC. See picture left (CEOs of SEC and Advantage West Mids)

- Couple of interesting pieces about fairtrade (coffee) and online debates; see Ugandan coffee trade and Fairer than Fairtrade

- Campbell Robb on the third sector and public service delivery in the Times, on removing the barrier to allow third sector orgs to deliver etc.

- Less enthusiastically, a piece in today's Times Public Agenda discusses how devolution is still an ideal, not a practical reality, something which chimes with SSE Fellows' experiences of local authorities (though it is a varied and patchy picture)

- What is citizen philanthropy? Perhaps not a question that's keeping you awake at night, but this article is an interesting read: This Is What Philanthropy Looks Like

- Matt Stevenson-Dodd posts on his fellow Ambassador Daniel Heery's great work in Cumbria

- Scottish social enterprise support is "fragmented, complex, uneven and inconsistent"; apart from that, all is well. More seriously, the report is worth reading, particularly in its call for support providers to talk to each other and work in a more joined-up (hate that phrase) manner. Lessons for England as well as Scotland, methinks.

- Clay Shirky is author of Here Comes Everybody, which is about 'organising without organisations': groups, networks and the effects of new technology. "Group action just got easier" is his five word thesis. Anyway, he spoke at Demos the other day, and you can download the hour-long podcast to listen in....

- Bilumi: stands for Buy It Like You Mean It, "an online community of people reviewing and rating the socially responsible business practices of companies and their supply chains"; interesting Shirky-esque stuff

- The Shoreditch Grand Prix involves kids bicycles, leg-power, and fundraising for social entrepreneurs

- Finally, while I mostly turn to Bubb's Blog for a smile in the morning (I will be picking out an appropriate tie and bottle of wine for my next meeting at ACEVO), Jeff Trexler's reaction to the SEC video of social enterprise is pretty entertaining.

Philanthrocapitalism and new clothes

One of the frustrations of recent events I've attended has been the common assumption that what comes from business into the social sector must be "better": venture philanthropy will revolutionise philanthropy, coherent investment-style metrics will revolutionise social impact, risk investment, social stock exchanges and loan funds will provide liquidity for the sector, and social enterprises will scale up in order to meet the challenges they face. Etc.

As regular readers of this blog will know, SSE's view of social entrepreneurship is an inclusive, broad-based one, not one that insists that social entrepreneurs must "have large-scale impact" to warrant the label, nor one that insists that social entrepreneurs must "earn income and trade", nor one that thinks impact is only delivered by an organisation's services, and not also through its operations in the round. For us, at its simplest level, social entrepreneurship is about entrepreneurial individuals applying themselves for social / public benefit rather than solely personal gain.

Further to this, the sector an organisation comes from, its legal structure, or its financing is not a guarantee of efficiency, quality, greater impact, excellence or even, in some cases, competence. Measurement in this sector is more difficult, intangible, and (at times) nebulous than the financial bottom line. Venture philanthropists have a more sensitive, complex role than venture capitalists....and so on. In reality, there should be knowledge transfer and learning between sectors (and always has been); indeed, the action learning process that underpins the SSE programme was originally pioneered in large companies for senior management. And, when 'business-like' is equated with more professional or making best use of its money (and people), then no-one has an issue with that either...

But, currently, it has felt rather one way (though I wouldn't wish to generalise: there are those who have a much more nuanced understanding all along the spectrum): and focusing more on business practice in the social sector, rather than achieving greater social equity and transformation. Hence my welcome for Paul Farmer's remarks at the Skoll event recently. And hence also my interest in this new book by Michael Edwards: Just Another Emperor? The myths and realities of philanthropcapitalism. It looks at the application of business practices to the social sector / philanthropy in great detail and, as far as I've read, speaks much sense, as well as provoking debate. I won't go on too much more, but would recommend starting with the transcript from the launch downloadable here, and I'll end this rather long post with a short quote from that which gives you a flavour of the argument:

"[Another] area where philanthrocapitalism claims to make an impact is in
improving the financial and the management capacities of civil society organisations.
However, I’ve always been confused by the way venture philanthropists and social
entrepreneurs differentiate themselves from the rest of civil society on the grounds
that they are “results based” or “high performance”, implying that everyone else is
uninterested in outcomes. Now sure, there are mediocre citizens groups, that’s true,
just as there are mediocre businesses, mediocre venture philanthropists, mediocre
social entrepreneurs and mediocre government departments. So why import the
practices of mediocrity into the social sectors, is Jim Collin’s conclusion, of Good to
Great fame.

What separates good and bad performance has very little to do with
business thinking or involvement in the market. What separates them is whether
they have a clear focus to their work, strong learning and accountability mechanisms
that keep them heading in the right direction and the ability to motivate their staff, or
volunteers, to reach the highest collective levels of performance. There’s no evidence
I know of which proves that business thinking, or business experience, can generate
those advances more effectively than experience in other sectors."

   

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....

Corporate social responsibility and inflection points

At the CAF Companies and Communities awards event yesterday, there was some interesting debate and discussion about CSR, the way it is changing, and how there has been a shift over the last two years in the way that it is viewed by the corporate sector. John Humphrys hosted (and gave out the awards later on: congratulations to all the winners) and was endearing in his contrariness. The most interesting insights for me came from Mark Kramer from FSG in the US, and I particularly enjoyed one graph he showed that looked as follows:

[click to enlarge]

Profit (or probability of profit) is on the y-axis, and consumer awareness (over time) on the x-axis. The red line represents profit from 'harm', and the green line profit from 'cure' (see below). The circled area is the inflection point.

Basically, the graph shows how companies reach a point where their ability to make money whilst still 'harming' or creating a problem (eg polluting, deforesting) becomes superseded by their ability to make money from 'curing' or creating a solution. Recognising the point where this happens (for each product / service / activity) is a key challenge for companies....or at least for those where this way of thinking can be applied. It also got me thinking that you could apply a similar graph from the charity point of view, with social impact on the y-axis: and the inflection point would be where the charity's ability to change things through campaigning against corporates is superseded by their ability to make change by working with them.

Obviously this isn't true for all, but it's an interesting lens to look at this issue through. Particularly if one considers that social enterprise and social entrepreneurship might be viewed as operating at those respective inflection points from their inception.

Will the private sector discredit or absorb social enterprise?

These (discredit / absorb) are two opinions of the private sector: social enterprise relationship I've read recently.

The first was from Cliff Prior, CEO of UnLtd, who was reported (in this Third Sector article) as making the point that "social enterprises are in danger of being discredited by private sector imitators" (aka profit-making businesses adopting a social enterprise model). Nigel Kershaw (of Big Issue Invest) rebutted this with "if you are transforming society, it doesn't matter what you are".

The second was from Julia Meek on Catalyst's Social Business Blog (Social Businesses: Victims of their own success?). In this post, she discusses the trend for mainstream businesses to adopt the approaches of social businesses, and then adopt them wholesale at a much bigger scale. Or, as Julia puts it:

"These supermarkets, electricity suppliers, market leaders and others have been able to watch the market and let social businesses prove the effectiveness of their various approaches. On observing a successful one the companies have been able to leverage their infrastructure, human capital, market positioning etc. to adopt it quickly themselves, marketing ’social’ products and services to the same target audience and at a lower price than can feasibly be offered by smaller, social businesses."

This is partly a conversation about scale: can social businesses ever break the 'ethical glass ceiling', as Julia's colleague puts it, and get the necessary investment to compete on more equal terms with the big boys? Does it mean that the best way for social businesses to make change is to pioneer/prove and hope for adaptation by the mainstream? (an approach often seen in the public sector and web 2.0 alike). She then posits 4 potential approaches, around quality, brand, partnerships and acquisitions. Well worth reading.

---

On the first, I partly agree with Cliff, in that just adopting a model / particular legal structure proves nothing, and this is a problem. This is as true for PCT's hiving half of themselves off into a CIC (excuse acronym-itis) and then commissioning that 'new' half, as it is true for the private sector. Unless the primary mission of an organisation is a social one and the initiative is driven by a social entrepreneur / team of socially entrepreneurial leaders, then its motivation can always be called into question. But we see social entrepreneurs operating across all sectors, and that is where I agree with Nigel: ultimately, moving forward, there will be this increasing blurring of boundaries, and what will matter, as I've posted before, is:

- the quality of the work/activity/product
(reputation / measurement / evaluation / provenance etc)
- how well this is communicated
(brand / voice / connections to stakeholders etc)
- the transparency with which the organisation operates
(mission / finances / governance etc)

Regardless of the legal structure chosen, these will be key things for all organisations operating across this field; from enterprising charities through to socially-responsible companies.

It's interesting to relate the second post to the 'six practices of high-impact non-profits' (which I mentioned here), in that one of those practices was to 'serve and advocate'. If the pioneering role of social business in getting ethical / fair / green / social practices adopted by the mainstream is seen through this lens of advocacy, then maybe that helps place it in a slightly different context. Also, as I am bound to say in this context, the assumption is also there that social enterprises and the like want to scale up. As the Small Business Blog posted the other day, "69 percent of small business owners said that they prefer to have their business remain small.” If that is true in the private sector, surely the same can be said of the third sector / social enterprise movement as well? (If not more so, as 'small and beautiful' is a mantra to some).

And surely the movement should be proud to be influencing and changing the mainstream in the way that it has: how satisfying, however imperfectly done, to see big supermarkets pushing fairtrade coffee, to see Fiji water pushing its carbon neutrality, to see M&S put out its Plan A...none of which would have been achieved without hundreds of activists, campaigners and social entrepreneurs, and none of which we could have said even one, two, three years ago. Where we are strongest is in demonstrating, through quality practice and delivery, that things can be done differently....and that they are better done that way.

Friday round-up: microcredit, RED, leadership, Harvard et al

Friday round-up, and there's a fair bit after inactivity this week:

- good Worldchanging post on microcredit and the ongoing debate about how effective it is; the argument seemed to be saying that entrepreneurship and enterprising people were needed to change things: access to finance alone was not enough (which is undoubtedly an argument we'd hold to over here as well); well worth a read, and a topic that is not likely to go away...

- Intelligent Giving follow up on the RED campaign (after it got a kicking in the press); not sure I totally agree with their take, but difficult to disagree with: "If you like RED products, buy them, but don't pretend you're giving to charity. We're talking pennies here....." and they have some interesting information about the charity that benefits too....

- the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference has been happening; someone kindly rounded up those who were blogging from the event, though they did miss one or two other interesting posts. Both of which see progress or "the ball" moving forward....

- we attended the Third Sector Leadership Centre Provider Forum on Monday; we're in their directory and they have an interesting interim report on action learning sets for third sector leaders (free registration needed); obviously we've been at that for a decade... ;0)

- Yunus saves the world with yoghurt....

- ...and We Are What We Do with a bag

On that bombshell, we bid you farewell for this week.