The School for Social Entrepreneurs

Thursday round-up: Sunlight, shares, scale, SROI

Quick round-up, as there seems to be lots coming in and lots of interest:

- Peter Holbrook has written a blog post about David Cameron launching the Tory green paper at Sunlight Development Trust, and has some interesting initial thoughts from a practitioner's point of view on its recommendations; more reaction on Bubb's blog (who's on rare form of late), here, and here.

- Paul Miller of School of Everything has written an interesting post about why their organisation is a company limited by shares and how they balance the need for start-up investment (in a silicon valley web2.0 type way) with a social mission at their heart....

- Fall-out from the ECT news continues; apparently the recycling arm is keeping its CIC structure, despite (or as well as?) being taken over by a private sector operator....will be interesting to see how that turns out. In the meantime, here's a piece in New Start about it all; as I mentioned previously, this can be seen as a positive as much as a negative, but I do think that the issue of scale is at the heart of it all

- On which subject (scale), some food for thought: The Fetishization of Scaling Up (Small is beautiful versus Big is essential....and local+local+local = global...) and a magazine/event called De-Growth

- The SROI-UK conference has spawned a network: SROI-UK is chaired by the evaluation legend Jeremy Nicholls, who we'll be doing some work with in mid-June

- DEFRA announced a big £4.6 million deal for the various third sector waste and recycling networks who have come together to form a new organisation, REconomy. Huge kudos to (former SSE Director of Learning) Matthew Thomson for masterminding the deal: word on the street is that the celebrations were substantial.....but well-deserved.

- Interesting article by Matthew Taylor of the RSA on the (independence of the) third sector and the need for accountability and transparency

- How to set up a refugee community organisation; consult this guide?

- And a brief final thought: Word of mouth is not created, it is co-created

Eco-friendly office printing

Inspired by Greenpeace's new EfficienCity, I have been trying to cut down on my printing in the office; although we do all the stuff you'd expect (double -sided, re-use of one-sided, recycling cartridges), my big problem was with widows and orphans...the unwanted few lines + images which cause you to print another page.

Delightfully, I can recommend GreenPrint World, a free bit of software (endorsed by a whole range of US eco non-profits) which you select as your default printer. It basically introduces on extra stage between pressing Print and the printer starting to whirr; at this stage it offers you the option of cutting off extraneous pages, removing images (great for website ads) and removing unnecessary text. Best of all, it keeps a running total of how many pages you've saved, and how much money this has saved you/your organisation. You can use it in your office if it's not for 'commercial' purposes, and use it at home as well.

Takes a bit of getting used to, but very useable once you get going. Their special font, on the other hand, I'm not quite as sold on....but you can't have everything.

Gore, greenness and giving

I watched An Inconvenient Truth last night (I know: bit behind the times etc) which was good, if fairly depressing, Sunday night viewing. I found the powerpoint / argument / evidence compelling and got increasingly frustrated with the Gore-centred family interludes. Well worth seeing, as it does (re) inspire you to act and do what you can (particularly the credits, which are brilliantly done).

It was also remarkably relevant, given the conference in Bali currently and the news that Australia (as promised in recent election) has signed up to the Kyoto agreement. Which, at least according to Gore's film, leaves the US as the only 'advanced nation' left who hasn't. Nuff said. Of course, there will be those wondering why everyone has to fly to a beautiful location in Indonesia for the event (and, btw, it's remarkable how many shots of Al Gore in an airport there are in the film), but let's hope the outcomes justify the carbon outlay.

In other Gore-related news, my favourite headline of last week was "How the other half give", which discusses a hugely glamorous event to raise cash from, and engage/involve, celebrities for charitable causes. Those attending included Al Gore, Bob Geldof, Benazir Bhutto, Bianca Jagger and..er... Jon Bon Jovi. Very much like the SSE Xmas party, then, just with less glamour but a slightly larger budget. Apparently, the last event involved spending of £800,000, of which half was on fundraising costs; which doesn't seem like a great return, but there you go. If, as the organisers put it, it is as much about "educating" those present as it is about philanthropy, then let's hope those objectives are achieved. The power that celebrities have to raise awareness and model behaviour remains extraordinary in today's world.

But raising awareness has to translate into action, and that is where some high-profile figures do better than others. What stayed with me most from Gore's film, alongside all the science, was his quote from Winston Churchill, and it seems to be very much about that urgency to act...not just speak and reflect.

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing, and baffling expedience of delays is coming to a close. In its place, we are coming to a period of consequences."

Do you do the green thing?

I met up the other day with Rod Schwartz of Catalyst to chat about social entrepreneurs, his trip to the Balkans and SSE. Having taught in a school for the blind in Bulgaria back in the dim and distant past, I was interested to hear about social business / social entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe, and the potential for the movement over there.

In the course of our discussions, Rod mentioned that he was involved with an initiative called 'Do the Green Thing', and that it was launching today....I vaguely remembered signing up to something and, sure enough, got an e-mail through today encouraging me to, well, do the green thing. Which this month is: walk more, drive less. It's kind of a We Are What We Do meets iCount meets GlobalCool meets TipThePlanet. With extra advertising savvy and web (2.0)-usability thrown in.

They describe it as: "a not-for-profit online community uniting people to act against climate change. Green Thing's basic principle is to tempt people to do one delightful thing a month and so build up a programme of green behaviour one easy step at a time".

I like it, mostly because it has a sense of humour, a bit of personality and engaging content. Whether it gets (drum roll) critical mass and really takes off remains to be seen, but there's some smart, plugged-in people behind it. And good use of the blogs/videos/podcasts/audio/wiki stuff out there, without it seeming chaotic (a challenge in itself).

Worth a bit of your valuable time.