The School for Social Entrepreneurs

SSEs recruit, SSE Fellows win awards, SSE recruits...

Just a brief Friday SSE news update to point out that:

- Our Liverpool SSE is recruiting social entrepreneurs (see Activities and News), and our Hampshire, Devon and Yorkshire and Humber SSEs will soon. Keep your eyes peeled. Overseas, our Australia SSE is recruiting for its block programme in Sydney to start in September. Get in touch with the local/regional SSE in question for more info in each case via the links above.

- SSE Fellow Chris Dabbs's organisation, Unlimited Potential, has become the first organisation (and I believe the first SSE Fellow) in the North-West to win the Social Enterprise Mark. See the full news story. Unlimited Potential provides innovative health and wellbeing services, and was given the award by Social Enterprise Ambassador Daniel Heery (who's been blogging like a demon of late)

- Congratulations also to SSE Fellow Ros Spearing, whose organisation Ebony Horse Club won the Beyond Sport London Legacy Award this week. Which means not only recognition at a prestigious global event, and a presentation from Mayor Boris Johnson, but also £60,000 over 3 years

- Finally, SSE is currently recruiting 3 posts at its centre in the UK. So please check out the adverts and job specifications via the newspage

More on Beyond Sport, the new Social Enterprise Live website, the Social Earth video page and much more soon.....

Brief reflection on Shine 09

Just wanted to capture some quick reflections on the two days of Shine 09. Am sure there will be more over the next few days, + more photos and videos to be uploaded. Overall, as one of the co-founders and organisers (SSE), I'm pretty delighted with how it went. Massive congrats and thanks to Sam, Lizzie and all at Germination for all their hard work in making the event a reality, and one that ran pretty smoothly. And all on a shoestring budget.

The four partners started the event because they felt there was a need for an accessible, affordable, practical, well-networked, dynamic event that was less about long powerpoints and plenary speeches, and more about one-to-one support and moving your business on. I really think Shine 09 delivered on that concept, and, overall, it felt like more 'business' was being done at the event than last year. Or, as Cliff Prior (UnLtd CEO) summarised to me, Shine 08 was about inspiration, Shine 09 was about perspiration...or about implementation. I saw a couple of SSE Fellows walking out at the end of Friday and they were listing the work they'd got, the contacts made, and the practical advice they'd received...which was very much music to my ears.

Highlights for me on the Friday were the 1:1 areas, where organisations like Lovells, Futurebuilders, UnLtd, Ashoka and ourselves got little respite from social entrepreneurs thirsty for advice and information. Some of the workshop sessions were a little more mixed, going on anecdotal feedback, but I heard positive things about the Mind MOT session and Jackie Westlake's DCLG session(s) in particular.

On Saturday, the vibe was relaxed and enjoyable, and What If gave a load of bespoke consultancy to those who were there (and booked in). The Social Collaboration game was great, and its hypothetical MP expenses endowment fund almost became a Twitter hoax, before being stopped in its tracks. Finally, the pitching session was great, with four excellent projects, and the judging panel giving supportive and constructive feedback (though I say so myself). Martin Sherrard won the popular vote, and an UnLtd Level 1 Award, for his walled kitchen garden project.

 As ever, we will learn from this year and the things that went well and that didn't. The balance between structured and unstructured felt good this year, and the Kings Place and the Hub Kings Cross were stellar venues. The only challenge with Kings Place was the split levels (which meant it felt slightly less of "one event" together) and lack of natural light in the downstairs rooms, but it's a great and well-resourced place to have an event. The Hub has a great vibe and, as at Kings Place, the staff and team there could not have been more helpful and accommodating.

Final big thanks to all who made it possible: Germination as I mentioned above, the funders and sponsors (Lovells, Futurebuilders, CCLA, DCLG, OTS et al), the media partners, the founding partners (especially Ben@Ashoka, Jonathan@theHub, Cliff and Nic@UnLtd), all the volunteer UnConsultants and helpers, David Wilcox for this site, and to all the social reporters and twitterers who helped make the event one that others could be involved in even from miles away.

Till next year then... ;0) and check out the Shine Social Reporter site for all the posts, videos, tweets from this weekend.

Shine unconference: buy tickets here!

The Shine Unconference is going to be amazing this year, with lots of great sessions already racking up: pitch for £1000; get free branding; have 1:1s on measurement and business planning...and network with lots of other social entrepreneurs. And all for a recession-busting £35..at Kings Place in London on May 15th and 16th. See the link above for more...or just..BUY TICKETS HERE!

SSE 40 join the Fellowship in London

It's late on Friday but I have to briefly write about yesterday's London graduation event, which was a huge success. I'll post more photos and reports next week, but I wanted to add my congratulations to the 40-odd social entrepreneurs who completed the programme yesterday and joined the SSE Fellowship. In two rooms at Coin Street's Neighbourhood Centre (thanks to Iain Tuckett and his team for all their assistance), the students gave 4 minute presentations about their project, themselves and their time at SSE. This could, of course, be a recipe for death by powerpoint, but it was a great and inspiring afternoon.

Thanks especially to all those who came along: this was officially the first SSE event where it was standing room only at the end! And thanks also to Kevin Brennan MP, the Minister for the Third Sector (pictured), who gave his time to welcome the Fellows and hand them their certificates (which was something of a marathon effort!), as well as announce the starting of two new SSE franchises (in Yorkshire and the South East) as a result of the recent OTS investment. More on this soon. Special thanks also to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP who supported the event, as well as our team throughout the year.

There was a great mix in the room of funders, policymakers, practitioners, friends and family, board members and others, and a really great vibe for the whole 3 hours or so. We've been inundated with positive feedback all day ("the love was bouncing off the walls"; "we were bowled over" etc), so the smiles are wide in the office and, I hope, on the faces of the social entrepreneurs.

You can find details of them all via this article, but you can also (thanks to the brilliant and generous David Wilcox) see some short videos on his Social Reporter site: Grassroots inspiration from graduating social entrepreneurs

A great end to a great week, and a great year for all those involved.

Reflections on the 6th Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

I'm a self-confessed Skoll World Forum veteran, having attended all six. Which must mean a lifetime achievement award or something is due sooner or later. I can even remember when it was free (!) and there was a filing cabinet in the centre of the lobby to organise meetings. So I approach the event each year with a mixture of excitement (at the networking / opportunities) and trepidation (at its full-on nature), mixed with a small dash of paracetamol (or Advil, for US readers)...because like many conferences, the good stuff happens in the bar, in the pub and over a glass of something or other.

First up, before I get going, check out everyone else! There is a huge amount of coverage online. My tips for the top to start with would be:

- Social Edge where many of the sessions are listenable / viewable online
- Nat Whittemore over at SocialEntrepreneurship.Change.Org (nice to meet you in person, Nat), who took a bunch of interesting video interviews
- FastCompany
- Social Enterprise Magazine
- Ashoka at SWF

But if you search for swf09 or #swf09 (esp. on twitter), you'll find loads. Indeed, for me, this was the event where I really began to understand the full potential of Twitter. So apologies to those following us at @SchSocEnt for the deluge that followed. But it was fascinating to see an alternative conversation and cross-session dialogues going on; questions from someone next door being asked; critiques from people thousands of miles away; dry humour to undercut the worthiness. See here for someone who writes about it better. Or Peter Deitz from Social Actions who said that "Frankly, there are two conferences going on: one for the tweeters and one for everyone else....The twittering delegates are having a distributed conversation with people here and around the world. The others aren't." Never thought I'd both agree with and understand that sentiment.

Of the planned sessions, I enjoyed the Kiva-GlobalGiving-MyC4 one the most; you may have heard of the first two, but MyC4 was a great find (as was Mads, its founder); another portal for channelling loans and investment to businesses / small scale entrepreneurs. He was also the most 'challenging' member of the panel, acknowledging the need to consider greater collaboration / possible merging, and challenging the Kiva co-CEO to say how much he earned last year (didn't necessarily agree with him on either, but at least he was prepared to divert from the norm). And, of course, these were great practitioner organisations.

Elsewhere, I found sessions on leadership and social capital markets to be dry, occasionally enlightening and fairly frustrating. A familiar malaise of Skoll is to have too many speakers on a panel, not chair them well (so they overrun), and then have little time for questions and answers...that's a problem with lots of conferences, of course, but I guess more so at Skoll because they have such a rich guest list to choose from. But reducing the Q and A also makes for a safer event: no-one challenging someone from UBS heading up a leadership session, for example, or questioning whether, given the collapse in private equity and investment banking, we should be mimicking their models, still, in the social space.

More creative spaces to get practitioners, academics, funders etc learning and working together would add to the mix. Indeed, one of the best sessions for me was straight after the final plenary, where the Skollars (see what they did?) hosted a networking session, having lured us in with wine. It was random (in terms of who you sat with), fairly open (in what you could talk about) and led to some really interesting debates and discussions. We had students, funders, practitioners (incuding the amazing Mothers2mothers co-founder Gene Falk), support/learning agencies (including ourselves and INSEAD) all around one table, and it was fascinating.

Of course, Brits tend to find the standing ovations and awards a bit much for our cynical, repressed selves, so there was also some good home turf networking to be found in pubs nearby whilst the opening / awards were going on (though apparently Ken Blecher + KT Tunstall were great, if you're seeking out highlights online). One of my main highlights, though, was in the bar of the Malmaison at about 2am, meeting David Bornstein (who wrote "How to Change the World"); what a nice, engaging guy, with really great knowledge of this field.

And then, before you knew it, it was all over for another year and back, a little, to reality...to take lessons and learning, to follow up networks and leads, to decipher the jargon, to unload a hundredweight of business cards, to remember good people (Jessica, Rod, Ben, Artur, Richard, Sat, Nigel, Liam, Sean, Jessica (2), Sam, et al), to come back with renewed inspiration, to come back with renewed belief in what SSE is doing...and to remember why I've been five times before.

Voice 09: investment, interest and igloos

Quite a couple of days up in Birmingham at Voice 09. I don't think I've ever know a conference where quite so many people wanted to talk to SSE and come and learn about us, which was great to be a part of. Massive kudos to the wonderful Liverpool SSE (Sylvia, Stephanie, Lisa, Jo, and all the students and Fellows) for manning the igloo throughout and keeping their energy up with all the enquiries and interest. And everyone seemed genuinely pleased for us given the announcment in the action plan, which was re-emphasised by Liam Byrne and Kevin Brennan in their speeches. As one person said to me (in jest), "when you look behind you, are you seeing spit on the floor?"....but, thankfully, the floor was refreshingly free of any such nastiness. Just lots of interest and lots of exciting conversations.

I thought the venue was streets ahead of last year (being finished and everything helped...), and the sounds / technical stuff all seemed perfect. The exhibition space also had more buzz as everything was a bit closer and less cavernous than before. Despite not making many sessions myself (bar the opening and closing plenaries), I heard good things about several of the breakout seminars, especially the one on scale (with the irrepressible Nigel Kershaw from Big Invest) and the one on new frontiers for business. From the plenary sessions, I enjoyed Duncan Goose of One Water taking us on his journey and taking a sideswipe at unnamed bottled water companies that (he contended) have never made a profit, so never invested any profits in projects. Although he got off fairly lightly with no environmental challenge to the bottled water paradigm, or his instant celebrity and advertising connections. As he said, useful to have; bit easier when they are your sister. But you can't argue with his impact or his ambition.

In the battle of the politicians, I think David Cameron was largely thought to be a little disappointing. His presence was arguably more significant than anything he said, given that there were no new announcements for the sector. He warmed up under questioning, though, with a neat-ish soundbite about this being the "first sector" ("I hate the phrase third sector...") and showing a decent grasp of this area's specificities and particular challenges.

Liam Byrne, meanwhile, did have new things to say, with a drive to create 25,000 jobs in social enterprises and a summit with DBERR (which will have pleased those who felt social enterprise has rather lost its connections with that department). I liked his emphasis on trust in the speech, and also heard that he'd brought local social enterprise practitioners he'd been working with in his constituency to a breakfast meeting with some more established social enterprise leaders. Which is a nice touch and shows that he also knows the sector well from the inside.

Of course, most of the talk in the bars and restaurants (there was something of a run on Ibuprofen on the Wednesday morning) was about the recession, and to what degree it was a challenge and to what degree an opportunity. The final plenary session seemed slightly torn on this, which reflected the views of the delegates, I found. On the one hand, there were those pushing for changing the whole paradigm (Andrea Westall) and aggressive growth (Nigel K), whilst others talked of the need for survival and the need to not make the same mistakes pursuing growth in an unsustainable way (Sophi Tranchell, and Matthew Thomson). That debate, I think, is set to continue, but we may hear more of survival and hatch-battening in the months ahead, rather than growth strategies.

All in all, congrats to the whole SEC team, especially events queen Mamoona Shah, and new recruit Pauline Milligan (for the Ibuprofen especially). Slightly fewer plenary speeches (not every sponsor needs a slot!) would be the only recommendation...other than that, the networking was great. And a final note of thanks to SEC and the Mid-Counties Co-operative for the bursaries which allowed some current SSE students to be able to come to the event. As you can see from the photo, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves (the SSE student, Richard Leighton, is on the left....).

Recession action plans

Well. It had been a busy week or ten days already, before today's announcement that SSE would be receiving a £500,000 investment as part of OTS's third sector recession action plan. Needless to say, we're delighted to get such a substantial boost in replicating our work across the country, and increasing markedly the numbers of potential and fledgling social entrepreneurs we can support. Which is all the more important in a climate where job creation and meeting social needs are two paramount concerns.

More coverage of the announcement can be found via our bookmarks. I've just got off the air on BBC London, and imagine there will be more coverage of the sector with a David Cameron / Liam Byrne double whammy to come at Voice 09 tomorrow and Wednesday (see below).

Us aside, it appears to be a well-targeted package of support for the sector, and I think the support for mental health and family support will be particularly welcome to organisations operating on the frontline. And, as predicted in our 10 social entrepreneurship trends for 2009, resilience and mergers (nos. 1 & 2) feature highly. I'd like to think that, as the minister said at the launch this afternoon, the investment in SSE will at least in part represent number 3, Bang for Buck.

Much other news to be blogged, which I will try and catch up on on the train up to Voice 09. If you're there, come and say hello at the SSE igloo, which will be manned by a marvellous mix of Liverpudlians and Londoners.

Social Entrepreneurship Summit video from Toronto

Just a quick link to the video footage from the Social Entrepreneurship Summit in Toronto in mid-November. And, though there are few things worse than watching yourself on video (and this is no different: it's all learning, I guess...!), here's the video of my presentation at the conference, along with that of Nigel Biggar from the Grameen Foundation. (To skip to the true horror, my bit is from about 6 minutes in, and also feature in the Q & A at the end; the presentation that goes with it is here).

SES08 - Social Metrics and Educating Social Entrepreneurs from SiG @ MaRS on Vimeo.

Death, sex and doughnuts (learning from experience)

One of the best things about travelling overseas for work (and there are plenty of downsides too) is the people you end up meeting. Often, strangely, this is not the people in the country you are visiting, but the people coming out from the UK for the same event. Indeed, some of my best UK networking has happened overseas.

The same was true on the recent trip to China, where I was part of a delegation including people from the Young Foundation, NCVO's Compact Team, the Office of the Third Sector (including Anne McGuire, the new government adviser on third sector innovation), the British Council, and the Welsh Assembly. It was fascinating to learn over dinner (and the odd drink) about their various experiences which had led them to this point, which ranged from conducting research on doughnuts (and why they are big sellers in Colombia and Saudi Arabia), reading articles on the sex lives of armadillos, and seeing behind the scenes at crematoria. Not hugely relevant to social entrepreneurship, you might think (and indeed, you might be right) but there is something about freeing up your brain and getting outside experience that brings you back to the organisation with fresh eyes and ideas. And about other people (with equally fresh eyes) asking questions about your work and your organisation from different fields and sectors that challenges and causes you to think anew about your work.

And about death, sex and doughnuts, of course.

Social entrepreneurship in China: lessons from Beijing

I've been in Beijing all this week working on a couple of practical projects and, yesterday, speaking at a Social Innovation and Third Sector conference organised by the British Council and the Ministry of Civil Affairs (or BC and MoCA as I'm learning to call them). There was some really interesting background statistics and information, not least the enormous rise in the registration of non-governmental organisations across the country: hundreds of thousands each year. The discussion of regulation was also fascinating, as new legal structures / processes have come into play, allowing for the creation of private foundations and also for very small local (primarily voluntary) groups to operate without the need for the full regulatory procedure.

Of course, small and local is all relative in this field: one conversation we were having about the importance of a social entrepreneur being connected / engaged with / from the community they are aiming to serve led one government-official to note that some of his neighbourhood leaders might come under that definition....and the neighbourhood they worked with and served? 125,000 people. Whatever one thinks of the Chinese government, they are practically the only route to scaling or replicating any sort of solution across this vast country.

But what inspired me most, given that we are in development with the Fuping Development Institute and the British Council about potentially bringing the SSE methodology to China, was the similarities between the social entrepreneurs and their voicing of the various barriers and challenges they face. There were some great examples and practitioners there: like the entrepreneurs who established Shining Stone Community Action and the 1+1 blind / radio project. In our breakout session (when I was still trying to gauge response to my presentation: always tricky to see how something has been received in translation / with a 10-15 second delay), such practitioners mixed with support agencies, government officials (some of whom were also extraordinarily entrepreneurial: overseeing pilot subsidies / exemptions for NGOs, increasing procurement from the third sector by 300% etc) and business leaders in heated and pretty open discussion.

And the key issues / barriers / challenges? Funding + earned income, personal/business support, government regulation / legal structures (on which people were split between they need to be heavily involved...and they need to get out of the way), connecting with each other to share information...and so on. Sound familiar? Absoutely. And while the UK is further along the line in many of these areas, and has learning and knowledge to transfer (including what hasn't worked), and while the constraints and challenges are different here, there is a huge amount of common ground. And what shone through, as ever, was the passion, dynamism and purpose of these social entrepreneurs doing extraordinary things in an extraordinary country.