The School for Social Entrepreneurs

Research engine

Increasingly in my role here at SSE I am tracking bits of research and policy that are flowing from different outfits and areas (and countries). And, while I haven't had much time to pore over them of late, here are a couple that I thought were of particular interest:

- The Social Intrapreneur: A Field Guide for Corporate Changemakers (pdf at end of article); It's from Sustainability, whose stuff is usually leaning towards the corporate / US / big business version of social entrepreneurship, and I guess this report is a logical extension of this. Their stuff is always very good and thought-provoking though, so this makes it worth a read. We've often played round with the idea of social intrapreneurship here, although as much in a 'large non-profit' as a multinational....but, either way, entrepreneurial individuals within organisations setting up new initiatives and projects for social benefit. Different challenges to starting from scratch, different benefits....but also much that is shared. An area to revisit, I think.

- Hitting the Target, Missing the Point: How government regeneration targets fail deprived areas is from the New Economics Foundation, and seems incredibly timely to me. Indeed, no sooner had I written something like "DCLG should aim to learn from previous / current regeneration initiatives such as LEGI" in a policy document than this lands in my inbox. Looks very interesting, particularly as it is rooted in practical work in the St Helens area (which has LEGI money: the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative).

I've yet to read it in full, but the general message seems to be that concentrating on outputs like job nos., enterprises started etc doesn't capture the full benefits of such initiatives. It's not a surprise to hear NEF calling for more sophisticated, thought-through measurement...but this one could have a big influence at at time when DCLG is looking at its regeneration objectives and infrastructure closely. Certainly, SSE has found that its outcomes and impact range far and wide: yes, jobs created, organisations established...but also increased political engagement, decreased isolation, greater community cohesion, improved relationships (!) etc.....

Intern-ment

Whilst reading about Derek Conway and the other MPs paying their own family for internships and work experience (even the Third Sector got briefly drawn in), I got thinking about how this related to the use of interns by third sector organisations, particularly in the fields of policy and research. As regular readers of this blog will know, SSE recently had an intern over from St Olaf College in Minnesota, which was pretty much an unqualified success. Using volunteers in this way can clearly make a substantial difference to an organisation like SSE whose capacity is still relatively small, if growing. And (I think) it can be a genuine win-win, with significant personal development, learning and contacts/networks for the intern in question.

The problem, which we have debated a fair bit internally, is how to ensure that this doesn’t run counter to our other principles: namely, the need for diversity in the third sector, the need for entrants and new leaders to come up from the grassroots as well as from the 'grad-routes'. For, inevitably, for someone to take a full-time three-month position at an organisation in (usually) London, unpaid with (possibly) some expenses, they have to have support from elsewhere. This is usually parental, either in the form of direct monetary support, or in the form of free rent & board. Or they are in university full-time and can afford not to work during some of their holidays. Generally (and this is a generalisation), these means of support skew the potential intake to those with a more privileged or well-off background.

So how can we ensure internships go to a real cross-section, to the best people regardless of background? Clearly, bursaries and sponsorship is one way: some universities arrange placements and support expenses, such as identifying cheaper accommodation or directly paying expenses. In Thor’s case, this meant that he could afford to not do his restaurant manager job for a month in the holidays, and come to SSE.

But how to also extend these opportunities further out? Our neighbours Operation Black Vote recently won an award for an interesting shadowing scheme which focuses on political internships / work experience, precisely to avoid the old-boy networks we see continuing in those establishments;  these might provide a useful model; or something along the lines of this scheme, Leaders Together. Maybe there is a case for something similar in the third sector: funded internships that take the burden off the organisation and the individual to find the money to make it possible, and allow for a broader, more diverse intern network. Happy to hear of any such initiatives or ideas: there could be a social enterprise in this....

Is Social Enterprise applicable in academic institutions?

After my first full week with the SSE and in the UK, I think I am starting to grasp the basics of both. It took me a while to get used to the light switch, the traffic system and the British slang, but it's amazing how quickly one adapts to a new environment. In my first week here at the office I've been trying to get a sense of the SE sector by poking around on the web and working on different projects for the network team. At first I was a bit overwhelmed by all the different companies, names, terms and slang, but it's starting to sink in gradually .

One of the things I've been working on is the Social Enterprise Ambassadors programme , led by SEC and assisted by a consortium of different organisations, including of course, SSE. It's been very interesting to read about the very inspiring  individuals that make up the ambassadors group and I very much look forward to meeting them at a training session towards the end of my stay in London.

Although the SE Ambassadors are amazing people, and have been chosen to promote the movement, what's been inspiring  to me so far is my encounters and interaction with the students and  Fellows of SSE. While social change was an abstract term to me at school, my meetings with these people have shown me that change doesn't occur in the abstract or (necessarily) on the macro level, it happens in our local communities, mostly at a smaller scale. My challenge in the months to come is to figure out a way to bridge such practical solutions with an abstract learning model that will work for my college back in Minnesota. SSE programmes are very much about learning, rather than teaching...and focused on the practical and personal, rather than the academic and generic.

Since I've also learned that much of the conversation about  social  change indeed occurs through blogging I would love any input /responses to this question:

How can Social Enterprise/Innovation/Entrepreneurship be taught in an academic setting?

 

Ann Cotton: CAMFED video

There is a great video of Ann Cotton, founder of CAMFED, and SSE Fellow, over at the Social Edge forum. Ann, now also a Skoll Fellow, has achieved a huge amount with CAMFED over 14 years, but remained humble and unassuming throughout. And still as passionate about her social mission as she was to start with, as the video makes clear.

Ann has said of us that "SSE provided a forum to test ideas and draw on other people's experiences. This enabled me to analyse the key ingredients and factors that had led to success and make conscious choices about when and how to grow."

It's wonderful to think that this organisation played a small part in helping Ann and her team at CAMFED achieve what they have, changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of African girls and women (check out their 'impact' page for more).

Global Cool...but not in school

Steve Bridger heralds the arrival of Global-Cool over on his nfp2.0 blog. I'm not sure how to describe it really. The website is kind of celebrity offsets meets change-the-world-in-simple-ways meets ecotainment. Or something. Here's the (very well-designed) site for you to make up your own mind. It's a pretty clear and good addition to what's out there already, although nothing groundbreaking as far as I can make out. There may be those who want the Scissor Sisters to tell them to turn their lights off, and if it reaches more people in a clear and entertaining way, then all power to them. Of course, there may also be those who question why, from a £20 donation, £3 goes to Global Cool Productions Ltd and £1 on administration. That's 20% of your donation not going to alternative energy/energy-reducing projects.....(the admin's fair enough, and the production company will "put on more carbon-neutral shows and make more programmes to create a bigger noise to turn more people into planet-savers").

[Incidentally, it's founded by the guy who founded Future Forests as it was then called....]

I'm not going to bang on about whether it's ethical to offset or not; you can read plenty of stuff about that in every paper under the sun. But it also seems to me to be connected to something else Steve mentions in his article: that the UK government are going to distribute a copy of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth documentary to every school in the country. Now, of course it is important that children are educated about the challenge of global warming and climate change; and of course it is important that this is communicated in effective ways. But is this really necessary? Aren't kids, in fact, the one group of society that DO fully understand, having had it drilled into them consistently at school in geography, science etc....? Several articles recently have detailed how children have started campaigning at home, prompting one parent to write in to a school saying, "Can you please inform Paul that it is allowed to have the light on to read at home?" Does that child really need to watch Al Gore?

The fact is that sending out DVDs is just information provision; but the point has already tipped: you can't move for environmental debate, recycling schemes, offsetting of flights, healthy organic food, and so on. It's not information and promotion of the cause that is needed, surely; it is action and, probably, legislation. How about ministers committing to a set (collective) number of flights per year? How about taxing companies who won't match M&S zero carbon initiative? What about the Global Cool people giving £19 of the £20 to carbon reduction, instead of more publicity and programmes? What a better example it might set for them to walk the walk, rather than talk the talk. The point is that it is not easy (we have these debates in this organisation as well), but has to be addressed. David Miliband is strong in the department, communicates and debates well, and has a lot of good ideas (individual carbon quotas etc.) but it would be great to see some of them, challenging as they are, put into action.

Friday round-up: responses, debates and new thinking

A brief Friday round-up before the computer ices over:

- A couple of things I previously blogged about have sparked responses / continued in debates. Firstly, the i-genius debate continues both in the comments of David Wilcox's original post (I particularly liked Tom from MySociety's "Yikes, it might be the best site in the world, but it doesn't seem to really chime with British social sensibilities. I'd go red at the face with the idea of adding myself to a site with a name like that. The hubris!") and in a follow-up post with an e-mail response from the site's founders. Read on, but give the site a try too....

The second thing was my mention of the Shaftesbury Partnership's distinction between system social entrepreneur and community social entrepreneur. A summary of my post might read "kind of agree, kind of disagree"....anyway, they've posted up a response on their blog which goes into some depth answering some of the questions I raised. I will respond to this more fully, but will do so in a separate post with some proper thought behind it, but am enjoying the conversation.

- George Bush used the words "social entrepreneur" in his state of the union address (thus causing havoc with my Google Alert feeds); I'll leave it at that

- Davos Conversation, a kind of online forum of the World Economic Forum, if you want to know (some of) what's happening

- the 59 smartest non-profit organisations online claims to be a list of "organisations who are winners because of their web 2.0 smarts and a willingness to engage their constituents far beyond asking them to dig into their pockets.These are organizations that give their volunteers and members a voice and get out of the way. They're pros at mobilizing awareness online. They're experimentors. Innovators. On a mission. They're fearless."  That  paragraph is a  bit American, and so is the list: I counted about three non-US sites; I don't know whether that's the real proportion (certainly the US leads on this stuff), but I doubt it. Still, lots and lots of interesting content through all these links....

- some interesting stuff on action learning via School of Everything via David Wilcox ; more on this soon as well, I hope

- something causing a bit of debate is a report from the City Parochial Foundation called Building Blocks about second-tier organisations which has some interesting findings including:

- small groups clearly benefit more than medium-sized organisations who struggle to fund their infrastructure support needs
- small groups in particular feel their voices are not heard and it is funders and outside agencies which decide what they ‘need’
- frontline groups value one-to-one help, from knowledgeable, experienced, committed, and skilled individuals/bodies which are not in competition with them for funding

CPF provide some funding to our London programme [disclaimer alert], and we are featured in the report as an example of good practice [double disclaimer!], but there is real validity in the points above. And it should be those that are reported, as well as what has become the headline (Cut back second tier non-profits, says major funder).

- and finally, an interesting article from Simon Jenkins in the Times (from October 2006: finger on the pulse, as ever), which includes, on the second page, the following:

"Someone should spur a revival of community participation in Britain. A crash course in parish innovation is needed similar to that which swept Scandinavia in the 1970s and 1980s, enveloping communes, municipalities and mayors. It should capitalise on the wealth that is pouring into many British villages and on the time that many retired people have to spare. Most rural communities in most parts of the world look after their old people without having to call for help from a near bankrupt nationalised industry.

Nor is all lost. The admirable Leicestershire village of Sheepy Magna raised £45,000 in 2003 to convert part of its church into a one-stop community enterprise, with internet access, a baker’s shop, a Fairtrade market and, of all things, a sub-post office. It took nothing but determined local leadership. It can be done, even in England."

Rural social entrepreneurs come forth.....

What is a system social entrepreneur?

Stumbled across an interesting new blog just before Xmas, entitled The Shaftesbury Partnership. It's a name that conjures up any number of interesting possibilities, but is in fact a kind of ethical business consultancy working primarily with what it calls "system social entrepreneurs". The people involved include Nat Wei, co-founder of Teach First, and programme director of Future Leaders (recently featured in the Guardian).

So what is a system social entrepreneur? I think it's worth pasting up their entire post on this:

"Social entrepreneurs are those who take aspects of entrepreneurship most commonly but not exclusively associated with the private sector, using it for social good. In its most enhanced form, the business model underlying such entrepreneurship includes an element of income self-generated from the social economy.

There are two main types of social entrepreneur (though on rare occasions both types can appear in one person): community social entrepreneurs and system social entrepreneurs. Community social entrepreneurs are locally based, working at grass-roots level. System social entrepreneurs have both the skills and the inclination to grow initiatives to national size, affecting the entire system. System social entrepreneurship tends to take a strategic top-down approach working on issues that governments and the public see as some of the most intractable and challenging, but by working with community entrepreneurs on a grass-roots level it hopes to make real impact as well on the ground reaching parts that governments and other traditional agencies find harder to reach.

For large-scale social improvement (in the public sphere and elsewhere), both community and system entrepreneurs are needed, working together to address poverty."

It is the differentiation between 'system' and 'community' social entrepreneurs that I find most interesting here. Some might argue there is an element of elitism here (note that community social entrepreneurs don't have the 'skills' or 'inclination' to take things national / scale up, according to these definitions; giving them the opportunity to learn those skills, and gain confidence and ambition to use them might be a thought), but there is also more than a grain of truth. Certainly Teach First and Future Leaders have been strategic, top-down approaches to addressing unmet needs, and appear to be working well (I met Brett Wigdortz, the CEO of Teach First, at a conference recently and was impressed with him and their work). But the division seems slightly too stark to me here, and perhaps over-emphasises the 'rarity' of community social entrepreneurs who start local but grow to become national.

Think of Anita Roddick who started with one shop in Brighton, or John Bird, who started with a monthly publication in London. Or, more recently, Colin Crooks, who started Green Works with one small local outlet. Whilst it is true to say that the majority of SSE Fellows are what might be termed 'community social entrepreneurs', there are certainly a fair proportion who would probably balk at that term. Also worth noting that our recent evaluation (by the New Economics Foundation) addresses this point:

"Sometimes SSE fellows are described as being simply local community activists working for local people solving local problems. This evaluation aims to contribute to the debate as we find that whilst social entrepreneurs are working locally they often face challenges produced by processes beyond their immediate sphere of control. Some fellows are seeking to counteract disempowerment by ‘scale jumping’ to assert their specific concerns and actively seek to shape and change public policy at local and even national and international levels.

There is also danger that the ‘local-people-solving-local-problems’ view may strengthen a dangerous assumption that social enterprise is the panacea that will solve social ills on the ground, thereby relinquishing responsibility for addressing these ills directly, or more importantly their underlying and systemic causes.

The SSE programme is designed and delivered in a way that is sensitive to the diverse needs and attitudes of the students who are striving to achieve positive change for communities. The spirit of the SSE experience is in the way it seeks, through the endeavours of its students, to reverse trends of social exclusion, poverty and disempowerment at local, national and international levels. SSE guides students through a process of personal transformation, organisational development and by supporting a community of social entrepreneurs as part of a network that can work on a long-term basis to create wider and lasting change."

The other interesting point for me is that the description of a system social entrepreneur here sounds very much like strategic social innovation, rather than person-led social entrepreneurship involving risk, opportunism, personal responsibility, challenging the status quo and so on....but then perhaps going down that road is too stark a differentiation from my side as well. The bottom line is that we need entrants to this movement from all backgrounds, working at all levels to solve complex problems; and working together where it brings benefits and improved results.

 

There are two main types of social entrepreneur (though on rare occasions both types can appear in one person): community social entrepreneurs and system social entrepreneurs. Community social entrepreneurs are locally based, working at grass-roots level. System social entrepreneurs have both the skills and the inclination to grow initiatives to national size, affecting the entire system. System social entrepreneurship tends to take a strategic top-down approach working on issues that governments and the public see as some of the most intractable and challenging, but by working with community entrepreneurs on a grass-roots level it hopes to make real impact as well on the ground reaching parts that governments and other traditional agencies find harder to reach.

For large-scale social improvement (in the public sphere and elsewhere), both community and system entrepreneurs are needed, working together to address poverty."

It is the differentiation between 'system' and 'community' social entrepreneurs that I find most interesting here. Some might argue there is an element of elitism here (note that community social entrepreneurs don't have the 'skills' or 'inclination' to take things national / scale up, according to these definitions; giving them the opportunity to learn those skills, and gain confidence and ambition to use them might be a thought), but there is also more than a grain of truth. Certainly Teach First and Future Leaders have been strategic, top-down approaches to addressing unmet needs, and appear to be working well (I met Brett Wigdortz, the CEO of Teach First, at a conference recently and was impressed with him and their work). But the division seems slightly too stark to me here, and perhaps over-emphasises the 'rarity' of community social entrepreneurs who start local but grow to become national.

Think of Anita Roddick who started with one shop in Brighton, or John Bird, who started with a monthly publication in London. Or, more recently, Colin Crooks, who started Green Works with one small local outlet. Whilst it is true to say that the majority of SSE Fellows are what might be termed 'community social entrepreneurs', there are certainly a fair proportion who would probably balk at that term. Also worth noting that our recent evaluation (by the New Economics Foundation) addresses this point:

"Sometimes SSE fellows are described as being simply local community activists working for local people solving local problems. This evaluation aims to contribute to the debate as we find that whilst social entrepreneurs are working locally they often face challenges produced by processes beyond their immediate sphere of control. Some fellows are seeking to counteract disempowerment by ‘scale jumping’ to assert their specific concerns and actively seek to shape and change public policy at local and even national and international levels.

There is also danger that the ‘local-people-solving-local-problems’ view may strengthen a dangerous assumption that social enterprise is the panacea that will solve social ills on the ground, thereby relinquishing responsibility for addressing these ills directly, or more importantly their underlying and systemic causes.

The SSE programme is designed and delivered in a way that is sensitive to the diverse needs and attitudes of the students who are striving to achieve positive change for communities. The spirit of the SSE experience is in the way it seeks, through the endeavours of its students, to reverse trends of social exclusion, poverty and disempowerment at local, national and international levels. SSE guides students through a process of personal transformation, organisational development and by supporting a community of social entrepreneurs as part of a network that can work on a long-term basis to create wider and lasting change."

The other interesting point for me is that the description of a system social entrepreneur here sounds very much like strategic social innovation, rather than person-led social entrepreneurship involving risk, opportunism, personal responsibility, challenging the status quo and so on....but then perhaps going down that road is too stark a differentiation from my side as well. The bottom line is that we need entrants to this movement from all backgrounds, working at all levels to solve complex problems; and working together where it brings benefits and improved results.

 

More optimism from the Edge

The Edge asks an annual question each year (since 1998) to renowned thinkers, scientists, businessmen etc which always makes for fruitful, if slightly uneven, reading. In previous years, this has included "What's your law?" and "What is your dangerous idea?". This year, it is "What are you optimistic about? Why?"

Some interesting people have been asked to provide answers, from Richard Dawkins to Brian Eno, from Steven Pinker to Clay Shirky, and from Cory Doctorow to Craig Venter. [their answers respectively, and massivly summarised, are: final scientific enlightenment, empowerment of people at grassroots, the decline of violence, evidence improving society, copyright openness, evidence-based decision making]. There's lots more in there (often the 'lesser-known' names provide more interesting entries..), and more than I can write about, but worth a read as we start the New Year with hope and optimism.

A related future-thinking exercise has been going on on the WorldChanging blog, as they asked many of their contributors to respond to "Looking towards 2007: What's Next?". There are some interesting social entrepreneur-related ones here (Jim Fruchterman, David Bornstein) but what stood out for me was that several of them basically said that there are enough solutions/inventions and certainly enough writing about them; we need to map them and use them. Or as Jeremy Faludi puts it, "in a nutshell, 2007 needs follow-through". Turning awareness into action: the strapline for 2007.

We-think throws its pages open

Charles Leadbeater, author of the Rise of the Social Entrepreneur and other myriad texts of interest, is publishing an interesting new book, entitled We-Think, next year. It seems to be bringing together various strands from his recent work into a coherent whole, particularly the Pro-Am Revolution stuff he did with Paul Miller at Demos.

To get a sense of what the book is about, here's the introduction which bears a long quotation...:

"The basic argument is very simple. Most creativity is collaborative. It combines different views, disciplines and insights in new ways. The opportunities for creative collaboration are expanding the whole time. The number of people who could be participants in these creative conversations is going up largely thanks to the communications technologies that now give voice to many more people and make it easier for them to connect. As a result we are developing new ways to be innovative and creative at mass scale. We can be organised without having an organisation. People can combine their ideas and skills without a hierarchy to coordinate their activities. Many of the ingredients of these forms of self-organised creative collaboration are not new - peer review for example has been around a long time in academia. But what is striking about Wikipedia, Linux, Second Life, Youtube and many more is the way they take familiar ingredients and combine them to allow people to collaborate creatively at mass scale.

The guiding ethos of this new culture and forms of self-organisation is participation. The point of the industrial era economy, was mass production for mass consumption, the formula created by Henry Ford. In the world of We-think, the point is to take part, to be a player in the action, to have a voice in the conversation. And in a participation economy people want not services and goods, delivered to them, but tools so they can take part and places in which they can play, share, debate with others. Workers could be instructed, organised in a division of labour. Participants will not be lead and organised in this way.

The people who take part in these collaboratives are neither workers nor consumers. They are participants and contributors. If the 20th century marked the rise of mass consumerism, one feature of the 21st century will be the rise of the mass participation economy: innovation by the masses not for the masses. Innovation and creativity have been elite activities, undertaken by special people - writers, designers, architects, inventors - in special places - garrets, studies, laboratories. Now innovation and creativity are becoming mass activities, dispersed across society. We-think is an effort to understand this new culture, where these new ways of organising ourselves have come from and where they might lead. They started, as most radical and disruptive innovation do, in the margins, in open source, blogging and gaming. But they will increasingly become the mainstream by challenging traditional, hierarchical, top down and closed organisations to open up. They could change not just the way that the media, software and entertainment works but also the way we organise education, health care, cities and indeed the political system."

Which all looks and sounds very interesting. And in the spirit of creative collaboration, Leadbeater is making the book open to read, comment on and print out. Of particular interest to the social entrepreneur will be the sections on Open Work and Open Leadership; you get a taste of the latter from a recent article entitled  "Jimmy Wales, not Jack Welch" (pdf...)

[via Designing for Civil Society, via the Open Blog etc....]

School for Social Entrepreneurs launches new school in Liverpool

Exciting news: The Liverpool SSE has been launched, with the support of Liverpool City Council and Business Liverpool. We're hopeful this will be done with nationally-renowned Blackburne House as the lead agency. It's an exciting intiative, and we hope to complement existing provision and build on the great work already being done in a traditionally entrepreneurial area. The support from Councillor Flo Clucas has been instrumental in making it happen, something she has wanted to achieve since she met Michael Young back in 1998.

You can read a little more here in the Liverpool Echo:

"Nick Temple, Network Director for London-based SSE, said since the project started eight years ago 85% of the ventures created are still trading, which is double conventional business rates.

We know 91% of our fellows create jobs; on average 35 jobs to every 10 fellows and 70 voluntary positions. More than 60% report a 6% increase in turnover and on top of that, they are delivering services to beneficiaries in their communities. Sustainability is very strong.

The SSE combines business and commerce with a strong social mission across health, transport, environment, education and child care.

He said Liverpool was chosen as the first north west SSE because of its strong entrepreneurial pedigree, adding: “We are looking to add to or complement what is already being done here.”

Just to correct a couple of those statistics (I'm impressed how many the journalist got down given the length/swiftness/garbledness of our conversation):

-  It is true that 85% of organisations established during the SSE programme are still in existence; it is only true to say that this is roughly double conventional business survival rates for our older cohorts (82% for our 1998 cohort, as opposed to 43% for conventional business, for example); on average, across all years, we beat conventioanl survival rates by at least 15%.

- Actually, 60% report an increase in turnover; on average this is a six-fold increase, rather than a six per cent one...which is slightly different...and much better.

All these figures our from our recent evaluation by the New Economics Foundation, of which more soon....anyway, all in all we're delighted to be expanding the network in the north-west, and look forward to some great success stories up in Liverpool in the years to come.