Wednesday round-up link fest: Craig, CIC, Catalyst

Am between a long morning meeting and a long afternoon meeting, so just thought I’d pack in the round-up of links of interest to social entrepreneurs and the wider movement:

– Nice profile of Craig Dearden-Phillips in today’s Society Guardian; I have huge respect for Craig and what he’s achieved, and the interview demonstrates his clear and open approach. SSE is also endorsing his new book, Your Chance to Change the World: the no-fibbing guide to social entrepreneurship. The launch is next week, so I’ll have an update then.

– Another one of the social enterprise ambassadors, Peter Holbrook, is also widely regarded as someone who walks the walk, and he’s put up another great blog post on why "Food is a four-letter word"; click on ‘Blogs’ from the main website

– And yet more of them: congratulations to Dai Powell and Steve Sears of HCT and ECT respectively; they’ve combined successfully with the ingeniously-named E&HCT to win a transport contract at the Olympics.

– Social Firms UK have put out a template for a share-based version of the CIC structure

– New social investment website, powered by Rod Schwartz / Catalyst: SocialInvestments.com; see also the Good Deals conference, which looks like being a great event in this area

– David Wilcox asks: "Are big innovations possible within large non-profits?"

– Social Innovation Conversations podcast: Chip Heath on how to write a good mission (more interesting than it sounds….)

– And, for humour’s sake, here’s a piece from the Onion on a philanthropist wanting to give youngsters the opportunities he never had….in pole-vaulting

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North by SouthWest (by East): SSE continues to grow

More on these stories soon, but just a quick note to say that the first Liverpool cohort have graduated from the Liverpool SSE at Blackburne House; they are going to have a bigger graduation event when the cultural entrepreneurs programme graduates in July, but our CEO Alastair Wilson was at the event last Friday, and justly congratulated everyone involved. Big congratulations from the rest of us, too: not only to all the students (now Fellows), but also to the Liverpool SSE team: Sylvia, Lisa, Jo, Claire, Angela et al. Hope to post up some photos soon, along with full details of the projects and individuals.

Also, as the more eagle-eyed will have gathered from this news item, Cornwall SSE is approaching. Again, more concrete news and details on this soon, but we’re obviously delighted at the continuing expansion of SSE into areas where it’s needed most.

And the East Midlands SSE continues to deliver programmes in three different parts of the region, and goes from strength to strength under Fergus Brazel.

And (!) two new cohorts start in London this week, delivering tailored support to another 40+ social entrepreneurs in the capital.

All that, and the Shine unconference: I’m exhausted just posting about it :0)

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Shine unconference: get your tickets!

Chair
The Shine unconference is now open for booking: please do get involved. The event is being backed by SSE, Ashoka, the Hub and UnLtd (amongst others). It promises to be the practical, relevant, peer-to-peer, practitioner-based, exciting, grassroots-y, networking, promotional event all you social entrepreneurs have been waiting for. Not to mention low-cost….

More details, and online booking, via the link above. Or see this pdf flyer for more: Download shine_website_and_ticketing_launch.pdf.

Don’t delay: limited tickets available, and we’re expecting them to sell fast.

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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."

   

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Blog honesty and whining

0804whine
This image pretty much sums up where I’ve been the last few days: moaning about being overloaded, shouting about government arbitrarily pulling funding streams after days of work, complaining about being bogged down in policy documents & reports & spreadsheets. There’s something about this time of year when people are tired, illnesses are floating round, and the year-end brings an admin mountain….

It got me thinking about the honesty of a blog; I was reading an article about corporate blogging which talked of the dangers of being ‘too open’, and got me wondering about what I hold back organisationally (or personally). It’s been good to see that Stephen Bubb’s blog seems to be pretty true to his tone of voice, and is also fairly open (about ACEVONCVO, about Futurebuilders’ coverage in the press and so forth). Of course, though, there are things that don’t get blogged, some as a result of competition (on which subject, it was interesting to read John Craig noting the difference between a (healthy) competition between ideas, and an (unhealthy) competition between institutions)….if I blogged about every opportunity SSE were pursuing, or every new idea, then I would a) do nothing else and b) give away any advantage over competing organisations in different areas. It’s certainly easier to blog about the contest of ideas…

Having said that, looking back over most posts, I think I have kept pretty true to one of the three blogging keys: authenticity (the others being passion and continuity). At times, criticism might be more reined-in online than it is face-to-face, but I don’t think I’m alone in that, and the vast majority of the posts are positive anyway (even if what our intern Thor called "your cynical British tone" may occasionally come through). Ultimately, I’m passionate about this movement, this organisation, the work we do and, most importantly, what this enables SSE students and Fellows to do. Sometimes that means competing with institutions, sometimes collaborating, but also sometimes competing with ideas and with communication. All worth remembering when the papers are up to the eyeballs, and the blog posts have diminished in frequency.

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