Dartington, Eden and round-up

Have just returned from the annual SSE residential in Dartington, an extraordinarily beautiful place which has many ties to our history, as Michael Young spent many of his formative years there, honed his entrepreneurial skills, and remained involved for many years afterwards. Dartington also has under its auspices several different enterprises on site (see the home page above under Departments), including Research in Practice and the Schumacher College, which makes it a unique place for social entrepreneurs to network, learn information, and get inspiration and encouragement.

The students from various SSE schools in the network also went to the Eden Project for a witness session from Tim Smit, and a visit round the project itself. Inspirational stuff from the entertaining and charismatic Mr Smit, drawing out lessons from his successes (and failures) that are applicable no matter the size of the enterprise involved. The Tinkerbell Theory (if you get enough people to believe in something, it will happen) is a favourite, as is the "accept every third inivitation" rule: building a network outside your normal world….and allowing serendipity to find you.

Vaughan Lindsay, the CEO of Dartington Hall, also spoke about strategy to the current SSE cohorts, and had much to communicate around strategic thinking, the importance of a unifying vision, and how to turn around an ailing or troubled organisation. He also had interesting things to say about how organisations which never have to be entrepreneurial themselves (which was the case at Dartington when the Elmhirsts were throwing money at it: $1 billion in today’s terms; or an economic atom bomb, as Vaughan described it) becoming unfocused, less driven and wasteful.

All good stuff and, most importantly, the different social entrepreneurs from across the country coming together to discuss, inspire, share, and build closer relationships for the future.

As I’ve been away, a few things to mention in a round-up, too:

– UnLtd are going away on an International Learning Journey; two SSE Fellows, Michelle Baharier and Nathalie McDermott are amongst the awardees heading away, along with some external people and 4 UnLtd staff……hope they’re offsetting the carbon ;0) UnLtd’s own Richard Alderson will be leading the blogging as they go….

– Social Enterprise London has some new guides

– There is a free health-related create a social enterprise event on December 1st in Manchester

– An interesting podcast on the social entrepreneurship landscape in the US, but of relevance to us all (via Social Innovation Conversations)

– Also from the US, an update about what will be an interesting article (by Jim Fruchterman and Jed Emerson amongst others), entitled "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: Risk-Taking Expansion Capital for Social Enterprise"

– Finally, Steve Bridger recommends non-profits have a ‘buzz director’; am changing the business cards now….

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SSE Fellow activity: website launch and No. 10 dialogue

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Massive backlog of things to post about at the moment (a backblog, maybe?), but here’s a couple of pieces of news from an SSE Fellow and a current student.

– SSE Fellow Dave Pitchford‘s web-based initiative, Intelligent Giving, launches today; congrats from all here, and make sure you check out the site, which is a new, independent guide to charities for the donor….should stir up things in the VCS potentially…

– Sahra Digale, who is part of the current London cohort, has been mixing in some interesting political circles. Earlier in the year, she attended a No. 10 Dialogue event (photos here) with the PM on the subject of engaging with muslim women. A report based on the dialogue is now available, and has started some interesting thinking  around Muslim women and social enterprise….See the report and the feedback (pdf) at the Women and Equality Unit site, and the Women and Work Commission report as well…

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Scaling social impact

A brief post before heading out of the door…but just received the latest missive from Greg Dees at CASE/Fuqua, which is all about scaling social impact. Well worth a look through the 160 case studies they have in their online database (OK, I’ve looked at a few…), as well as some interesting articles from Stanford Social Innovation Review. SSE’s take on this is that, yes we need some organisations to scale up and replicate to have a bigger impact and share their knowledge and strategies….but we also need to scale up the number of opportunities for as many people as possible to become a social innovator/entrepreneur. For many initiatives are fit to a particular locality and community and are not suitable for scaling, and should resist the impulse (I talked about this previously in Scaling your replicable pilot franchise).

Anyway, there is lots of interesting stuff here to sift through.

Also worth mentioning is that UnLtd, of which SSE is a founding partner, had a big Awards event today. Sadly, I couldn’t be there, but hope it went well, and that there was a warm welcome to these new entrants to the movement. Please note that the autumn/winter 2006 edition of UnLtd’s No Limits magazine (quarterly, becoming monthly) is available for download here (pdf). Featuring Ben Metz of Ashoka fame, no less….

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50 Green Entrepreneurs

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Worldchanging (whose book you should be buying at a particular time on November 1st…about 4.11pm Uk time, I think?) points out Inc.com’s list of 50 Green Entrepreneurs: the Green 50. They are US-based, pretty much, but loads to inspire and inform here…from recycled toothbrushes to a zero-waste company. And natural burial, something I know a fair bit about from previous work: one green industry where the UK is well ahead of the pack.

All very timely given the Stern report and associated brouhaha. On the back of which, George Monbiot has a 10 step plan to save us….which seems remarkably plausible on this blustery Tuesday morning.

[via Doors of Perception]

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Comprehensive Spending Reviews

For the sector geeks amongst you, a good link here from Voluntary News, detailing various responses to the Treasury Comprehensive Spending Review re. the third sector. SSE also submitted a response, + fed into the London Third Sector Alliance response as well….

Whilst we’re in the political sphere, it’s also worth mentioning that there was a social enterprise supplement in the Observer this Sunday (though sadly not online, that I can see), organised by SEC and featuring many of the award-winners from the Enterprising Solutions event. There’s also an article by Ed Miliband which features the following:

"[Government] can help to build a culture of social enterprise. We want more people, from schools to boardrooms, to understand what the term means. Only by extending understanding of the concept can we inspire more people to become social entrepreneurs. We can ensure that social enterprises have the right advice. This starts with Business Links….but it also means encouraging specialist support agencies and the networks of successful social entrepreneurs"

Yes, yes and yes to that: broadening understanding of this movement… to encourage many more people to get involved in it…and encourage those networks and agencies that provide opportunities/support to those people.

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