Category Archives: Social Entrepreneurs

Scaling your replicable pilot franchise

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In the world of social enterprise, a consistent mantra is the need to replicate, franchise, scale up…which somewhat overlooks the fact that some social entrepreneur-led organisations and initiatives are fit to their particular sphere or community….and nowhere else. Some projects are best kept at a certain scale (a size or catchment they may have been shaped to) and, also, to a certain duration (has anyone thought through what happens if every new project is eternally sustainable?).

Couple of interesting things worth a look in this context.

– An online discussion about "Why you shouldn’t scale up", in relation to E. F. Schumacher’s seminal "Small is Beautiful" concept; particularly interesting is the concept of scaling up ‘strategies or ideas’, rather than necessarily scaling up organisations and organisational frameworks….

– CAN’s new Pilot toolkit, which "takes you through three key stages of planning, monitoring and evaluating, providing the room and space for all the key players in your organization to contribute to its success"; you can download the Guide here and the Project Map here (both pdfs). It’s an interesting tool which SSE fed into…and could be used in various ways. It came out of their Beanstalk programme, which was set up to focus on social franchising, but widened to more general replication…..

– Also see an article about a (UK) social franchise that failed in Stanford Social Innovation Review: An Enterprising Failure (pdf); [see here for a brief description of Paul Harrod, one of the founders of the social franchise, Aspire, running a seminar in Oxford recently]

This topic is of interest to SSE not only because we are a social franchise (for various reasons: to avoid re-inventing the wheel; to bring expertise and experience to bear; to create genuine partnerships with local and regional organisations; to avoid parachuting in people from outside the area; to create a strong and vibrant network etc.), but also because it is a question that many of our students and fellows face….how to have the greatest impact / be most effective? Lean and mean, large and powerful? Or small and beautiful….

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Mapping the impact

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As our evaluation process goes on with NEF, we’ve also been looking at some other ways of (literally) mapping the impact of SSE and that of its Fellows….I’ve been playing around with Wayfaring which is a neat tool (Platial is similar). I’ve trialled it by doing a map of where there are (or have been) SSE programmes in the UK. Check out the map.

It’s quite an interesting tool, so I’m hopeful we can use it to do the same for Fellows / Students, so that we can see all the different places that a) they are based and b) they have an impact….

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The Social Apprentice: the human face of ambition?

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In response to a piece the other day about how the TV show The Apprentice demonstrated that "Blair’s Britain was all about profit", I wrote in a letter, printed in the Guardian, which set out an alternative point of view, and the potential for an alternative type of show: the Social Apprentice.

The basic idea is for 14 social entrepreneurs to take the place of these business high-flyers driven by pure profit. Tasks could be similar, if themed: participants sent out as chuggers on the streets, or organising a big fundraising event (as they will have to in this coming week’s episode), or developing a new product for a social enterprise, or rebranding and so on….the ultimate prize could be £100k towards starting up/expanding their own organisation/initiative, or a job with Anita Roddick or Muhammad Yunus or Al Gore, or someone else doing interesting things socially and environmentally.

People always say at ideas like this (and I’m not pretending I’ve come up with this….BBC/ITV/C4 have all discussed various versions of this or Dragon’s Den with us and other organisations…) that the show will be too worthy and dull, and everyone will get on because they’ll be so ‘nice’, and they won’t have strong personalities etc….these people have obviously never worked in this field. They should come and sit in on a session here at SSE and tell us there’s no passion, ambition, personality or conflict in this world.

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Why call yourself a social entrepreneur?

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I was reading through the comments of an interesting post over on the Let There Be Light blog, titled Do Social Entrepreneurs exist? Nothing like a provocative title to get the comments flowing.

An interesting comment by Jim Fruchtmann who, I think, runs Benetech, who says there are two reasons to call yourself a social entrepreneur (in his opinion):

"1.  You get to meet people who are much more like you than typical nonprofit or for-profit leaders, and
2.  It’s a fund raising hook."

Is it really that simple? Certainly the amount of hype/buzz around social entrepreneurs and social enterprise at the moment (check Cameron’s recent speeches) gives it a cachet of some sort I guess…but ultimately, I find this fairly reductive. I recently met someone setting up a new initiative that was fairly entrepreneurial and clearly charitable/social in mission….she just wanted to get on with it, but everyone kept mentioning ‘social enterprise’ to her. My advice was to ensure that she had a USP, could make her case, evaluate her work, prove it in a pilot and promote it effectively + have a robust strategic plan. And that legal structure/titles would follow from whatever work/governance/funding she chose to pursue.

There are no great funding pots that become available as a social enterprise / social entrepreneur-led organisation (although some funders might be attracted by applications that are, to use Gilligan-speak, ‘sexed up’ by such words)….the former point though is valid: meeting other people of similar mindset, attitude, drive and commitment. That really IS what it is all about….

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Upstarts and Green Fellows

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Some announcements of distinct relevance:

– First up, the nominees for the Edge Upstarts Social Enterprise Awards have been announced; there are some SSE connections which we are happy to see; 2 out of the 3 nominees for trainee of the year (Michelle Baharier and Bernadette Wright) are SSE Fellows from London and Salford respectively; also, up for the prestigious Social Entrepreneur of the Year award is current London student Simon Fenton-Jones……best of luck to all.

Also heavily represented are our friends at Training for Life, who are up for an award, along with their CEO Gordon D’Silva, and their flagship enterprise, the Hoxton Apprentice.

– Secondly, in the US, Echoing Green (who’ve been working with and connecting social entrepreneurs for many years) have announced the finalists for their 2006 Fellowship Finalists. You can see the first finalist here, and then click through to the rest…Some really impressive people/projects here (mostly US-based) competing for some serious money. They cover a range of areas including leadership in Africa, clean technology in Latin America, helping Palestinians travel freely and supporting farmers in North Korea… well worth a look, as is the whole Echoing Green site

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