Category Archives: Social Entrepreneurs

The real deal social entrepreneurs in Yorkshire

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Great to go and visit our Yorkshire and Humber SSE today, and not just because East Coast trains do free wi-fi (hooray)…but also much more importantly to get a catch-up on how the first programme is going up there, and to meet with three current students currently being supported.
What was great for me was that the relatively dry, formal points I had been making in the first part of the conversation were vividly brought to life by the real examples the social entrepreneurs brought up as they spoke. Here’s some examples of what I mean.

1) Formal version (me): “Social entrepreneurs build trusted relationships, form partnerships and gain practically useful contacts as a result of being together on the programme”

Real-world: John, who’s working on a project to build trust and improve relationships between neighbours, is now working with two other Y+H SSE students (Jay and Justine: there must be some sort of J cubed or 3J name in the offing) whose work complements his. Namely, a platform is built to get neighbours interacting (by John); recycled PCs (from Jay) enable people to get online more easily; and video stories (by Justine) provide content and evaluation material to demonstrate impact. As John put it, this makes it more of a package that has more value and is easier to sell.

2) Formal version (me again): “SSE gives them the time and space to reflect on what they are doing, in a trusted environment with like-minded people”

Real-world: Mani was talking about how his hip-hop empowerment work in schools had really taken off, and that he was massively busy in the day-to-day. He said that the SSE ‘forced’ him to take a step back, think about what he might have missed or forgotten, and bounce ideas / problems off other people. Otherwise he would have carried on going continuously at 100 mph.

3) Formal version (guess who): “The 18-20 students come from a diverse range of backgrounds, and bring a varied range of experiences, networks, information and skills to the group”

Real world: Chris, who’s just won a couple of awards (see here for more on him and Mani winning awards), and works on fuel poverty and eco-efficiency with housing associations was talking about how he came very much from a commercial business background. It was a chance meeting that led him into the world of social and ethical business, and he’d joined the SSE partly to get “a bit more of the social bit of social entrepreneur”. He added that he’d learned a great deal from people in the group, who he might otherwise never have met or taken time with.

Pleasure to see them and learn a great deal from them too.

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General election charity podcast thing

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Amongst an avalanche of swingometers and speeches, the general election could potentially be one of the most important in a generation for charity, social entrepreneurs and social enterprise. SSE has worked with many practitioners and other support organisations to develop the Social Entrepreneurs' Manifesto which has some specific calls of government to help social entrepreneurs have the most significant impact over the next decade or more. (and please add your ideas as well)

What are the key issues more generally, and what are the parties' policies and approaches? Worth checking out this new podcast from the Guardian that puts questions to the Tory, Labour and Lib Dem Third Sector Ministers / Shadow Ministers. Some good questions (including SSE), some decent responses, and also some more general and practical 'how do you effectively lobby and campaign' advice from experienced organisations. Well worth half an hour of your time, and hat-tip to SSE Fellow Jude Habib's Sound Delivery who help produce the podcasts.

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SSE London graduation photos: social entrepreneurs galore…

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I mentioned the London SSE graduation of 49 social entrepreneurs last week, and the photos have just arrived. Check out the slideshow below or see the full set on Flickr.

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Shine 2010: buy your tickets to the social entrepreneurs unconference

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Been busy of late: usual end-of-year shenanigans here, with programmes graduating (see this article on London SSE), and new ones starting (see this article on SSE coming to Wigan and Leigh), a launch of an SSE feasibility study (with MaRS in Toronto), and lots of policy work (see the Social Entrepreneurs Manifesto) in the pre-election build-up.

Looking forward though, I'm very excited about this year's Shine 2010 unconference. Now entering its third year, Shine was set up by co-founders SSE, UnLtd, Ashoka and The Hub to create an event that was accessible, practical, dynamic and fun for grassroots + up-and-coming social entrepreneurs. No boring powerpoints, no long plenary sessions, no tedious speeches from sponsors, more questions and interaction, more peers + practitioners than experts, more networking, and more directly relevant stuff to help organisations move forward.

This year, from May 13th-15th is shaping up to be the biggest and best ever: but only with your help…and your presence. So buy your ticket below (about £50 for 3 days…and 2 parties!), and then click on the relevant links on the website to contribute your content, and shape your own programme. Like all the best things in life, you get out what you put in! Looking forward to seeing you all there; and follow http://twitter.com/SHINE_2010 for more updates.

Attendee Management by amiando

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Why the Social Entrepreneur Search is exciting…and worrying

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The UK likes to position itself as a leader in social entrepreneurship, but in some areas I think we are way behind. Take the new Social Entrepreneur Search widgets in the US, which themselves come from the Social Entrepreneur API. For the non-geeks, an API is tech-speak for an 'application programming interface' which basically provides data or information that is open and available for others to use and do what they will with (as Social Actions put it, "The Social Entrepreneur API dataset is available for any website or
individual to search, syndicate, republish, or use to build web
applications, widgets, and search engines"). And so these new search widgets and engines have been developed from that data source.

On the one hand, this is tremendously exciting. It's open, collaborative, innovative, connective and potentially helps match social entrepreneurs to investors / funders / journalists / other entrepreneurs in a way that is currently not possible in the closed and more clunky UK equivalents. [I'd include our own online SSE Fellows database in the 'clunky' category, which is currently searchable by field, by geography and by keyword etc, but is not in this kind of shape…yet]. It also opens up the possibility of taking this information and publishing it or syndicating it anywhere: potentially enormously powerful. Kudos goes to Social Actions, Social Edge, and the funders who've both funded the work and contributed the data.

So why worrying? Because the data for these 'vetted' social entrepreneurs only comes from a relatively small range of funders who fund fairly big scale, 'successful' social entrepreneurs (Skoll Foundation, Schwab Foundation, Echoing Green etc). What concerns me about that is that, as with the main Ashoka Fellows programme, the resources and connections and profile are often being diverted to those who need it, in many cases, the least: those who are already credible, sizeable, recognisable and well networked enough to attract funds, gain support and expand their work. Is the risk not of funnelling more resource to the well-resourced, rather than tapping the under-resourced and under-networked into this opportunity?

Partly, of course, I acknowledge that's for us to sort out: if I want SSE Fellows (or UnLtd wants its awardees) to be part of this, then we will have to invest in getting our data sorted for the API, and make the case. And I had that discussion with Social Edge about UK sources. There is also the question, though, of whether these would be considered 'vetted' or credible enough for the project (who judges that?). And yet we know from experience that social entrepreneurs want to discover peers like them (or just ahead of them), not just 'stars' (indeed these extraordinary, unachievable role models can actually deter new entrants), and that funders are interested in new (riskier) innovations, not just credible and mature success stories. Nat Whittemore on Change.org reckons the API / search won't be a supply of much funding, but we also know that those who feature in research, journalism, blogs and profiles end up getting more support and resource in the long run.

Dan Elitzer at Full Contact Philanthropy thinks the widget is potentially damaging because it "promotes the damaging mythology of the social entrepreneur" (a point with some validity that I've answered in the comments on that post), but I think the greater potential damage could come from scaling and championing the few, instead of including, inspiring, resourcing and connecting the many.

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