Category Archives: Social Entrepreneurs

A-head of the game: new hats business

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I was recently at the graduation of the first SSE programme in Aston. For those of you who missed me writing about this previously, it was a really moving day, and an amazing bunch of inspiring people to replique montre meet and learn from. [8 completed the
programme, 7 of whom are women, 6 BME, all previously unemployed] One of that new group of SSE Fellows is Vivean Pomell, who is launching her new business this Wednesday in Edgbaston.

The business, Brynels Hats and Accessories, is named after her mum who died earlier this year, and will be launched by Birmingham’s Deputy Lord Mayor and Jo Cameron from the Apprentice (for those of you who don’t remember her). Vivean is an amazing woman, and committed to providing support to those with specific hat/hairpiece needs (be that after hairloss, or bereavement etc.) as well as pursuing high-end fashion: indeed, she recently displayed at London Fashion Week with extraordinary work.

So well worthy of support if you are in the Midlands on Wednesday…., and worth drawing attention to as one of the more unusual businesses to have come through an SSE programme.

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Social entrepreneur round-up May 2007

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Long overdue round-up of recent news and links of interest:

– the Third Sector awaits the imminent reshuffle with Gordon Brown succeeding Tony Blair and, most likely, Ed Miliband moving from his current post….though no-one seems to know where (not even the legendarily well-connected Stephen Bubb, who I asked last night)

– the Schwab Foundation, who run "Social Entrepreneur of the Year" competitions across the world (US, India etc.) appear to have paired up with the Independent and Boston Consulting Group to launch here: see Calling all social visionaries here; I wonder how the Edge Upstarts Awards (who announced their finalists and will announce winners this evening) and Enterprising Solutions and the other ceremonies will feel about another award scheme on the patch? Given that the article above misspells "entrepreneur" in its headline, possibly not very worried….

– And, while we’re on the subject, the Skoll Centre in Oxford has launched (or re-launched) its business plan competition as the 21st Century Challenge: "to encourage bold and innovative business ideas that will help to solve
the major social and environmental challenges of the twenty-first
century".

– Social Edge, the Skoll-funded portal of US/international social entrepreneurs, has launched some video and audio podcasts. Global X, whose blog is profoundly irritating or intensely amusing depending on who you speak to, is in charge of video interviews… ;US-centric, but there are some nuggets here….

– Whilst we’re covering all things Skoll-related, there’s an interesting take on the recent World Forum: all the way from New Zealand

– How can I not link to an article entitled "Digging into social enterprise: the mud beneath the yellow brick road"? It doesn’t really deliver on the title, but some interesting bits and pieces on earned income, sustainability and the balance of economic with social aims

–  An article in the NY Times about businesses which "try to make money and save the world"; worth reading, and the first time in a while that I’ve read the label "fourth sector", which was once predicted to become a more established term….

– Closer to home, this month’s Social Enterprise Magazine features an article by Barbara Phillips on scaling , which refers to our own Long Tail of Social Entrepreneurship theory….(article not online yet, but available in our reception if you’re passing by… ;0) )

– Finally, seamlessly linking to the long tail comes this marvellous video on that very subject. Spoof movie trailer on how old media is being undone by the power of new technology. Or something.

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Duplication and diversification

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Just thought I’d reference a couple of posts that deal with the two ‘d’s: duplication and diversification….the first, duplication is something that comes up a lot when I’m expounding our long tail theory: “but then there’d be hundreds, thousands of them…all starting new organisations, all duplicating existing activity…” etc. And there is something to this: in Hackney in East London, for example, it is said (urban myth?) that there is a charity/community organisation for every 6 people. I also heard the other day that there are over 150 prostate cancer charities….in London (is this true??!).

So this post on Social Citizen about duplication is an interesting one, particularly because it places it in the context of ‘why young leaders are leaving the [third] sector’….s/he says the following about the situation in the US:

“There are a million social entrepreneurs coming out of college ready to
go, and they all start their own nonprofit or get a job with a
nonprofit they have always loved. The problem is, there are too many
people doing the same thing. Talking in business terms, nonprofits are
flooding the markets. A recent Chronicle Article
got it right. Someone interviewed had said this about competition in
the nonprofit sector: “‘It wouldn’t be nice to compete. We don’t run by
metrics; we run by good intentions.’ If the city the social
entrepreneur was working in had eight soup kitchens, he said, everyone
would applaud the person who decided to start the ninth.”

To an extent, this is true, although I’d temper some parts of this in our context. Certainly, I don’t think you could say that there are lots of graduates (never mind millions) leaving university dedicated to becoming a social entrepreneur and starting their own thing. There are more than there were, but it is still a relatively minority career option (a subset of entrepreneurship, of you will). The other part I’m not sure I go with is this myth that the sector is all nicey-nicey. Certainly, there is an imperative to collaborate, but there is also an impulse to compete. If I opened a 9th soup kitchen, I can guarantee the other 8 would be in touch, be protective of their funding, do their utmost to prove they were more effective and had greater impact and so on….given the amount of third sector organisations supporting themselves with contracts as well as grants and donations, there is no dearth of competition.

In theory, also, a social entrepreneur spots a niche in the market…so I would argue that the person starting up a 9th soup kitchen is not doing anything innovative, or meeting an unmet need. Unless they were doing it in a new way, more effectively, or something, it would simply be pure duplication.

Where I think Social Citizen has it partly right is that we should be less afraid of being like business here, and understand that organisations fail, merge, get taken over, partner to cut costs and so on. We’ve started to see this at a big level (in the ‘corporate’ charity world): Childline being absorbed by NSPCC, Gingerbread and OneParent Families merging, and, of course, Cancer Research and Imperial Cancer Research….but maybe we will begin to see these happening at a smaller level. New innovative projects being taken under a larger organisation’s wing; two social enterprises merging for greater effectiveness and sustainability; community groups sharing back office functions….and so on.

And so to the other peril, diversification. A post from Todd over at Social Catalyst got me thinking about this, and I think he has it pretty much spot on:

“Why do Social Enterprises think they are different than private
enterprises? I want to shake people silly or run outside and scream
every time I
hear…

“..and
we will run a cafe, bookstore, creche, catering service, consultancy
service, training, lettings, bakery, car repair, disco, and flower shop
in our building.”

You and what government? How do we
get social enterprises to do one or two things well and grow sensibly.
It’s no wonder so many social enterprises never get off the ground or
are spinning out of control. You cannot do everything and do it well
(or even ok).”

Certainly this rings bells here: social entrepreneurs, particularly, are often buzzing with lots of ideas, and an eternal message here tends to be “focus” or “you can do three things well: what are they at the moment?” or “put those in order of priority for yourself” etc. And this doesn’t just happen at small, fledgling organisations, as this article on CAN demonstrates well, with Adele Blakebrough sharing the learning of how they went from 25 projects to focusing on two, to great success.

One key thing we’ve used to enable social entrepreneurs to focus on the goal, is to introduce evaluation techniques at an early stage, basically as a planning tool. Focusing on the outcomes and impact they are striving for, and gaining an understanding of how, why and what to do to get there, is incredibly powerful for channelling the drive, commitment and passion they all have.

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Defining deprivation and disadvantage

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SSE sites its centres (try saying that in a hurry) in areas of ‘social deprivation’ or ‘disadvantage’, although we are probably as guilty as others at times at bandying around those terms without fully understanding what we mean by them. There are, of course, areas of deprivation in need of regeneration pretty much everywhere, and sometimes in different ways to what you expect. I was recently in Cornwall discussing the potential for an SSE down there, and there was much discussion about how the model and methodology had worked in rural as well as urban areas, and the various challenges that brought (transport, access, buildings, infrastructure). Then, towards the end of the conversation, one person mentioned that one of the biggest/most troubled estates (block, rather than land!) was also in the area; so actually, our work on inner city London estates had as much relevance as our work in the former coal-mining areas in East Midlands or Fife.

Speaking of Fife, the Fife SSE is based in Lochgelly whose Wikipedia page describes it as follows: "It was originally a mining town, but with the industry now dead the
town has slipped into economic and social deprivation as with other
former mining towns. Lochgelly is now classed as a town in need of
regeneration "economically and socially". Good to know that Wikipedia agrees with us. Anyway, I was reminded about Lochgelly because it has long been reported as the place with the cheapest house prices in the UK, but this week we were told that its average house price went above £100,000 for the first time (£104,738 to be precise). One indicator of deprivation/need for regeneration need, perhaps, but merely one of many (and one fraught with many complexities). Still, I don’t think there will be an SSE Kensington and Chelsea anytime soon.

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Celebrating success: should we?

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Celebration and recognition are widely viewed as important parts of promoting organisations, giving them credibility and disseminating good practice. One graphic of the "social entrepreneurship ecosystem" (don’t ask) I’ve seen parcels it up into four areas: thought leadership, skill sharing, financing and recognition. The latter including Edge Upstarts, Enterprising Solutions, Ernst and Young (Social) Entrepreneur of the Year, as well as wider third sector awards (Third Sector magazine, Guardian awards etc.).

This article by John Burton of the World Land Trust (pointed out by the Charity blog), begs to differ:

"I abhor the very concept of reducing charity work to this level.
Hopefully a few of us do it because we believe in the cause, and not
simply to get an award at some Hollywood-style ceremony. But worse is
to come, because to attend these awards’ ceremonies, a place at the
table is £141.35 a head (for charity workers), or £1175 + VAT for a
table of 10.

Is this really what supporters of a charity
expect their money to be spent on? Is this really how they expect staff
and Trustees to be spending their time?

And of course only a few
charities can afford the time and money to actually enter into a
competition to become ‘Charity of the Year’ or be nominated the
‘Trustee Board of the Year’. And not everyone has the ego that needs to
be the ‘Finance Director of the Year’. Clearly awards like these are
going to be influenced by money and size — particularly when there is
an award for the ‘Best Charity to Work for’ and it’s decided by
internet voting.

The problem is that some members of the
public will assume that these awards have real meaning, and that will
mean that a charity which has spent an undisclosed amount of time and
effort winning an award, is presumed better than one that has not done
so. If the awards were chosen by an independent group of assessors,
reviewing all charities against published criteria, there might be some
value, but as they stand I believe them to do more harm than good.

Interestingly
there does not appear to be an award for the charity that has ‘done
most to achieve its charitable objectives, for the least amount of
money’……."

These gripes are, specifically, about the Charity Times UK Charity Awards and I think that’s important to say because, frankly, lots of the awards (certainly most of those I mention above) are chosen by an independent group of assessors, don’t charge massive amounts to come to the winning ceremony (if at all), do praise effectiveness in outcomes and so on. Many of these awards have also drawn attention to smaller, innovative organisations – indeed, awards are often one of the few areas where such organisations CAN compete with the big ‘corporates’ of the third sector.

I think John also underestimates how much an award can do for an organisation’s profile, morale and credibility. External recognition is hugely important for this, something I’ve seen as a judge (on CAF’s CCI awards), and SSE has seen as an organisation (Highly Commended in Charity Awards 2004), but also which we have found in our work: recognition and celebration are key for raising social entrepreneurs’ confidence, their credibility as a leader of an effective organisation, and an understanding of their own value (and the value of their work). When this is recognised at our Fellowship events by politicians and stakeholders, by the praise of funders or investors, or by their own peers, the effects are substantial.

A small example: Debbie Ariyo, the SSE Fellow who founded and runs AFRUCA, recently got a substantial grant from the Big Lottery Fund confirmed, which will enable the organisation to grow and deliver its important campaigning, research, and policy work on child trafficking and abuse. On e-mailing this to the SSE Fellowship, quite a few have since written in congratulating Debbie, saying how important her work is, asking for links to her website, and generally giving a big thumbs-up. It’s not the same as the money, but it still matters a great deal.

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