How do interns fit into the social enterprise movement?

Posted on August 6, 2009 by sse

In the welfare-state utopia that is Scandinavia, there is a saying that goes, "give the youngsters a computer before football gets to them," alluding to the ever-dominant role the sport plays in Scandinavian society. In the world of social enterprise, perhaps it is time we adopt a similar approach: "give young people a purposeful career before the corporates get to them." Step one? Adopt an intern.

As a twenty-year old college student I was lost in what to do with my life. Like many of my peers I was young, idealistic beyond belief and equipped with a hard work-ethic. However, what I lacked were hard skills, proper levels of pragmatism, and a realistic view on how to 'change the world'. Then I got the opportunity to intern for a month with a social entrepreneurship organisation, which took me in, nurtured my confidence and taught me about how social enterprise practitioners apply idealism. A year and a half later this experience has put me on track for a career that mixes purpose with professionalism, work with an outside life, and idealism with pragmatism. While there are many similar stories out there, there is still a large gap between the many young interns who stand ready to join small social enterprises, and those who actually gain the opportunity to work. Why? Here are a few hypothetical claims…

– Small social enterprises or NGOs often lack the funding to bring in an intern, even for part-time. As far as I know, outside funding alternatives specifically aimed at bringing in interns are few and far between.

– Prospective interns often have no idea where to begin their job search. Finding a small social enterprise is hard enough, finding one that can afford them and is willing to go through the process of hiring an intern is virtually impossible.

– Small social enterprises are not proactive enough in searching for interns. Many organisations want trained employees, and fail to see value of fresh perspectives and the hard work-ethic interns often bring to the table.

– Prospective interns prefer big organisations or well-known employers. In looking an internship with a name-brand business, they often do not see that with a small NGO they will receive greater responsibility, more advanced tasks, and ultimately, greater skills.

– Students are often limited for time in that they can only do internships that last for one to four months. A lot of organisations prefer longer contracts to make it a more useful learning experience for intern, but also because it gives the intern a greater opportunity to make a positive impact on the NGO.

Surely other factors play a role as well, but these stand out to me as particularly limiting.

Why is it important to defy these factors and make a conscious effort to recruit more interns? As is widely accepted, not everyone could, or should, be a social entrepreneur. However, there are plenty of young men and women who still want to partake in social enterprise, and who want to make a positive impact on their society. In this sense, second-tier organisations might be a perfect fit. NGOs often prioritize the day-to-day tasks over long-term projects that involve research, updating of databases, technological innovation – they just fall by the waste side. Ironically these features are essential in moving the sector forward, through strong networks, new initiatives, a deeper understanding of complex issues, and organisational growth.

If you work for a small social enterprise and you are looking for an intern, what do you do? SSE was lucky enough to be approached by an American college, looking to set up a sustainable internship relationship. This coming January, SSE will welcome its third intern from St. Olaf College. Looking for such a partner might be a good first step – loads of schools are filled with competent young men and women, ready to enter the sector and contribute to its growth and development. While it might be time-consuming and not directly beneficial for your organisation to adopt an intern, it might be essential for the social enterprise movement. Youth is an essential ingredient to a successful sector in the future.

Interns, enterns and the ripple effect

Posted on April 28, 2009 by sse

One side-effect of the recession / rising unemployment might potentially be a rise in the number of graduates seeking work experience, as fewer will be going straight into work. Whether this begins to correspond to a rise in internships at different organisations will be interesting to see. Interns have been on my mind of late, since Jamie Veitch's excellent blog post over at New Start: "Interns: make tea for free, get a job (maybe)". The crux of his argument is as follows:

"It always struck me as ironic that an organisation devoted to social inclusion should perpetuate a system
whereby only those with the means to work for free could gain the
experience they needed to get a proper job in the sector."

I would pretty much agree with this. From an organisational point of view, though, as I commented on the post, the flipside is that if you hold rigorously to this value set (around social inclusion) you can actually lose
out on fresh thinking, additional capacity etc etc. in comparison with other agencies in the field.For an organisation like SSE, with a core staff team of around 10, one person can make a substantial impact. The person who's set up the interesting Enternships site (Rajeeb Dey) clearly agrees.

We've dipped our toe in the water, as regular readers of the blog will know, with an intern-ing relationship with a college in Minnesota, St Olaf….particularly with their Center for Experiential Learning, because it shared a focus on action learning, entrepreneurship and social innovation. For the last two Januarys, we've had an intern from St Olaf (Thor and then Hannah), and I think it's been a mutually beneficial experience in terms of learning, contribution to SSE, and development (on both sides). Both utilised the university's travel fund to make it happen.

As the person managing them internally, it's been great to maintain the relationship afterwards and to continue conversations about where they are heading job and career-wise. Both have influenced the development of things back at St Olaf, and also kept in contact throughout. Thor is coming back to work for us this summer for 3 months (and we're paying him this time…), whilst Hannah is applying to work with a large US non-profit financial institution, Thrivent Financial. Both of which I'm delighted about, and happy to support with references or advice or whatever.

Are we helping perpetuate disadvantage by taking internships in this way? I don't think we are in this case, and there is also the broader point that, as Matt Stevenson-Dodd has written recently, this movement also needs to attract the high educational achievers. But we similarly can't be complacent about using processes that reinforce advantage and inequality. Perhaps there is room for a supported internship scheme, or sponsored internship bursaries, in this sector to ensure that doesn't happen.

Statistics, damn statistics…and lies

Posted on October 30, 2008 by sse

I mentioned in my review of Made to Stick (incidentally, they have a website about it here) the other day about statistics giving credibility, but often inducing glazed eyes and heavy eyelids. But, in the broader area of evaluation and measurement, they are incredibly important in this sector.

I had a great conversation with Steve Lawrence (founder of Work Ventures in Australia) at the SSE residential recently about the SSE evaluation, and how we can seek to extend and improve upon that work. You can find and download a full 100+ page copy of the report in the Outcomes and Impact section of the main website…and an exec summary version as well. One challenge we talked about was how much of the nuance and detail you lose when boiling this stuff down to headlines. A few times, Steve mentioned different things he was interested in, only for me to say that some of them were in the 100+ page version, but not the shorter exec summary; or had been in an earlier version and then cut. I'd love everyone to read that full report, as it gives such a rounded view of SSE programmes and their various outcomes. It also has more on the evaluation process, such as how we tried to provide incentives / anonymous responses (in order to get a good cross-section of participants), how we also used the process to empower SSE students and Fellows to use evaluative tools, and so forth. But, ultimately, the highlights are incredibly important organisationally because of people's time, and their need to grasp something swiftly. And simple, concise points do that. Balancing that with the need to give as full and holistic picture as possible is one challenge for those heading up evaluative work. (And, lest we forget, to improve and develop internally as an organisation from that learning).

You can see something of the same debate in the SROI vs. social auditing argument. See this exceprt from the Social Enterprise Magazine article linked to above:

"Where there are impacts which can be easily ‘financialised', like
people moving off benefits into work, by all means use SROI. But there
will always be impacts which are difficult to attribute reasonably in
this way. In these cases how people think and feel is important and
social audit methods will be more appropriate"

Not quite the 'highlights' vs. 'holistic' wrangle, I'm talking about, but it is about that same sense of crunching something down and losing something of the reality and totality of it all. But, as Craig Dearden-Phillips puts it in a typically provocative column, the sector can't rely on anecdotal evidence either:

"For years we have got away with being the sector of great anecdotes.
When asked about the difference we make, we often bang on about our
best-ever success or offer improbable statistics that would do a
Soviet-era government proud ("our two staff provide services for
267,000 people" and so on). In a tougher climate, those who properly
measure and prove impact will thrive while those who bleat that it's
all too difficult will sink."

I agree with this, and make sure we introduce evaluation, impact measurement, outcomes, and all the rest of it to our students while their projects are at an early stage. So much easier to build it in at the start than try and retrospectively collect and analyse….

Having said that, the masters of the twisted statistic remain the retail sector. The current Flora Buttery advert has Gary Rhodes offering crumpets to people around the country: one with Lurpak Spreadable butter on, and one with Flora Buttery on. The whole ad is based around the fact that "more people said they preferred Flora". At the bottom of the screen (as with the classic shampoo ads), the "proof" pops up. In this case, it has 200 people who were asked, of whom 48% preferred Flora…..and 45% preferred Lurpak. With 7% having no opinion. That's 96 people for Flora, 90 for Lurpak and 14 for neither. So, yes, in a one-off exercise conducted by Flora with 200 people, 6 more out of those 200 preferred Flora to another brand. In my humble opinion, that proves absolutely nothing….do another 20 tests with the public, independently, and not conducted by a celebrity chef driving a Flora van with a crumpet on top…and then I might be swayed. (Mis)using statistics like that is why people say things like this:

"Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death" (Hillaire Belloc)

and, more poetically,

"Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment" (Jean Baudrillard)

Friday round-up: Bubb, Hub, Club, and… Forces for Good

Posted on October 10, 2008 by sse

As SSE prepares to head off to Devon for its annual residential (are you ready, Totnes?), and launches in Cornwall, the rest of the world continues to go absolutely haywire….

– And where else to turn at such times than to Stephen Bubb, who was already calling for the sector to be given £500m to help it through these troubled times, and that was before we learned that a load of charities have lost millions in their Icesave accounts (up to £120m according to the Guardian);

– And if you’re wondering who has all that money stacked away, why not check out the Charity Commission’s new website, with its groovy pie charts and punitive red and green borders (if you submit your accounts late). A vast improvement on before, and on Guidestar.

– It’s fairly rare that this world makes it in to the mainstream press (apart from when it’s losing buckets of cash apparently), so good to see a bit on the BBC website about social entrepreneurs including Colin Crooks who we are big fans of here at SSE, and the Hub making it into the Telegraph (seemingly by pretending to be a gentlemen’s club!)

– This is an interesting Q&A on Stanford Social Innovation Review’s site with David Gergen, who’s a leading pundit / activist in this sector in the US. Worth a read, even if I found myself disagreeing as much as agreeing….

– Heard of Tribes, and how ‘everyone’s a leader?’ You will soon….

– The Social Catalyst blog asks us, "People or Structures?" and answers "both" or "neither": values….

– SSE was at the Listening to the Social Entrepreneur Event yesterday: kudos to the organisers for choosing a community-based venue, and for assembling a decent mix of practitioners (not enough!), support agencies, and academics. There was a good mix of ‘classic’ SE debates, but also some more thought-provoking debate as well.

– Am reading Forces for Good at the moment, and it talks about how the organisations that have really big impact have a "network mind-set" that is not controlling, competitive but recognises that (if they don’;t care who takes credit), working with and supporting other organisations and being open and distributive leads to greater overall positive social impact. It’s something we’re passionate about here, both through our ‘flat’ franchise approach and through initiatives like chairing the Social Entrepreneurship Policy Group. Full review to follow, but this certainly chimed with me and experiences with organisations that have an "organisational mindset"…..

– ……seems to chime with Craig Dearden-Phillips as well; here he blogs about an example of exactly that network mindset: How to build an empire without taking slaves

– Finally, as it’s been one of those weeks, here’s some advice and tips for avoiding information overload! Hopefully we’ll be updating the blog from Devon all next week…..

Category Archives: Voluntary Sector

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