Heavyweight week

Posted on by

Been quite a week here at SSE. Both London programmes are sharing a joint study session today: John Bird‘s voice is echoing through the courtyard into our office as I write. And this morning Colin Crooks of Green-Works was the expert witness. Colin’s a great guy: he’s built such an impressive organisation over the last eight years, and he had some interesting things to say over lunch about franchising (a topic we share!), about diversification, about boards and board management, and about growing office recycling in the years to come. And that was just lunch, so I’m assuming the session with the students was enlightening and informative.

Another thing Colin mentioned over lunch was their new(er) work overseas. In particular, they’re doing some extraordinary work in Sierra Leone, where they are basically kitting out a whole town through re-using furniture from the UK: a library, a hospital and 37 schools. Humbling stuff.

————————————————————————————————————————————

Yesterday we helped facilitate a day for the Social Enterprise Ambassadors which also had some big players in attendance: not only the ambassadors themselves, but also 25 high-ranking civil servants from across different government departments, two ministers (Ed Milband and Phil Hope) and Gus O’Donnell, head of the civil service (as someone said to me, he’s taking time out from running the country). So quite a powerful and intimidating group to work with….but it went well. The programme has taken a while to bed down and to get going (though announced last June, the appointments/launch took place in October-time), and everyone’s committed to making the most of the next two years.

In some ways, the ambassadors programme reminds me a bit of SSE, in that a group of entrepreneurs are, by their nature, not always the easiest group to lead and facilitate….and the group dynamics can take a while to settle (the old forming-storming-norming-performing stuff), particularly when the group doesn’t meet very often, and it’s difficult for all to attend each time. So still a bit of forming and storming yesterday (from some) and more norming (from others). And hopefully performing over the coming months. :0)

Ended the day at the Edge Upstarts Awards. Congratulations to all the winners (who will no doubt appear on the website soon) who included Lily Lapenna of MyBnk, Carmel McConnell of Magic Breakfast, and Forth Sector. And now we’re off to address our sleep deprivation………….

Monday round-up: tribute, Twitter, tracking

Posted on by

A long overdue post: been utterly swamped the last week. But….back in the game:

– The shock from Sarah Dodd’s death has still not dissipated. There’s now a blog to leave tributes, and links there to an online memorial fund + photos (you can upload them to flickr and tag with ‘sarahdodds’)

– Haven’t been able to do a trawl of the honours list yet. I did note that Social Enterprise Ambassador Claudine Reid picked up a gong of some sort….links to follow soon.

– Should you tweet? A guide to Twitter for non-profits….I’ll say no more

– Interesting piece on social entrepreneurship in Director magazine by Rebecca Harding.

– Winners of the Spark award programme were announced recently. it’s a homeless / social enterprise combo, and delighted to spot a couple of SSE Fellows amongst the winners; congrats to Dave Miller’s Bikeworks and Simon Fenton-Jones’ StreetShine

– How ethical business was bought by big business: article in the Independent that’s worth a read, if you didn’t know that Cadbury own Green & Black’s, and Unilever own Ben & Jerry’s that is….

– The reason why, if I start up a charity / social enterprise, it will help dogs…..

– Edge Upstarts Awards shortlist announced

– Understanding social enterprise: for those of you who love the world / debate of definitions….

– How you can give with one-click (but please don’t just do that)

– there’ve been some good podcasts at Social Innovation Conversations recently: if you’ve lost track of this site, it’s worth a (re)visit. recent speakers include Paul Farmer and recent topics include the delightfully titled "Evaluation for Normal People"; given I head up our evaluation, I won’t take that personally….

Lots more, but I’ll catch up with that towards the end of the week. Hopefully more time to blog a more interesting post soon. In the meantime, check out the video from the Shine Unconference by Smarta (thanks Smarta):

A sad way to start the week

Posted on by

I was full of optimism coming to the office this morning: a beautiful sunny day, after a great, relaxing weekend, and a relatively light schedule this week to plough through work. So I came in early and trawled through the blogs, and ran across this post from Rod Schwartz:

A Tribute to Sarah Dodds

[NB: UPDATE: there is now a site set up to post tributes here and a memorial fund to donate to online]

Apparently, Sarah, who was UnLtd Ventures Director until very recently (she was set to move on to pastures new), was involved in a cycle accident last week. Sadly she died this weekend. I didn’t know Sarah as well as Rod or some others, but she started work at UnLtd around the time I joined SSE, so our paths have crossed a lot over the past few years. As Rod details in his post, she was an exuberant, larger-than-life presence with a healthy irreverence; combined with a sharp brain, this led to plenty of interesting (and entertaining) conversations at events and conferences. It is always shocking to lose someone of a young age with so much ahead of them; so am a bit stunned by that this morning.

SSE‘s thoughts are with her family, friends and colleagues.

Thursday round-up: Sunlight, shares, scale, SROI

Posted on by

Quick round-up, as there seems to be lots coming in and lots of interest:

– Peter Holbrook has written a blog post about David Cameron launching the Tory green paper at Sunlight Development Trust, and has some interesting initial thoughts from a practitioner’s point of view on its recommendations; more reaction on Bubb’s blog (who’s on rare form of late), here, and here.

– Paul Miller of School of Everything has written an interesting post about why their organisation is a company limited by shares and how they balance the need for start-up investment (in a silicon valley web2.0 type way) with a social mission at their heart….

– Fall-out from the ECT news continues; apparently the recycling arm is keeping its CIC structure, despite (or as well as?) being taken over by a private sector operator….will be interesting to see how that turns out. In the meantime, here’s a piece in New Start about it all; as I mentioned previously, this can be seen as a positive as much as a negative, but I do think that the issue of scale is at the heart of it all

– On which subject (scale), some food for thought: The Fetishization of Scaling Up (Small is beautiful versus Big is essential….and local+local+local = global…) and a magazine/event called De-Growth

– The SROI-UK conference has spawned a network: SROI-UK is chaired by the evaluation legend Jeremy Nicholls, who we’ll be doing some work with in mid-June

– DEFRA announced a big £4.6 million deal for the various third sector waste and recycling networks who have come together to form a new organisation, REconomy. Huge kudos to (former SSE Director of Learning) Matthew Thomson for masterminding the deal: word on the street is that the celebrations were substantial…..but well-deserved.

– Interesting article by Matthew Taylor of the RSA on the (independence of the) third sector and the need for accountability and transparency

– How to set up a refugee community organisation; consult this guide?

– And a brief final thought: Word of mouth is not created, it is co-created

Two big stories: ECT takeover + Tory Green paper

Posted on by

BREAKING NEWS. Oh yes. Two big stories, both with a ‘green’ slant.

The first is that the Tories have just released their green paper on what they would do to/with/for the third sector if they were in government.Launched at Sunlight Development Trust, It’s the first salvo in what is intended to be a constructive and consultative dialogue between the party and the sector. I’ve only just downloaded it and am yet to digest (95 pages over lunch was beyond me), but our friends at Third Sector online have helpfully done so and come up with the 20 headline pledges.

Of particular relevance to this world:

"•    Creating a network of social enterprise zones to provide incentives for social investment in deprived communities

•    Setting up a Social Investment Bank as a wholesaler of ‘patient capital’ to a wide range of social investment institutions

•    Creating a powerful ‘Office for Civil Society’ at the heart of government to fight for the interests of charities, social enterprises, co-operatives and community groups"

Looks interesting, pretty well-thought through and pretty sector-friendly, even if a fair bit of it has been announced one way or another in the past. The OCS replacing the OTS would seem to indicate that NCVO’s advocacy of ‘civil society’ as a concept has fallen on receptive ears. More soon after several tube commute reads.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Second big story is that ECT Group, widely viewed and lauded as one of the leading social enterprises in the movement (and certainly one of the largest) has had the recycling part of its business taken over by May Gurney, a private firm. Their press release includes the following:

"ECT Recycling – part of the ECT Group with 1,100 employees – has been
acquired by May Gurney, one of the UK’s most successful maintenance and
support services companies and listed on the London stock market (AIM).


First and foremost, it’s ‘business as usual’ at ECT Recycling – the
current strong management team will remain in place, led by Stephen
Sears, and the focus will remain on delivering service quality for its
customers and its customers’ customers – members of the public.

For some time, ECT Recycling had been exploring ways to secure its
future and to build upon its successful business formula in delivering
municipal waste services to local authorities.

Stephen Sears, who has led the development of ECT since 1980 said: “ECT
has been looking for a partner for our recycling and waste management
business with a good reputation in the local authority market place and
with the commercial muscle to help us to secure bigger contracts. This
will allow us to deliver our social and environmental objectives as
well as the financial results that are essential to continued success." 

Which leaves the ECT Group back to its original core business: the CT of community transport, having sold its various other businesses (railways, health care etc.). A few questions fall out of this, of course. Not least that ECT Recycling was a CIC, so is this the first CIC to be taken over? (and how does that work re. asset lock etc.?) Is this a strategic move separating out the two businesses, or in response to more fundamental problems? And if ECT generally needed to find a bigger partner (with "more commercial muscle") to secure bigger contracts, what does that mean for procurement/commissioning for all the other third sector / social enterprises out there? (many of whom are significantly smaller).

New Start magazine rang me this morning to comment, and I kept it largely generic (because I don’t know enough about ECT’s business / governance etc; see q’s above) but did say that we shouldn’t overreact as a sector or movement. More of this will happen over the coming years, hopefully in both directions, as mainstream business is influenced as well as threatened by ethical and mission-led competitors.