Friday round-up: enterprise, endowments and expansion

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Quick social enterprise and social entrepreneurship round-up to end the week:

– Most interesting conversation of the week is over on Social Edge with the provocatively-titled debate 'Are the Only Innovations in Social Entrepreneurship Anglo-Saxon?'; kudos to Rod for kicking it off, and to others for some great comments

– On the eve of the OTS-DBERR, Byrne-Mandelson summit,, which I'll report on next week, a different taskforce recommends social enterprise staying where it is (and not returning to DBERR, or DTI as was); on balance, I think we'd agree with that….

– Other big news circulating is the Future Jobs Fund, and the intention to include charities and social enterprises amongst the deliverers; an example of the opportunities in this recession?

– Enjoyed 10 lessons from a failed start-up (if slightly techie)

– A new kind of capitalism (Bill Gates / social entrepreneurship?) on BBC Business

– Umair Haque on the best business model in the world (short summary: "create something awesome"), which also introduces the neat powerpoint-busting presentation tool, Prezi.com

– I have to mention the Shine Unconference again: sessions are looking blindingly good: everyone from Bridges Ventures to Mother branding agency to What If to ourselves/UnLtd to policymakers to David Wilcox on collaboration to pitches for funding and much more….if you're anywhere near-ish to London next Friday/Saturday, you should get a ticket before they all go!

– More self-promotion: SSE plans global expansion article in Social Enterprise Mag, covering all the recent developments here at SSE towers…

– Craig Dearden-Phillips remains one of the most honest and articluate bloggers and writers out there; here's his recent take on the Art of Communication

– Two bits of news from the Office of the Third Sector of relevance: the targeted support fund (previously announced in the recession action plan) is open for business; arguably even more interesting is the local council created endowment fund in Essex

– I hesitate to do this but here's a link to How to Twitter for Social Entrepreneurship; I'll follow that up with a link to Rob Greenland's Three Things I Wish I'd Known post which includes "Sometimes the most entrepreneurial thing you can do is stop doing something"…..

– Finally, I read somewhere this week: "A social entrepreneur can see the world in a grain of sand, heaven in a wild flower and hold infinity in the palm of his hand for eternity"; to which a few things occur to me: 1) hopefully a social entrepreneur can do stuff as well; 2) perhaps it might be 'her' hand as well? and 3) most social entrepreneurs at this point on a Friday are more interested in holding a glass of wine/beer in the palm of their hand (for as long as it lasts…).

Welcome to all the blog's new readers, especially those new SSE-ers in Sydney!

UnLtdWorld 2: the birthday and launch

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Nick and Mark K Tuesday night was the UnLtdWorld 1st birthday / re-launch over at Lovells' nice buildings in Holborn. Congrats to Alberto and the team, especially Nicola, who organised the event. I haven't had much chance to check out the new incarnation of the site, but I certainly prefer the design. As ever, it will be up to the individual social entrepreneur to see if it works + repays time for them…but definitely seems more practically focused and oriented towards action, which should be a good thing.

The party was fun, with some pleasant surprises. I bumped into SSE Fellow Alison Skeat, who was full of purpose and confidence about her new project, Dirty Hands (great name!: see more in this pdf), which is regenerating a piece of land in Newham in order to grow food, and nvolving the local community in doing so. Great to hear how she was being incredibly resourceful in persuading companies and councillors alike to contribute to the project.

I also met up with Fife SSE Fellow Mark Kelly, who won a Special Recognition Award at the event (hence that orange lego brick thing under his arm in the photo) for his contribution to UnLtdWorld's development. Mark was on great form, and was very kind about the impact that Fife SSE had had on setting him off in a different direction. His is a great story, and it feels like he's only at the very start of what he might achieve. Was good to see him getting the recognition he deserves.

Congrats to all….

Shine unconference: buy tickets here!

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The Shine Unconference is going to be amazing this year, with lots of great sessions already racking up: pitch for £1000; get free branding; have 1:1s on measurement and business planning…and network with lots of other social entrepreneurs. And all for a recession-busting £35..at Kings Place in London on May 15th and 16th. See the link above for more…or just..BUY TICKETS HERE!

Fellowship and diversity

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Four of us from SSE were at a PwC employee volunteering event last night, as we are one of the charities they work with: it was great to see some of those who've mentored students last year, and to meet more potential mentors for the two programmes of students just starting. The Community Affairs team had also invited one of our newest London Fellows, Jen Ruppert, to bring a selection of her recycled / unique jewellery from her Revamp Fashion collective…and she appeared to be doing a roaring trade.

An unexpected highlight was an SSE Fellow being on the stand next to us. Koko Bassey, who was on our  programme in 2006-7, is now working for Tomorrow's People…alongside continuing to make her own natural cosmetics on the side (the project she brought to SSE). Great to see Koko, who is a wonderful ball of positive energy, and to hear about the work she's doing…and to see her and Jen chat about their experiences at SSE and get to know each other.

Also yesterday, there was an interview in the Guardian with another SSE Fellow Roger Wilson-Hinds, the founder of Screenreader, which provides free speech-reading software for visually impaired people across the world. Roger is an inspiration, and it's wonderful to see his organisation, and its impact, go from strength to strength.

Three more different people and three more different projects it would be difficult to imagine; but that diversity, and making connections between such paassionate entrepreneurial people, is what the SSE (and SSE Fellowship) is all about. Such a good day.

Interns, enterns and the ripple effect

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Hamsterwheel 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.