No, you’re not losing the plot. It is Thursday. I’m operating on slightly random timings at the moment. When all this kicked off part of me thought, ‘Hmm, lockdown. Doesn’t sound too bad. I can catch up with some reading, maybe learn a new language or something’.

Things are perhaps not running that smoothly. I’m staring at an email inbox with about 300 unread emails in it and a large part of my day is spent chasing my eighteen month daughter around while she comes up with increasingly creative ways to destroy our house. I am getting very good at washing up and tidying, however. Who knew how much washing up there could possibly be? By the time this is all over I’ll almost certainly have done the required 10,000 hours of washing up to be considered an expert. So that’s something positive.

Enjoy this week’s news…

@davemcglashan

• Has your social enterprise been affected by Covid-19?  Trying to take your business online?  Frustrated that you’ve lost your income from trading? The Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland Social Entrepreneurs Trade Up programme will help you get back on track and set up to go beyond this with a stronger, sustainable, resilient business model.There are less than 2 weeks unttil the closing date: 30th April. Find out more, join an online info session and apply here.

• You wait months for a blog from David Floyd and then two come along at once. It turns out he’s been using his time to work on his headlines as he tackles the government’s support (or lack of) for charities and social enterprises in ‘5 things we learnt when voluntary sector leaders asked the government for a funding deal to support charities and social enterprises through Covid – and what happened next didn’t blow our minds‘ and again in ‘One hilarious blog about groups of people getting together to carry out activities that are not primarily focused on return on investment – do these organisations even exist?’ As ever with David’s work, time is well spent reading it.

• Social Enterprise UK are hosting a a webinar focusing on digital marketing hosted by Stephanie Bennett, MD of digital agency Battenhall on Monday (20th April) at 11am. You can register here. It follows a webinar they delivered earlier this week which discussed digital tools & working from home, which you can watch here.

• A really detailed article over on Pioneers Post looking at what the UK’s social sector needs now from social investment. (Five points to you if you guessed that a large part of it is grant funding.) Read the article here.

• Along with the resurgence of hopscotch as a popular past time, ‘counting the rainbows in the windows’ appears to be keeping south east London’s children busy at the moment (we got to around 45 the other day). Now SSE Fellow Alex Winstanley of Happy Smiles is taking things a step further by raising money to send rainbow badges to NHS staff, frontline workers and carers across the country. You can donate from just £3 here.

• If your organisation delivers training and is now making the move online then Catalyst’s ‘Six tips for moving your face to face training online‘ has some useful pointers.

• If you’d like to experience the output of an organisation that has made the move online, then do take a look at our one-day workshops. We’ve currently got good availability on our Crowdfunding for Charities and Social Enterprises on 15th May – if you are thinking of running a crowdfunding campaign in the coming months it will be money well spent. Book a place here.

• Are you a social enterprise in Essex, Kent or East Sussex? The South East LEP would like to hear how your business has been affected by the Covid-19 lock down. It’s likely that decisions on resources and funding will follow the findings of this survey so if you specifically mention social enterprise in the comments, we could see critical resources being earmarked for social enterprise across this region. You can take the survey here.

• Donna Rowe-Green of Lancashire based social enterprise Rosemary and Time is putting together garden memory boxes to go out to local care homes and hospices. If you have links to a hospice or a care home in Lancashire, Donna can send a box (which you can see here) for free. Contact Donna by emailing [email protected]. There are also some smaller packs some smaller packs that can be sent out to individuals in Lancashire too (containing prompt cards, a scrapbook to create and guidance notes) – use the same email address to contact Donna for further details.

• A neat idea from SSE Fellow Rhiannon Mair Griffiths and her social enterprise Comics Youth. They’ve launched Comics Youth Radio, designed to be a place of sharing and empathy and a resource for young people (and adults) about how to live IWC replica through lockdown. The fortnightly online live radio show Lockdown! at the Disco will feature songs requested by young people across the Liverpool City Region – you can learn more about it here.

• Finally, we were saddened this week to hear of the death of SSE London Fellow Jobeda Ali. Jobeda was an incredible force of nature and well loved by many SSE staff who were around when she learnt with us. Our thoughts are with her friends and family. A page for Jobeda’s friends and family to connect and share their memories has been set up here.