SELing social reformation

It's been quite a week; so much so that it's taken me until now to blog - so I've got a great many things that I want to share with you.

I'll start with the last half an hour and work my way back to the start of the week.

I have been watching the Twitter feed on Bigotgate and whatever you might think of what the PM said and how he and his team subsequently mishandled it, the one issue that is only just surfacing is that very little has been said in defence of the Eastern Europeans in the UK who work hard, pay taxes and nonetheless can't vote.

What's happening in social enterprise? I have to tell you it is frantic, behind the scenes SEL and our members are having a thousand conversations about the changing landscape and how social enterprise is going to deliver social reformation.  As a trained historian I keep coming back to that which went before. What social enterprise is proposing is a Reformation, we want to challenge conventional thinking that neatly divides the world up into business, government and charity. Top of the list are education, health, energy, regeneration and above all money. We can do this, but only with the support of a Government that carefully listens to the detail and helps us put into place the necessary investment.

Today 2000 charity leaders came out in defence of the Future Job Fund. I am not a charity leader but if they had asked me I would have joined them.  At SEL we put together London's Future 500 which is putting over 500 young, unemployed people into social enterprise jobs, and I have to tell you, it is going well.  The applicants are enthusiastic, the employers are being, as you would expect from social entrepreneurs, supportive and early findings show that the number of permenant job offers coming out of the scheme is high. Surely no government could contemplate ending a program like that? Not when all of us fear growing unemployment, particularly in the young.

That is the saddest thing about new governments; change for change's sake. They often think ending things will save money and on the face of it that can be true.  But then the social cost is felt and then they have to invest in a new program to address the problem which ends up being more costly than keeping what was originally there in place. I have seen it in further education, the FEFC becoming the LSC and that being abolished in favour of...well, what?

Last night I had the Tory local authority candidate, Paul Hodgins, on my door step.  I must have been one of the few people he spoke to that evening who had actually read his parties manifesto, as I have poured over all the major parties proposals (incidentally, in return, increasing numbers of candidates are looking at SEL's own manifesto; encouraging) I asked him if their commitment to enabling communities to run local schools would, if they won, lead to something being done about our local school. I have met our local MP Susan Kramer and she seems like a good egg, and yet Shene School remains an unacceptable choice for many local parents.  Having said that Paul didn't seem to share my fury over the shambles that is Richmond secondry education, so I'm not sure he's going to get it sorted either.

On Tuesday we had an amazing event on the crucial issue of social impact assesment.  Like it or not, and despite what anyone says to the contrary, in future there will be more counting.  If its jobs, contribution to GDP or energy consumtion savings there will be more counting and those who get on board with how to do it will be in the strongest position.  The event was held in conjuction with PricewaterhouseCoopers and the London Development Agency and attendees were social entrepreneurs and accountants.  One lot knew all about social impact and the other, measurement and assessment. Combining the thinking of the two is the challenge.  Having been involved in this field for over 4 years and with our resident expert Sabina Khan, SEL's Director of Policy and Research at the helm, we are doing a great deal on this. So if you are interested check out our website for more information.

Finally, a few quick gardening updates.  I have got in my beetroot, salad, chard and carrot seeds, and I am preparing my runner bean beds.  But the crops at the moment are the real highlight of the week.  We have had our first asparagus, delicious and sweet and my purple sprouting is, as you can see from the photo, outstanding!

Both of them have interesting effects on the colour of your wee, so eating them together can provide endless entertainment.  All good clean fun! Talking of which, I'm off now to watch the leadership debate.

The early bird...

I've spent the afternoon at the allotment putting in my first early potatoes. Despite the glorious sunshine I know the weather isn't warm enough, so I'm being a little optimistic but I normally have them in by now and I do like my early potatoes. I went rocket again for obvious reasons, rocket by name rocket by nature. I took a picture of my work and a close up of the glorious croci growing under my apple aspelier.

Croci growing under the Apple Aspelier

This morning I facilitated a discussion between Ben Brabyn of BMyCharity, myself and Brian Bannister, Director of Communications for PwC on the role of communication in leadership. It was organised by Acevo and filmed so that they could turn it into a training tool and podcast. I'm not sure how well we did but at least I enjoyed the chat. As is always the case with these things, the stories of when communication fails are so much more entertaining than good practice.

Playing with the big boys and girls

If you weren't there last night, you missed a fun one. In partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and our very own LDA we put on quite an event for social enterprise leaders. Entitled 'Question Time for Leaders in Social Enterprise' we had some fantastic speakers who told us what we needed to know to face the tough times ahead.  I am always delighted when I hear new stuff. Stephen Dawson of Impetus Trust told us how to address the elephant in the room, (which elephant, you ask? All the presentations were filmed beforehand and are on our website) Philip Wright of PwC gave us the means to weather the 'cold winds of the recession' and Rod Schwartz of ClearlySo, told us that we needed to stop being cute, grow up and look for investors.

Rod's stuff on investment capital was challenging and exciting. In my humble opinion he is one of the best commentators in the social investment world and although he and I have disagreed in the past, most notably on the social stock exchange, I think he is always worth listening to and has probably as much experience as anyone at the coal face of financing social transformation.

What struck me whilst watching PwC's opening (excellent) film is that if the assertions it makes about the impact of social enterprise are genuinely held by the organisation (as the presence as chair for the evening of the impressive Keith Mansfield, London Chairman of PwC testified to), then we have come a long way.  Don't get me wrong, its not that I don't take social enterprise seriously until Government or in this instance the mutinational world does; it's that looking at us through their eyes as we did last night makes you realise just how interesting we are.

Philip's assertion that insolvency is not always a bad thing was a shocker, but so was his rationale, which proved pretty compelling.  He talked about the need to close streams of activity down before they bring the whole structure to its knees and mothballing organisations before they lose their intellectual property as well as their assets. Food for thought.

We also heard from Anne Humphries, former board member of John Lewis and current board member of the London Development Agency. I was delighted that she voiced pride in her association with the UK's leading social enterprise, John Lewis.  I know there are those in our movement who think JL isn't a social enterprise, but I'm not one of them. I think the way they have thoughtfully constructed a business model around profit distribution, staff ownership, ethical behaviour and customer satisfaction is a thing of beauty and their recent success is something we should be proud of.

I woke up this morning to lots of lovely texts and emails from those who had come last night saying how much they enjoyed it.  The use of the word 'superb' more than once helped my early morning tea go down very nicely. Thank you to all who took the time to come and especially those who fed back afterwards. I forwarded all your comments on to the SEL team, who of course worked their socks off.

Tomorrow we host a lunch to discuss procurement.  The purpose of the event, which is being run again in partnership with the LDA, is to bring a handful of folk together (from government, social enterprise and the private sector) who know a thing or two about it, and to discuss how we can empower social enterprises to win more business. I think it should be gripping and I am especially pleased that my co-chair Sophi Tranchell of Divine Chocolate is bringing along Angela Smith MP, Minister for the Third Sector, who, wonderfully is shadowing Sophi for the day under the Coalition's tremendous Social Enterprise Ambassadors' Programme.

Our Sabina, who is organising the event tells me she wants it in the style of me 'hosting it in my own home'.  That was a stretch for me since there will be no children suddenly deciding to practice the trumpet/piano/guitar as soon as the guests arrive and no rabbits and hampsters hopping and wheeling about to the dulcet tones of the ever rotating washing machine. In fact it won't be like being at home at all. I shall have to improvise.

Last Thursday I met Angela's new Director General at the OTS, Rolande Anderson who kindly gave me an hour of her time to chew her ear about social enterprise. I hope she found it helpful, she seemed really engaged. I often come away from meetings like that feeling sorry for folk who are continually subjected to lobbyists like me, but hey that's the job.  Mine to put our case and theirs to hear it.

I have also met up with loads of social enterprises this week, all at different stages of development, all with different needs and all absolutely inspiring. I am currently trying to make sure I have done everything for them that I said I would, again that's the job: to give (hopefully) good advice and to open doors. One person who doesn't need me to open any doors is the lovely Ed Mayo who I had a chat with on Monday. Ed is the new CEO at Coops UK and quite the nicest, most considered man I have met in a long time. We really put the world to rights and I'm excited (as the Americans say) about working closely with Coops UK as we did when my mate Pauline was at the helm.

Finally, and thank you so much to all of you who have enquired, after a lot of huffing (her) and puffing (me and my super sis Sue) my Mother's move is complete. I did manage to end last week with a rather unattractive nervous twitch in the left eye, but after a weekend with the family, gardening and watching Miss Marple re runs I can now hold a steady gaze. My Mother is adjusting rather well to her lovely cottage and has only locked herself out once, although Monday's revelation that she had managed to leave her passport at the old house did, I have to admit, feel like a step in the wrong direction.

I'm off now to fleece my bulbs, which bravely sprouted in last weekends clement weather and will now get scorched in the latest of what seems like an endless line of cold snaps. Life's so like that isn't it?