In public service, does size matter?

Steve Saunders from PwC sets delegates straight: growth is all about competitiveness   

At the University of Northampton, public sector spin-out platform, the Transition Institute, announced today that the university was to become a strategic partner for the Institute. Also, Professor Simon Denny, the man charged with enabling Northampton to become the UK’s first social enterprise university, is to join the Institute's board. 

Speaking on behalf of the Institute, its Chair, Allison Ogden-Newton, said, “We are delighted to welcome the creative input of Northampton, which is fast establishing itself as at the forefront of social enterprise development. Its energy and expertise will be a fantastic addition and helps us take the debate on the future of public services up a gear.”

Simon told the audience, "If the level of debate and contribution at today’s event was anything to go by, the university's decision to become a partner of the Institute is one it is unlikely to ever regret.”

This announcement came at the latest Transition Institute Camp on scaling up, where those who want to spin out services or want to bid for new service contracts can learn from the market leaders and industry experts, and share their experience and questions adding to developing research.

Steve Saunders, Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), sparked a lively debate about preparing to thrive in an increasingly competitive market. He charged participants to think about why they think the service they provide is different, what they want to be remembered for and to really scrutinise where the market for that is.

Paul Jansen, consultant at Stepping Out, the specialist service for spin-outs, described this sector as a market that is in its infancy. He compared spin-outs to the motor industry in the 1930s where there was excitement for the novelty for a revolutionary form of transport, but where efficiency and speed had not yet been achieved. Paul made the point that we need to recognise the innovation sparked through independent service providers and told his audience about social enterprise, the National Migraine Centre which is a world leader in headache services that has developed therapies and treatments previously unheard of in the NHS. In that sense the services available at the centre are not spun out, but have achieved unique complementary status so common in social enterprise where innovation can be easier to develop than in the mainstream.

Owen Wilcox from TTP Law

Owen Wilcox, a partner at TTP Law, filled delegates in on the legal dos and don’ts of going it alone and illustrated his points with apocryphal tales of social enterprises that have failed, such as Secure Healthcare, which closed after only three years because it did not anticipate the potential impact of its contractual obligations and started with an inappropriate corporate structure. Owen took delegates through the treacherous waters of TUPE and asset transfer and pointed them to early adopters looking at the secrets to their success.

Working with Sabina Khan, advisor to the Institute, delegates discussed and analysed the Institute's latest research Scaling up your business: expansion models for spin-outs, written by Dan Gregory. The enthusiasm of delegates derived some insightful observations that came from their considerable experience in the field.

Delegate Richard Catherall of Katarsis Ventures contributed to the debate by making the point that outsourcing authorities often go for scale thereby missing vital potential. “Local authorities like large things sometimes simply because they are big, which doesn’t acknowledge that an opportunity of spin-outs are to spin services apart. The focus is often around the spin-out and in actual fact it’s an opportunity for the parent body to change. It’s not just about the egg, it's about the chicken … which came first incidentally."

All of the comments made at the event were captured and will be reflected in the final version of the research available on line at the Transition Institute.

Can social impact really be measured? Really?

Can social impact really be measured?

I've been thinking about Rob Edwards' comment on my last blog and have decided it deserves a blog of its own. In his response Rob, reflecting on Magic Breakfast's call for investment of £13 million in a social impact bond that offers £28 million in savings from the additional Government expenditure needed to address the social problems of children too hungry to learn, Rob said, "This is the whole problem with social enterprise. The returns can be somewhat ephemeral, and an awful lot of time and money goes into setting up organisations rather than actually delivering services that people want."


Is this the case? Is measuring social impact ephemeral and therefore too academic to bring into a discussion about investment? Can social enterprises miss the point and make an offer that is not really what people want?


Clearly some people think so and if we are to make any real progress, we have to address these criticisms, and not just by refuting them from the vantage point of the moral high ground, but by generating the data that proves our services are needed and our social return has been critically assessed and properly measured.  


Just after the election I had a meeting with the man put in charge of regeneration in a major Government department, he asked me, "How do we create regeneration and cut spending?"

I advised introducing social impact assessment across the whole department and insisting that the impact of cuts were assessed for their wider social impact and concomitant cost before decisions are made about what stays and what goes. Needless to say he didn't, or couldn't, follow my advice, but I am sticking to my guns, because despite a slow start, members of the Government namely, Nick, Hurd, Francis Maude, Ken Clarke, George Osborne and the Prime Minister himself have shown growing enthusiasm for social impact bonds making this an ideal time to take out the tape measure.


I do appreciate this is not easy. When I started looking into impact measurement I too was baffled and because I found it tough, I made sure SEL had the brains to work it out with people on the team like Ali Somers who devised the first social value balance score card and went on to head up the social impact unit at Goldsmiths. Also, Sabina Khan came to us from the impact assessment team in Lehman Brothers in New York and has since founded the world's leading Social Enterprise Journal, developed  SEL's SIMPLE programme – our how-to guide to assessing which tool is right for you – and launched our fantastically popular Introduction to social impact assessment training. Because SEL has been developing tools with real social enterprises working on the ground, often in the most difficult circumstances, we have come up with solutions that work for busy social entrepreneurs not just academic exercises. The goal has been to move social enterprise from being characterised as warm, fuzzy charity to one where hard evidence shows how it really works.


As times get tougher, the clamour for evidence will get louder. Occupying the moral high ground with its stunning views no longer guarantees any of us a future. Being able to produce data about the exact cost of your product or service and measure its impact will give you future contracts, boost your bottom line and ensure you offer services that, as Rob recommends, "people want". I know because we have done it at SEL and it really, really works, honest Rob.

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.