Racing through Social Enterprise Day with men with moustaches

Latzo lorverly prizes at Livity, Brixton 

For the last few years, Social Enterprise Day has been a real celebration for our world. It's a day when a great many social enterprises make the effort to showcase some or all of what they do. At SEL, we did our bit with a Guardian-supported launch of Spin-out and deliver, our latest publication on new forms of public service providers that go it alone to focus on social value, and an open day at the SEL offices.

At the youth and media company and SEL member, Livity, CEO Sam Conniff had Super Mario in and some guy in a red hat from the Cabinet Office to announce this organisation has organised youth consultation across the UK with Nintendo. This will co-design practical ideas that will make a real and lasting difference to young people. Nintendo intends to start piloting these co-created solutions for and with young people in their own communities as soon as next year.

Over the other side of town, SEL Director June O'Sullivan of LEYF gave this year's Margaret Horn Lecture at the RSA on LEYF research that explores social franchising as a model to tackle the challenges of child poverty. Read her lecture: 'Child poverty: Why social franchising is a giant step in the right direction'.  This event was chaired by Matthew Taylor, chief executive at the RSA.

Spin-out and deliver at the Guardian

Our own Guardian event sparked some really good debate and Matthew Booth, Head of Policy at Ealing Council was fantastic. He explained what was happening at the council and his frank and enthusiastic approach was a breath of fresh air. Participants got stuck in and a good discussion followed that I really enjoyed. As ever Andrew Burnell of City Health Care Partnership was on great form. Andrew is on the board of the Transition Institute (TI) and is as good an advertisement of public sector spin-outs that believe they are the next generation of public servants as you are ever likely to get. He was sporting his Movember moustache which, while impressive in a challenging facial hair sort of way, was no match for the tash of Super Mario. (Movember is an initiative that encourages men to grow moustaches in November to highlight issues and fundraising around men's health.)

Andrew will also be speaking at the TI launch of Social value ethos, its first publication on Monday at GLL facilities in Marshall Street, Westminster. Nick Hurd, the Minister for Civil Society (as seen above and a person who started following me, @aogdennewton on Twitter yesterday), and Sir Stephen Bubb, CEO of ACEVO and TI board member, will also both be there.

Hearing about social enterprise

Back to Social Enterprise Day. I left the Guardian to race back to SEL offices where the staff had done a lovely job smartening us up for a social enterprise drop-in day. We had no idea how many would come, so were chuffed when over 50 social entrepreneurs came through our doors. Mei Hui, SEL's Senior Business Advisor, gave a presentation to over 30 of our guests and the rest met SEL staff and enjoyed some networking.

I had to break of to do a Live Guardian Q & A on, ironically the future of business support for social enterprise following the sad closure of our sister organisation RISE in the South West. During that discussion there were plenty of comments to the effect that everything we do should be paid for at the point of contact. Sitting in on Mei's presentation and listening to the comments from participants, I was struck by how much advice those new social entrepreneurs needed and how utterly unable the vast majority were able to pay for it. In this harsh new economic climate, it is hard to think those people are not our audience. After all, wasn't supporting community development through enterprise why we were set up in the first place?

When Mei, Jillian and I shut up shop at around 7.30pm, we congratulated ourselves on an excellent social enterprise day and wondered about next year: what would the world of social enterprise look like then?

Spin out and deliver

Allison Ogden-Newton on the launch at the Guardian of the latest guide to public sector service spin-outs

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• Allison Ogden-Newton
• Guardian Professional, Thursday 17 November 2011 08.00 GMT
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Some services, such as childcare, are mostly undertaken by independent providers. Photograph: Photofusion Picture Library / Al/Alamy

So often the story of social enterprise seems inextricably linked to public sector reform, and while there is actually so much more to the growing world of ethical business, what is happening in the arena of public service is undoubtedly big stuff.

Today is Social Enterprise Day and will be celebrated all over the world as a day that matters. For our part Social Enterprise London is launching Spin Out and Deliver here at the Guardian which is our nattily entitled latest thought piece on what is actually happening to those who are leaving direct employment in public services and becoming independent service providers. We started on this journey 15 years ago with our first guides on services such as childcare which we thought could be done more efficiently by those outside the public sector whether they started there or not. Today we learn that leadership is the key, that identifying and supporting those able to inspire and drive the project is the single most significant contributor to success.

To give you some idea of the scale of change, as an example, Social Enterprise London is working with four local authorities across the political spectrum, that between them plan to spin out 22 services. I would take this as evidence that services will be done differently in future, the only arguments left to have are, should services be delivered by social or shareholder-driven value enterprises? And, how can we make sure our services continue to improve in terms of their social impact? At Social Enterprise London we are part of the Transition Institute, an information platform for reform in public services that promotes social value focused delivery. At the institute the mantra is transform not just transfer. We showcase trailblazers who have made it work and help each and every spin-out to learn from those that went before. Some of these new service providers you might recognise, likeLEYF, the market leading early years foundation, and some like Circle Partnership, the health-based company you may not. The report tells us that there is still a great deal of confusion about models and if we are to help these new entities to be sustainable that is a worry.

One of the key things prospective spin-outs told us was their frustration at the lack of specialist support. Even when they found organisations like Social Enterprise London they had no budget to pay for the work they needed doing, and the agencies that could have assisted them like Risein the south-west had experienced 100% funding cuts. This is a growing pressure point. The economic crisis has created a demand for specialist advice and eliminated the public funding to support the propagation of that expertise. It is too easy to say that if that advice is any good the market should pay for it as the market really means fledgling spin outs and growing numbers of start-ups with no budget.

Our live Q & A here at the social enterprise network today is an ideal forum to discuss this. I wonder how many think community business and public sector transformation can really happen on the cheap?

Allison Ogden-Newton is chief executive at Social Enterprise London

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the social enterprise network, click here.

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  allisonogdennewton

  17 November 2011 3:19PM
  Thanks to everyone who came to the launch of Spin out and Deliver this morning and participated in this afternoon's Q & A which had in the end 73 comments and not all of them mine! It's great to know that social enterprise is getting that level of interest.

  I hope you are having a Happy Social Enterprise Day we are at SEL!!!
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• mjraywsm

  17 November 2011 4:09PM
  Are the guides social? Can others take them and update them after the publishers have gone? In other words, are they under something like Creative Commons Share-Alike?

  Small correction: RISE did not have a 100% funding cut - only the RDA grant had gone. They held other public contracts. Although the cut has proved catastrophic, I'm not sure if we know the exact number because RISE is refusing to release the promised full accounts yet. It was still charging subscription fees and trading, taking money from many businesses who could ill afford it, right up until the EGM... the EGM where windfall payments were proposed. Maybe RISE was an I-can't-believe-it's-social enterprise?

  Happy Social Enterprise Day too! software.coop isn't doing much this year because the RISE rearguard campaign has drained us and we're preparing for the International Year of Co-operatives 2012.
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• JeffMowatt

  17 November 2011 6:37PM
  Allison, The web site for Transition Institute refers to the concept of Creating Shared Value, an academic theory from Harvard business school. The reasoning however for embedded social value and rethinking capitalism, derives from our papers and strategy proposals spanning the last 15 years from the point that the P-CED concept was proposed in a paper for the White House.

  More relevantly in 7 years UK operation we have demonstrated this as a working model within the supply chains of several international corporations.and the UK public sector.

  Why does a UK social enterprise organisation endorse the unproven theories of an American university when it could stand by the UK social enterprise which has been the change?

Happy Social Enterprise Day!!

I hope your having as much fun as I am on this day of all days. Thank you for the wonderful feedback, as one member's message said today, "We celebrate with you on this special SEL Day and congratulate you on the hard work that you have been doing to help other enterprises."

 I am moving from one event to another but via the wonderful blackberry I thought I'd do a quick post. First off we took this lovely shot of the SEL team this morning while we were still together and before the fun and games started. Sarah Ramsey, pictured to the far right, is going to be our new Head of Finance and Operations in the New Year was having an induction day, so I hope we made her feel welcome.

Since then I have been participating in  a great event at the DCLG where I met SEL Board John Charles, CEO of Catering to Order who has just landed a £1.2 million contract with Waltham Forest Council – fabulous news! I keep talking about the potential for social enterprises to win public sector contracts in this current climate but it is lovely to have evidence, and Catering to Order is such a great social enterprise.

The purpose of the event was to set up a Human Library. People who have some advice on social enterprise to offer were 'taken out' by people who were interested in that advice. I had some really good chats with folk including Sarah, pictured here, a DCLG staffer, who was a Befriending volunteer and very interested in social care.

I'm off soon to the Unltd social enterprise celebration but have also just received a phone call to say that I have won a social enterprise hamper which is on its way over from Social Firms UK who were running a raffle at the DCLG gig. Happy Social Enterprise Day!

Straight talking

I thought I’d take the time spent in the hairdresser’s chair having my hair straightened (first time ever – hope it doesn’t fall out!) to update you on Social Enterprise Day.

No 10 was fun, bumped into lots of old friends including SEL pin ups Micheal Pyner of the Shoreditch Trust and Campbell Robb, who is leaving the Office of The Third Sector in December to take over as CEO of Shelter. Good for Shelter, but our loss. Campbell has been a great champion of social enterprise and has been particularly effective in developing support for the movement to play a key role in England’s economic development strategy. Sounds boring but makes all the difference to our members, who are crying out for the information, guidance and support provided through things like CapacityBuilders and the Social Enterprise Knowledge Exchange, both of which Campbell has put in place. He will be missed.

At the reception the Prime Minister spoke warmly to the gathered social entrepreneurs, telling us how much he admires what we do. He said he applauded the fact that we are working to make people's lives better. It sounds cheesy but was really nice actually and I think he meant it. I managed to hook up Reed Paget of Belu Water and the amazing Lynn Berry of the massive volunteering organisation WRVS, who is on a mission to make her organisation more environmentally sustainable. WRVS makes and distributes more sandwiches than anyone else in the UK and they also sell a great deal of bottled water, so let’s hope Belu hits the mark. Wholfing a few delicious canapés courtesy of CafeSunlight, Peter Holbrook’s outstanding social enterprise, I headed off...



...to The Guardian conference in Birmingham where I joined the round table delegate discussions. The questions centred on how we can deliver more public services and whether social enterprises can work with the private sector. I did an Anthea to Patrick Butler's (Head of Health, Society & Education at The Guardian), Brucie and we each read out individual table findings. One of the things that struck me was how positive people are on the proposition of working with the private sector, the general consensus being that as long as we negotiate effectively it is absolutely possible. I have been saying this for years and as a result SEL has had several highly successful commercial relationships with the private sector. I had always thought it was controversial and so was fascinated to see that in that auditorium at least, the attitude was very positive.

We then had speeches from Vince Cable of the Lib Dems and Barbara Follett, Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Communities and Local Government. Vince was really interesting, he had clearly thought the issues through for himself and confessed to us all that until he recently met Margaret Elliott from Sunderland Home Care he didn’t really understand was social enterprise was. Having got to grips with it he feels it has a strong future, particularly in delivering local services. In print recently he un-packed the 'big government vs local government' debate, arguing we need local services delivered to national standards - I think he’s spot on. Barbara said ‘social enterprises express what people really feel’, I liked that.

In the q & a Vince threw my question straight back at me, asking what I think government needs to do to better support social enterprise. I said:

1. Government needs to be a better shopper - buying from organisations which deliver real positive social change

2. Existing capacity building support (which Vince had slightly upbraided in his speech) is vital and needs to be continued and developed.

Caught the train with Patrick and Mark Gould from The Guardian, Gemma Hampson of Social Enterprise Magazine and our Matt Jarratt, where we had a good debate over whether social enterprises really will end up running public services on a large scale. We agreed that they could do rather well if the planets align in our favour. Earlier I had chatted to Sophi Trachell, MD of Divine Chocolate and SEL’s co-Chair, who had been frustrated that The Guardian had chosen Social Enterprise Day to report on the collapse of Total Healthcare. I put this to Patrick who maintained that he had done it to put the debate about the future of public services into context: social enterprise can be a winner but it can lose too. Fair enough I think, when Woollies went down no one said that it marked the end of high street retailing.

We sat around some poor chap who looked like he was trying to work. When we got out at Euston I apologised for disturbing him and he said he had really enjoyed the conversation, gave me his card and said he would welcome a further chat about the social impact I mentioned…. everyone is interested in social enterprise, they just don’t know it yet!

As I finish typing I’m presented with the result of the hairdresser’s endeavours. They say it won’t look like this forever... I feel a gin coming on.

Happy Social Enterprise Day!

Celebrations kicked off last night for SEL when I opened our event with the Philosophy Shop and left a packed room poised to answer the big question, “What is a social enterprise?”. I then went off to the official launch of the Women’s Enterprise Taskforce report “Greater Return on Women’s Enterprise” where we heard from the wonderful Alyson Warhurst, Co- Founder and CEO of Maplecroft, a company first into the market with global risk analysis. She went from working from her bedroom to employing 42 employees and working for leading companies like Nokia, Microsoft, M & S and TNT. She told us about the plight of adolescent girls worldwide, how their lack of education and access to finance means a loss to GDP. How they are more likely to get HIV the closer to roads they lived and how in turn the prevalence of HIV affects corporate supply. All of these factors are part of the risk planning large corporates undertake when looking at expanding their operations worldwide. Alyson lives in a very interesting world, although the vagaries of running a business are similar no matter where you are. She told us how slow corporates are to pay their bills, and how important it is to productise data when everyone wants something for nothing. I found her presentation gripping.

The Taskforce was thanked by Lord Davies, the Business Minister, who committed to making sure the recommendations were enacted by Government, something we are confident of because not only is the UK economy crying out for more women in business but also it was Gordon Brown himself who established the Taskforce in 2006 and gave it the job of advising how to increase the quantity, scalability and success of women’s enterprise. Our co-chairs, Pam Alexander and Glenda Stone, thanked all of us and the colleagues who worked tirelessly with us to produce the work, and then we all exited stage left for a celebratory drink.

I left that reception to have a delightful supper with my friend Baroness Glenys Thorton, Minister in the Whips Office. We talked of all things social enterprise and family and had a good catch up. Sadly on the way home my hybrid car fizzled out and I had to fall back on the services of the AA to get me home, but I didn’t let that diminish my sense of having had a good day. However, I’d still like to know what the answer to the big question was?

Today I am off to No 10 for the Prime Minister’s Reception for Social Entrepreneurs, then to Birmingham to speak at the Guardian’s conference on social enterprise, and finally I hope to swing by this evening to the London Early Years Foundation annual Social Enterprise Day Lecture which is always really thought provoking. Whatever you’re doing today have a great day and spare a thought for all of those working against the rising tide of cynicism to make a better, fairer and greener world.