Making the transition to social enterprise. A 'guru's' perspective

See below for this morning's piece in Guardian Public - my take on the future of social enterprise 'in-sourcing'  - and my first outing as a 'guru'!?

Social enterprise guru Allison Ogden-Newton speaking at this year's Public Services Summit

Following the coalition government's decision to cut spending and support social enterprise, I have been talking to a lot of public sector leaders lately. Those that have contacted me want to discuss how social enterprise can help them turn a fiscal crisis into opportunity by building new services that maximise community engagement.

What they don't want to talk about is how the existing third sector or community sector or "Big Society" family, however you prefer to term us, can deliver more public sector contracts.
I'm thrilled that so many are now seeing the potential of the employee, community ownership, mutual and cooperative models encompassed in the term social enterprise, to deliver a whole new world of public services.

It is clear to me that social enterprise is about to get a great deal bigger with more public servants than ever joining in. It is equally clear, that the opportunities for existing social enterprises, particularly those operating at the voluntary sector end are grim.
If you look at this from the point of view of the harassed local authority leader or chief executive, they have upwards of 25% to take off their bottom line, and they have to cut to do it. For them the only option is to enable staff to create workable business models that deliver existing services more cost effectively. What is not helpful are third parties that want to be alternative providers, although there are opportunities for proven social enterprises that offer jobs for existing staff, cost savings and genuine community engagement.
As a strategic body the challenge for us is to work with local authorities, public health bodies and central government to create this new generation of deliverers where former workers can increase their job satisfaction.
In my discussions it is clear that it is the public service ethic that is driving people's interest in social enterprise as well as the fiscal crisis. Workers want more creative control over service delivery and they have ideas about building enhanced relationships with service users. In some ways it's far more appropriate to think of this as in-sourcing, as opposed to out-sourcing, and remember that this only works if it is approached positively and creatively.
Social Enterprise London has published Transitions, an introductory guide for public sector staff anywhere, on how they can go about establishing a social enterprise out of their existing service, with their existing colleagues. We have produced it in collaboration with London Councils, Capital Ambition and leading social enterprise leisure trust, GLL.
The guide is for local authorities who want to support staff to consider whether social enterprise might be right for any services which could include parks, children's nurseries, transport, libraries and back office functions like finance and IT. It is an exciting process and one that I hope inspires new recruits to the idea.
My only sorrow is that it is definitely preaching to the unconverted and there is little here for the choir.

2012, it isn't all just Games

Elegantly hosted by the Guardian newspaper, SEL held a roundtable on 2012 this morning.  Jane Dudman, Editor of Guardian Public was our Chair and kept everyone in line, drawing out the discussion as only a journalist can. Lord Wei kicked us off with some thought provoking comments about Big Society and how 2012 was a unique showcase for social action, and then we got stuck in.


You can read all about it in a feature to be published by the Guardian soon, together with pictures. As we spoke we had our pictures taken, which I have to say makes me quite self conscious. I suddenly became very aware of just how much I wave my hands about when I speak. You will also see that I wore large hoops in my ears, as it was the Olympics.  I point that out in case you miss the reference, it's very subtle.

Some real eye openers for me were comments made from senior colleges about just how much Government prefers to commission the private sector, seeing social enterprise as a risk, and how even some of the biggest firms in the UK, CISCO and GE Corporate represented at the meeting by their senior directors, find Government procurement almost prohibitive.

On a more upbeat note I was delighted to hear from GLL Managing Director and SEL Co-Chair, Mark Sesnan that GLL now employed over 5000 people and has a turnover of nearly £100 million. That settled a late night argument I had with a colleague in Korea, who maintained you could never have a social enterprise topping a £100 million turnover in a developed country. It seems I was right, because it turns out that you can.

I thought contributions from CISCO were particularly erudite, Neil Crockett their Managing Director for the Public Sector gave us both some great challenges and opportunities and I look forward to talking to him soon about how CISCO can work with social enterprise to achieve their extremely ambitious goals for social impact.

Lord Andrew Mawson famous for his work at Bromley by Bow, John Charles of Catering to Order and a successful 2012 contractor like Dai Powell, Managing Director of HCT, all battled on behalf of social enterprise delivering Olympic contracts and Legacy. They argued that we can build jobs and ensure local investment that will transform the East End. This was reiterated by Sophie Tranchell, Managing Director of Divine Chocolate and SEL co-Chair who made the last point which was that surely if we wanted to keep investment in London then companies that had a commitment to reinvest their profit into their social mission were an effective way of achieving just that.

I threw in my lines about Government being a notoriously bad shopper and that we should build the Social Enterprise Square Mile on the 2012 site (a brilliant idea from our friends at Calverts) and that having just returned from Seoul, a city which is still showing all the signs of being an Olympic venue, I have an immediate sense that there is a lot at stake.

We have all had an eye on the World Cup, and even if you didn’t care much for the football, the social commentary about how it has raised the economic well being, vision and pride of an already fiercely proud country is a lesson we should learn very quickly. It isn’t about the fireworks, fancy stadia and ceremonial flourishes, it’s about the people.

The world over, people are the same, they all want to be inspired by bravery, generosity and vision and Brits can do that in spades. It struck me this morning that Korea is a country hungry to learn from the UK experience of social enterprise and replicate it post games, they even expressed to me their regret that they had not discovered social enterprise before hand, and here we were with little time left to plan, but still with the games ahead and not behind us. Those in the driving seat, encouraged by us all, have an historical opportunity to embed social enterprise in our Games and their Legacy and show how Government and private investment in a very public affair can deliver excellence and world class social transformation.

SEL, with we hope, LOCOG, will be launching its vision for the Games, Legacy and social enterprise very soon, and lets hope there is still time to make this not only the best Games ever, but also the most inspiring.

A time of change: social and political

On Monday I wrote a piece which appeared in Guardian Public. Here it is:

"Having stayed up all night on Thursday to watch events unfold, twittering and blogging for Britain, I was rewarded by a result that feels absolutely right.

As the power struggle continues the electorate has spoken. Seat by seat, voters carefully picked through the spin and returned, for the most part, those whose offer rang true. I cheered as Brighton gave us our first Green MP, Caroline Lucas. She's just one woman, but when numbers are tight, her voice will be loud.

My MP is now Zac Goldsmith, who promises us green conservatism. Go on then Zac, show us how it's done, and while you're about it, talk to our local parent consortia, Social Enterprise London member Parent Promoted Foundation, which is trying to sort out schooling in Sheen.

Pundits tell us that democracy has been lost in this process. Certainly the debacle many experienced trying to cast their vote was a travesty, but are the results really so bad? I happen to think that they are full of glittering potential. The leaders spent the campaign telling us we would have to take our medicine for a crisis that remember, was not of our making. On Friday morning they led by example, and took theirs. I think it was cod liver oil all round.

Like elephants, the electorate remembered. Those who had got their hands caught in the cookie jar, or who had been a bit too "cheeky" were given an opportunity to spend more time with their families.

It turns out no one was keen on the promise of cuts when the lowest paid always end up the biggest losers. Those candidates who worked hard at local level on platforms of environmental sustainability and social justice met with greater success than ever before. For the social enterprise movement, which is founded on these things, this felt like change.

A powerful role to play

The 2,100 social enterprises I represent deliver social change through business. Our message is simple; you can do a lot of good by demanding social action with a business model that stacks up. As John Charles, chief executive of Catering2Order, a Lewisham-based corporate catering social enterprise that employs blind and visually impaired people, said to me on Friday morning: "Social enterprise delivers something new and exciting. This result shows that Britain is ready for change and I believe social enterprise will have a powerful role to play."

Getting to grips with economic recovery and improved public services through community engagement is our unique proposition. Sophie Tranchell, chief executive of Divine Chocolate, like me was optimistic. She says the parties are aware that in tackling our financial crisis social enterprise is part of the solution.

The principles of mutual ownership and community-led enterprise, fair investment and true sustainability are now part of conversations everyone is having. When I met Philip Blond, the so-called red Tory last week, we were certainly on the same page.

At this election we reminded politicians that franchise is a social contract. We want change and we want what is fair."

Click here to read the original piece.

More or less of the heroics?

The Tory Summit organised by Acevo on Thursday was great. We had an impressive procession of shadow ministers over the course of the day including George Osborne, Francis Maude, Oliver Letwin and Nick Hurd. They each highlighted different areas of consuming interest to us in the third sector, particularly around procurement, payment by results, right to request and social impact measurement and reporting. I didn’t agree with everything said but I did manage to blog most of it as it was happening.

Getting important public statements out onto a public platform in real time felt new and exciting, even if my right hand did ache with the frenetic typing. I was therefore chuffed when my efforts were described as 'heroic' in the Guardian blog the next day.

In the session I participated in I was asked to comment on social impact measurement which I hope I did coherently. It’s such a complex field to deliver in sound bites, and I think Phillip Hammond got the wrong end of the stick when he came back on my point, with a sense that what social enterprises need are two forms of contract, one for the things they make and sell (their economic return) and another for the jobs, training and opportunities they create (their social impact). No Phillip, two forms of procurement? I don’t think so. What is required are effective and clear social impact clauses in all contracts. Perhaps they should all come to a SEL event on same to bottom out the principles?

Still I thought it went well. They seemed keen, and more to the point they seemed organised and briefed which makes for altogether a better conversation.

Since then I have had some really interesting discussions with Asheem Singh, Deputy Director at ResPublica, Phillip Blond's think tank about new horizons for social enterprise. We both agreed that education will be the brave new frontier and that the SEL conference on education is well timed. The event should be a real groundbreaker. It’s on April 15th at RBS Headquarters on Bishopsgate. Speakers include Sir Michael Wilshaw the remarkable head of one of the UK’s leading schools, Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, and Paul Mason, who runs the Parent Promoted Foundation. If social enterprise in the education context is on your agenda then do come along. Tickets are available through the SEL website in the usual way. Or you can email me direct.

I should apologise for my unusual quietness on the blog front. I have been spending all my spare minutes painting my house. I started in the hall, but it’s turning out a bit like the Forth Bridge: each freshly painted room makes the one next to it look rather shabby. I will put up some more before and after shots when I have a moment. Now that piece of work is turning out to be heroic. I just hope I can get the house back to some kind of order before I head off to Tokyo on Friday to talk to a symposium about social enterprise.

I must sign off, I’m due at the House of Commons to meet with Vince Cable in 30 minutes. I am looking forward to it. He was so lovely when we shared a podium in November and seemed to have a real interest in social enterprise, not least because, as he explained, his son is a social entrepreneur.

Making friends in Merton

Today I chaired a social enterprise event in Merton. I really enjoyed it as the group the council had brought together were really on the ball. We had old hands like Nick Temple from the School for Social Entrepreneurs and some fresh faces from Merton based social enterprises like the inspiring Annys Darkwa from Vision Housing which works with newly released ex-offenders to find suitable, sustainable housing. The purpose of the meeting was to give the council a steer on taking their plan for social enterprise development on to the next level. James McGinlay, Head of Sustainable Communities at Merton Council opened the session and laid out his commitment to making Merton a place where social enterprise is making real impact. I was listening intently as SEL are about to publish a route map for local authorities to engage with social enterprise and achieve maximum return on investment.

As I keep saying, if you mean to do something then you are more likely to do just that. By the same vein, if Councils set about to grow social enterprise, they'll do it.

Much of what was said this aternoon underlined the 4 key pillars in the route map. These pillars are firstly to extend the right to request to all public services. This would encourage and enable public employees and community activists to spin off a given service, out of direct public management, whilst improving it. Secondly we are arguing for local and central government  to invest in developing a culture of entrepreneurship within communities through existing networks. My plea to all government is not to establish new support bodies but work through existing ones with a proven track record. Thirdly social enterprise creates jobs, it should therefore be a priority within every economic development strategy. Lastly procurement and commissioning guidelines should include social clauses, these will ensure the public sector gets the most from social enterprise and they in turn will have ample opportunity to demonstrate their social impact. With social clauses local authorities can get more bang for the buck.

All of these themes came up spontaneously  in the discussion today, which makes me think we are on the right track.

Finally I came home to two children that needed seperate costumes for their respective school plays tomorrow. Once again I seemed to have missed the memos. Sam needs to be a sort of Ali Baba character and Katie a punk rocker. After a lot of running around the house I think we have pulled something together. They both seem pleased.

Katie does counter culture

I am now going to sit down quietly avec a gin and read today's Guardian in which I alongside some of my friends in social enterprise are featured. Its all good stuff, a four page special on social enterprise put together by the lovely Patrick Butler. The timing is perfect, because now is exactly when we need to be asking ourselves the tough questions Patrick poses, namely where do we want to go and how do we plan to get there?

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.