2012 Victory Parade: A celebration of faith, commitment and funding`

Today, I was at a meeting at the RSA just as Team GB's Victory Parade went by. I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity and so waited for the floats with Jaume Martorell, Network and Communications Manager at the Transition Institute, which is now based at the RSA and is right on the route of the parade. Jaume is from Spain where parades are a common occurrence, I told him that on the whole, we were not a big parading nation and this spectacle was unusual for us reserved Brits.

The atmosphere was very jolly with people smiling, cheering and waving flags. I fell into conversation with an delightful older lady jammed next to me by the crowd. After apologising for getting me in the eye with her flag, she told me how much she had enjoyed every moment of the Olympics and Paralympics, that she had gone to see both and thought they were 'wonderful'. It seems that few have missed out on the spirit of 2012 and, for those of us lucky enough to go to the Games, it has been magical.

My role right from the very beginning of winning the bid had been to work with the Third Sector in the Cabinet Office, then headed up by Ed Miliband, to ensure as many social enterprises as possible were able to contribute to the building, running and legacy of the Games. For social enterprise advocates, our starting point back in 2009 was the vision of the Social Enterprise Square Mile and for us this has turned out to have been a successful Games, with social enterprises like HCT providing transport on the site, Catering to Order supplying food to the construction workers and Clarity the soaps and detergents, both of which provide employment to the visually impaired. At the time, Ed had been really fired up by the Olympics and was extraordinarily supportive, using his influence to persuade key folk like the then mayor, Ken Livingstone, to give me the time to explain why social enterprise was so on message for 2012.

My gold medalist, John Charles, a great social entrepreneur

I thought today, as I watched the Paralympians, about inspiring social entrepreneurs like John Charles the extraordinary CEO of Catering to Order who set up the company after losing his sight at 18. For him, their success would perhaps be less surprising as he knows only too well what those challenged by disability – with the right support, guts and determination – can achieve. Not content with being a profoundly visually impaired, most of John's employees have similar difficulties and yet Catering to Order is commercial all the way. Now that deserves a gold medal.

Truly the greatest show on earth

Our family trip to the Olympic Village was in August when we went to see the men's hockey, something the kids will never forget. Joe, our 16-year-old, was particular thrilled as he is captain of his hockey team and was voted player of the year at the end of last season. It was an extraordinary atmosphere, hard to quite pick up on the TV and the Olympic Park was every bit as impressive and inspiring as you dared hope it might be. During a break in one of the matches, we even bumped into one of Joe's schoolmates, a fellow hockey team player and his family, so incredibly the Games left us feeling connected to our community even though they were evidently global.

As we left the Olympic Village we walked past the Aquatic Centre, which is now being managed by GLL, a great social enterprise that beat all other bidders in a highly competitive process to win this most prestigious 2012 legacy management contract. SEL, in our role as social enterprise ambassadors to the Games, supported its bid and I personally made representation to the legacy committee on its behalf, explaining the advantage of social enterprise in terms of its sustained commitment to local employment, community engagement rather than shareholders. So many victories made possible by vision and commitment.

Today, as the athletes went by, those of us on the pavement shouted our salutations and in turn many of them mouthed thank you to the crowd, including Victoria Pendlelton, Mighty Mo and Lee Pearson, which I thought was touching. They too seemed a little caught off guard by events. It's not in our nature, we Brits, to go over the top about things, but their achievement has given us all something to shout about. It is heartening to witness what can be done when faith and hard work are met with investment, something for us all to take away with and ponder.

Can 2012 deliver the world's first social enterprise square mile?

New Olympic contract wins could start a trend, says SEL's Allison Ogden-Newton

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• Allison Ogden-Newton
• Guardian Professional, Tuesday 10 January 2012 08.00 GMT
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The London Olympics could be good for social enterprises. Olympia/ Photograph: Arne Dedert/EPA

2012 starts with a bang as news breaks that social enterprise, Leisure Trust GLL, has won the landmark contract to manage the London Aquatics Centre and the Multi Use Centre (Handball Arena), whilst the development agency Renaisi, in partnership with Balfour Beatty and charity Groundwork, gets the contract to run the Olympic Park. These bids will deliver jobs and community regeneration and much more through entrepreneurialism that understands the importance of enhancing social value. There is a vision at work here and it is to make good on the promises of the legacy by supporting the most audacious community development any games has ever undertaken through the canny management of the site's assets.

That might sound like hype, but a closer look at the successful tenders show some very clever, ethically-driven plans to create jobs; giving local people a real stake in the facilities the games leave behind.

I spoke to Rob Pearce, Director at Renaisi, who told me that "We argued strongly that you will only get a great park if you create and involve successful neighbors and unless you create a specific mechanism, like a social enterprise, with that purpose in mind a park that inspires would be hard to achieve."

The community interest company "Our Parklife" that got the green light from the Olympic Park Legacy Company brings together co-curators Balfour Beatty, Renaisi and Groundwork. It will guarantee that jobs are created for local people and will ensure that a minimum of 50% of the supply chain contracts go to local small and medium-sized enterprises. It sets a clear vision for local integration and, like the GLL bid, creates a framework for a sustainable park where local communities will see real benefits.

GLL is another success story, and this latest landmark contract will mean a great deal to others in the social enterprise world given their strong social enterprise supply chain. Mark Sesnan, GLL's managing director told me they will "make a real difference", by working with other social enterprises. For example, GLL plan to work closely with transport specialists Hackney Community Transport (HCT), as well as London Recycling Network who have developed innovative recycling in East London and local social housing agencies. This will ensure that GLL's success supports other community based partners for a socially sustainable future.

HCT has been providing transport on the Olympic site for the last four years and its managing director Dai Powell told me he was delighted with today's news, adding: "When you look at the confidence public bodies and the public themselves are showing in social enterprises you realise that now is our time."

These latest contracts and other proposals, such as Business In The Communities plans to turn the 2012 Olympics Media Centre into a social enterprise business hub, all add up to the possibility of the world's first social enterprise square mile, set in London's Olympic park, post 2012.

I am sure the OPLC wants to make sure we don't get a games like Atlanta in 1996, where jobs failed to materialize, or Sydney in 2000 where the Olympic Park, set 18 miles outside the city, couldn't inspire a community to grow up around it and remains isolated and in a state of decline. Or, worse yet, Athens: where a failure to plan for any legacy missed every trick in the book with many of the facilities mothballed and jobs nowhere to be found.

It is fortunate that the 2012 games are set in the city that is acknowledged worldwide as the lead for social enterprise development. By choosing to back social enterprises based in London which innovate in regeneration, environmentalism and social impact, the OPLC has invested in a vision where a great games is just the starting gun ahead of the main event: a sustainable community where everyone is a winner.

Allison Ogden-Newton is chief executive of Social Enterprise London.

If money is too tight to mention, what can we talk about?

Necessity, as we know, is the mother of invention. Talking in recent weeks to London's local authority chief executives about their challenge to slash costs and mitigate the impact on service users and staff, I ask, can you do that and improve services?

It is unfortunate but perhaps inevitable that the greatest opportunity to innovate public services since their inception, comes when money's too tight to mention. As one local authority chief recently told me: "It's like trying to surf a tsunami, if we can hold on we might make it, but if we lose control, we'll go under." So is this really a good time to talk about social enterprise? Or would that make me the air stewardess trying to flog perfume during the emergency landing?

To put my view in context, I believe that inefficiencies are created when the government acts as buyer, seller and quality controller of services. It invariably gives the thumbs up to its own standards, errs on the side of generosity in setting prices and ends up paying more than it should. Into this Trinitarian formula we need at least one or two independent players. This does not devolve responsibility for provision from government, but it does allow them to design, purchase and assess services very differently.

Everywhere government is looking to save money by cutting and outsourcing, but before we scramble for the exits, can I offer the attractive alternative to privatisation? Social enterprise. Prioritising employee led services clearly run for the 'profit' of service users, not shareholders, reduces cost. These companies can put a value on staff by-in through such things as absenteeism, which is lower in social enterprise than the private and certainly public sectors. Greater efficiency de facto drives down cost and can improve quality.

Existing social entrepreneurs, like veterans, represent a real asset in these trying times. Mark Sesnan, managing director of GLL, and recent Government Pathfinder appointee, told me: "It feels like the 1980s when councils had to make big cuts, closing services everywhere, but we know now what we didn't know then, that there is an alternative in social enterprise."

It makes sense to work with and build on models like GLL which could collaborate on other forms of service delivery. After all, if leisure services can be successfully delivered the social enterprise way, why not libraries, or schools or children's services?

Social Enterprise London's recent publication Transitions, distributed across the public sector, and mentioned on Stephen Bubb's blogg this week, illustrates how services delivered by social enterprises have saved money, improved standards and achieved additional social impact. For example 'profit' in GLL, the UK's largest leisure social enterprise has been used to provide training for hundreds of long term unemployed young people. HCT bus services has similarly created local jobs and even a harm reduction bus that supports drug user rehabilitation. Ironically by making this about people not money, costs can be cut.

Conversely when private companies deliver state sponsored services they might or might not do a good job but they will always maximise profit, shareholders will be prioritised over service improvement or staff working conditions, and risk alongside responsibility will be upwards managed back to the state, a process reflected in the cost.

But what really matters is not the governance model but social impact and sustainability of the new provider. They will need governance that enables them to structure their finances so that they can deliver services that are paid for by results or have come through personal budgets, because these will be the new forms of payment. They will need to attract and retain the best staff and borrow because, even with a three or five year contract, they will have to expand to compete and survive. But it is possible to do all that and offer staff a stake in the business as Sunderland Homecare Associates does, or involve users in service design like Your Healthcare in Kingston, in effect, be social enterprises.

There are difficulties, however. The central message of big society, that people can do things for themselves, seems to have left public service providers to work out, on their own, what it means for them. Investment in sharing best practice has been cut alongside everything else, leading to reactive decision-making and lost opportunity.

So how can we shape the amorphous message of big society into a step-by-step transition where social enterprise emerges as the new service provider of choice? As Annie Francis of Independent Midwives UK says: "Government must introduce smarter, faster and more effective business support and encourage public services to genuinely engage with the [social enterprise] sector".

I urge the widespread distribution of Transitions and take up of its recommendation to work with local social entrepreneurs to establish champions and spread the word. With leadership that encourages people to chase savings alongside social impact I believe we can have a happy landing, even if it's been a bloody bumpy ride.

Published article in this weeks Guardian Public online

Having a bad speech day

I went to the Guardian Social Enterprise Conference today which was really good, except I was speaking and was not so good. Classic school girl error, I wanted to convey a complex argument for the ways in which social enterprises need to be flexible in order to shape up to public service delivery, I used fun (?!) slides that in themselves required a little context, and I had a rigorous 5 minutes to do it and so inevitably ran out of time. Muppet. I am particularly disappointed because as the only woman speaking in any of the plenaries or key notes I wanted to give the boys a run for their money. Sorry girls next time I promise to do better. At least the podcast I did with Rodney Schwartz of Clearly So and Gordon d'Silva of Training for Life, with a contribution from Dia Powell at HCT, all SEL members, went well. We had a good rapport and I think got on to some chewy issues quite quickly which between us we were able to deal with. The difference of opinion gave issues a degree of balance.

Someone who had more to say was Secretary of State, Andrew Lansley who announced a new wave of Right to Request in the department of health, I cheered for those spinning out and those who want to and in particular our friends at Local Partnerships helping them to do so. He also threw in there was to be a new £4.5 million in the DoH's fund to enable social enterprise, investment that is as rare as hen's teeth these days. He told of a potential £1 billion of contracts open to social enterprises and to me seemed very well briefed and committed to the idea of social enterprise delivering health services.

The dishy Nick Hurd also spoke and gave a sensitive speech about there being very little anyone could disagree with in the concept of social enterprise and to see growth he recognised the need for increased investment and engagement with intermediaries. In fact he talked of the Big Society Bank only dealing with intermediaries which was clever I thought. I look forward to seeing how that pans out. I asked him a question I wanted to ask when I saw him at the excellent Good Deals conference the day before, which was wether he saw the social investment market being able to invest in public sector spin offs. I was thinking of the local authorities we are working with and wondering if they would be looking to social investment bankers or the high street? He thought they would be able to invest but perhaps it would be mixed. I agree but the people we are working with will need their money very soon and I'm not sure what and indeed how much will be available to them from social business, nor sadly how social enterprise friendly our friends for the high street will be feeling. We shall see.

SEL's lovely Michelle Richmond was brilliant in one of the breakouts on social impact, I was very proud; Ali Wilson of the School of Social Entrepreneurs was wonderfully phlegmatic when he asked us to spare a thought for the poor old entrepreneur who would need support and company on their difficult journey from grant or zero income to sustainability. In fact come to think of it there was a general dissing of grants which I think is sad. So many very good social enterprises start that way, like SEL member Colin Crooks at Greenworks who started with a grant only to become a profitable multi million pound business, recycling office furniture, providing employment to ex-offenders and getting nothing from from the state to do it. A process that took time.

One of things we struggle with in our world is celebrating one form of entrepreneurialism without criticising others.

There were lots of other great contributions too, and at both conferences it was good to talk to members and colleagues about what they're up to. All in all, and despite getting no signal to tweet and fluffing my speech, it was a good day.