Looking back with pride at 2011

Magic Breakfast working to feed London"s hungry kids wins the Big Society Award in 2011 

Looking back on an extraordinary year I can hardly believe that our small organisation could have achieved so much and made such a difference! That is, of course, down to our members, networks, clients, supporters, co-chairs Mark Sesnan and Sophi Tranchell and board, all of whom enabled the fantastic SEL team to really pick up the pace for social enterprise in 2011.

The year started for us by hosting the world’s largest 2012 Olympic social enterprise conference at the London Film Museum where hundreds of delegates met to discuss and plan a successful games that will establish a worthwhile and long-lasting legacy for the wider community.

SEL also held a conference, put together by our own local government expert Mei Hui, especially for London’s local authorities with the support of London Councils. This was the 5^th LAConnects conference and the most successful yet. Bringing together representatives of all 32 boroughs and the City, we took a good hard look at their social enterprise strategies and ways in which boroughs could do more with social enterprise. This was an important conversation to have, especially in such difficult economic times because social enterprises are working with some of society's most vulnerable citizens who are always the hardest hit by economic decline.

A big breakthrough came in 2011 with another seminal partnership, this time with NESTA, the leading innovation agency, with which we worked to established the ground-breaking Transition Institute. The organisation, led by Director and policy supremo Dominic Potter and supported by the dedicated Jillian Oxenham, gained its full institute status from the government - no mean feat, because it provides a unique and vital platform for the discussion and promotion of public sector reform that maximises social value.

I am privileged to Chair the Institute, which has as its board members luminaries like Sir Stephen Bubb, Lord Micheal Bichard, Ed Mayo, Philip Colligan, Sue Bruce, Helen Bailey, Andrew Burnell, Sophia Looney, Mark Sesnan and Ben Lucas.

The Institute has attracted real media attention and as a result been contacted by an ever-growing number of public sector workers looking for information and support in the pursuit of their plans for a new approach to service delivery.

Launching its first publication in 2011, Social Value Ethos the Instutute offers strategic support to the Public Services (Social Value) Bill which, thanks to Chris White MP and Minister Nick Hurd’s tenacious campaigning, has made it to the House of Lords. We hope it gets through and is passed in 2012.

Our international work continued to be a significant part of the 2011 story with SEL consultants working in Croatia, South Korea and Copenhagen led by our chief boffin, Director of Policy and Research, Sabina Khan who has also started a series of tele-events for the Chinese government with partners, the British Council.

SEL’s work with local authorities continued to blossom and, over the year, we trained over 400 local authority officers in how they might approach becoming independent service deliverers. Building on their challenges and experiences and those of the 10 local authorities we worked through our consultancy team, we published Spin Out and Deliver from the Guardian as part of our Social Enterprise Day celebrations, which has since been downloaded from the SEL site many thousands of times.

We also continued to work with the Department of Health researching the challenges faced by health sector spin-out services through our research hub and consultancy. 

Our links with the corporate world also defined 2011 in that we delivered eight oversubscribed events for social entrepreneurs sponsored by our partners KPMG and PwC. These events have become astonishingly popular and offer real evidence of the way in which the larger City-based firms have valuable expertise to offer social enterprises that our members, in turn, are delighted to benefit from. 

Thanks to our Membership Team, Emma Hodson and Clare Sharpen, the SEL family has risen in number steadily all year and means that despite the battles we have fought and, I have to say, not always won for social enterprise, we are clearly doing something right. Offering programmes like ERDF Winning Contracts headed up by our own powerhouse Sue Potter, we know has really helped members. This programme saw us train over 580 social enterprises in improving their performance in securing and delivering quality public sector contracts. Independent assessment showed that our training resulted in over £4 million of new business being won by clients who specified the training they had from SEL was key to their subsequent success. 

I was a judge for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the Guardian Public Sector, the Third Sector and Social Enterprise Photography awards all in 2011. These competitions might not change the world but they give us an unparalleled opportunity to make sure that social enterprises like Livity in Brixton and the Acton African Well Woman Centre get the recognition they deserve.

Our membership goes from strength to strength and is about to top 3,000, which is fantastic and makes us the largest social enterprise community in Europe. It seems that as things get tougher, social enterprises are looking for more information and support and SEL is the obvious go-to choice. 

Having the design and techno wizard, Surbhi Bahl sorting out our front end has, I hope you agree, made a real difference to the impact and clarity of our message. Surbhi has made sure that the success of members like Magic Breakfast, which joined SEL members GLL and Central Surrey Health when they bagged a Big Society Award in 2011, was shared by the whole network and SEL’s now significant global audience. 

Astonishingly 2011 saw SEL get our members covered in at least 43 pieces of national media and countless more sector-specific and local media sources. We also continued to do well in the world of social media with a combined (SEL, Transition Institute and aogdennewton) Twitter following of over 6,000 and consistently high Google ratings. If you search social enterprise from anywhere in the world, SEL will not be far from the top of any search engines suggested links.

But what is my highlight of 2011? It has to be the successful conclusion of our London Future 500 programme in which we got 500 young people jobs in social enterprise, 69% of whom are no longer on benefits.

Social enterprise is all about making a difference, and that certainly is making a very big difference indeed.

I wish you all the very best for the holidays and a prosperous 2012, whatever it brings SEL will be there working tirelessly and creatively for you,

All the very best

Allison

The closure of RISE

From the RISE website

Like everyone I have been shocked by the announcement of the closure of RISE, the body in the SouthWest set up to support the development of social enterprise. This is a devastating loss. I haven't had a chance to talk to their ceo, my friend Lucy Findlay, who understandably is rather preoccupied, so I don't have all the relevant information, but I do know a thing or two about the challenges facing social enterprise support and it is time we all faced facts.

This Government has not prioritised the support of social enterprise business development in anything other than finance, by which I mean the actual money not help with working out if you need it or what you could do with it. So whilst money could be argued as the most important element of business growth I would also argue that for the majority of our members, making the most of the kind of finance that is on offer is not something they feel they can do at present, for now they want basic business advice, the support of their peers and access to the wider social enterprise community, and they have no money. In short they need what is referred to in our world as finance readiness, something SEL has been offering for 15 years and RISE for nearly as long. It is interesting to note that where social enterprise development agencies have been longest that is where the density of social enterprises is at its greatest. Chicken or egg?

I know its not fashionable to say this, but is grant funding for social enterprises or their development really so terrible? I see no contradiction between social enterprise agencies making money through trading to deliver social impact and being in receipt of grant, nor have I ever thought support bodies must be self sustaining through fees to be legitimate. Social enterprise creates wealth in the most deprived communities and their social impact often provides the Government with a healthy return on its investment which must be worth making, no? The idea that such things as research and policy development for instance can be supported through income generation is simply not practical in my view. The RDA's have gone, and in London so has the Government Office and the majority of London Councils grant money as well, we have said goodbye to the wonderful Future Jobs Fund, and since the introduction of the Work Programme, work creation projects for most smaller providers have mostly gone too. All of this can be multiplied when you also add the European funding that can not be drawn down due the absence of matched funding. In short the cuts have been eye watering. 

SEL will survive, but not because we are better than RISE, nor because our members are more prolific or loyal than RISE members. No, we will survive because we have long since worked on adaptive relationships with clients through our consultancy, welcomed collaboration from private companies who sponsor our work in exchange for commercial access to our members, and have re shaped the organisation to offer only that which can be bought and paid for. The result is we are much smaller, you may have noticed, we do a lot less policy, but I like to think we are still perfectly formed.

I mourn the loss of RISE, I wish I had been able to do something to prevent it from falling over. I know some of its staff and have always been impressed by the quality, creativity and commitment of their approach, I am very sorry that social enterprise will lose that expertise. RISE was the best of us and it will be missed, especially by me. I can only hope that this will make those remaining work harder to support one another so that social enterprises get infrastructure that delivers growth, and we can be confident in saying we can not do that alone.

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.