Happy New Year! 2011 is going to be a wee bugger

New Year finds me clear headed in Cornwall. Last night we were invited by my friend Emily Scott to her fabulous restaurant, The Harbour, in Port Isaac. Emily is a stunning chef and last night she really treated us. We had red onion jam and goats cheese tartlets, locally caught crab in a light salad, monkfish in pancetta with lemon mash and pannacotta and raspberries followd by chocolate truffles, yum! The village gathered outside the restaurant which is at the head of the slipway for some super fireworks and a male (nude) swimmming race across the harbour which the health and safety police have not been able to put a stop to, yet. This morning I have awoken to views of the surrounding countryside, including an unbelievably large cow.

Scanning Twitter I see many are posting their predictions for 2011, whilst I'm tempted to join in, I think it will be a bugger of a year with much rear guard action and can only advise we keep our spirits and left hook up, and not pull our punches as my dear old Dad used to say.

I was over the moon yesterday when the announcement came that my friend Stephen Bubb, ceo of acevo, was to be made Sir Stephen. As Vice Chair of acevo I have had the chance to work closely with Stephen who is a very rare bird indeed. Whilst he cultivates a persona based on hedonism he is, in fact, like a swan, frantically paddling under the water to promote and these days, preserve all that is best in the third sector. I have always admired his approach which, if you are a fan or irony, which I am, is self deprecating. In any event, Stephen is bloody effective and a good laugh, so well done to you dear and the team at acevo who, like my SEL lovelies, work like stink for the sector!

Other honours included OBE's for SEL board member Gordon D'Silva, founder and leading light behind the ground breaking Training for Life, and Steve Wyler, Director at our old friends the Development Trust Association. It will be organisations like Training for Life, the DTA and Community Links, featured in a shattering article by Patrick Butler in last weeks Guardian, that will be picking up the pieces of the cuts. I could not believe my eyes when I read the piece, much of it in the words of David Robinson, one of the most respected leaders of community work anywhere in the world. He told us that this beacon of good practice, much needed in such trying times, was itself facing closure. That can only mean one thing, no institution, group or icon is above the waterline.

So, when the going gets tough the tough get going? Well yes, but many of us don't work for the tough, we represent society's least heard, least valued and most vulnerable, so that isn't terribly helpful. We shall all need this break, like boxers we have gone to our corners for some refreshment, and when the bell sounds we will have to come out fighting!

Family, friends and other animals

My Mother rang this morning with sad news. A very close member of the family, my Father's life long friend, John Hughes, died last night. John and his family were always a part of our lives and both he and his friendship with Dad were legendary. They were both characters that lived life to the full. John was the local vet, my dad the GP and their kindly ministries just about covered the needs of the village. When I was about Katie’s age, I remember them staying up all night to attend to my guinea pigs that had been attacked by the neighbour’s dog. This was, of course, the perfect excuse for them to drink all night, but when I awoke in the morning to news of Posy’s death (Rosie made it), having them both there made all the difference. Funnily enough I was thinking about John last night whilst listening to my friend Stephen Bubb, of acevo and Martin Brookes of New Pilanthropy Capital, slugging it out on Radio 4. Martin reckoned people should make moral judgements about how they give their money with children taking precedence, over say, ballet. Stephen talked of his 98 year old Auntie, fond of giving to animal charities, who would take a very dim view of being lectured to do otherwise. I thought of Val, John’s lovely wife who died 4 years ago and who requested that instead of flowers we all gave to her favourite donkey sanctuary. John and Val really loved animals, living in a veritable Noah’s Ark for most of their lives. Each to their own ehh?

The dreary thing about age is the accumulation of goodbye’s in contrast to the diminishing hello's. This process is supposed to make us wiser and kinder but it doesn’t alway work. Listening to people talk of the Big Society or the Good Society, I think of my upbringing. My father, Dr Bill Ogden dedicated his whole life to public service. As a GP he was not brilliantly well paid and worked extraordinarily long hours, doing night duty for the majority of his 50 year career. He was still doing visits on the day he died, aged 76. The services he provided included over 1000 homebirths, helping those less able to keep up with their paper work so that they could maintain independent lives, performing minor operations at the local cottage hospital and always, always taking responsibility. In retirement he moved to an urban London practice to teach, which he loved, but he did not agree with the increasingly risk averse culture that saw GP’s referring minor ops, like ingrown toenails, and felt that the move away from GP home visits increased the distance between doctor and patient.

I wonder what Dad would make of social enterprise in health care? I think he would like it as he preferred models that prioritised responsibility and enabled medical practitioners to make real connections to patients. Today we have a really good piece in Social Enterprise with Francis Maude Minister to the Cabinet Office visiting Central Surrey Health. They are a great social enterprise who have innovated health care and offer a cost effective service. Francis is quoted as saying he wants to see the majority of health services delivered in that way in 10 to 15 years time and if the Government can support the transition so that neither patients nor staff lose out, (pensions, commissioning etc) I think he may get his wish.

Our latest contribution to this debate is Transitions, which as Third Sector reports this week is flying out the door with over 4000 going out and agencies like the National Audit Office loading it up to their data base. I am off now to meet yet another local authority CEO, my 3rd this week, to look at Transitions and see where they can use it within the council strategy to meet the demands of austerity and outsourcing. Some think we are advocating privatisation and I am quite clear that we are not. At present local authorities have two stark choices, cut and kill or privatise. The social enterprise lobby are offering a third possibility, that of outsourcing to a staff led/owned entity that maximises social value, looks and feels like a public service but offers value for money and a significant degree of mutual independence. I think of Dad, pouring John a scotch just about now, and I think he’d approve.

If I had a hammer

As the heavens open, again, I think of Noah, the patron saint of forward planners. Even without Mr Fish, those of us working with Government can read the signs.  Only strong swimmers need apply.

So if you can hear the sounds of busy hammers its the strategists determined to keep their head above water by building vehicles fit for the new era. Anyone labouring under the misapprehension that the status quo will prevail should check their water wings for holes, cos they're gonna need 'em.

I do think a lot of wonderful social enterprises will go. Those too small to respond to the meta programs the Government are constructing, and too bespoke to fit into the new o/s era. I don't know about you but I have never looked good in o/s, and an o/s society seems counterintuitive to Big Society to me.

But it is possible for some to construct a mighty ark. I had a meeting with the fantastic Sue Slipman yesterday, Director of the Foundation Trust Network, and she has some top tips on boxing and coxing for success. Sue and I had a really good explorative talk about her model and what makes it so perfect for the times. Sue helped develop my thinking on hybridisation and its profound relevance for social enterprise. As I said to Sue, and to anyone who will listen, the strength of social enterprise is in its ability to maximise social value in any commercial transaction. For me Foundation Hospitals are not only social enterprises but bloody good examples of it. What we need are more of the same and there is a high probability that if we are clear in our thinking and articulate in our approach we will have the opportunity to strut our stuff.

I had lunch on Monday with Stephen Bubb ceo of acevo the wonderful organisation I have the privelidge to be Vice Chair of. I was horribly late because getting around London can be a joke, which upset both of us. Stephen and I really enjoy one another's company. Stephen is the consumate advocate who does not take himself seriously, which is precisely why he has been spoofed, and why he is very good company. Oh we do have a laugh, although we got quickly to the very serious business of working out how to offer direction to our movement when all but the rhetoric seems disasterous for small, local community based groups. As Stephen has said in his blog, the Ministerial visits are sure to dry up with the funding.

Yesterday I was met by Giles Wilkes, Vince Cable's Special Adviser, to talk about the plight of the social enterprise regional support bodies. Giles confirmed what I suspected, which is that in closing the RDAs there was no intention to deconstruct the social enterprise support infrastructure. Giles could not of course make any undertaking but did say he would make enquiries and see how the land lay. Sitting in BIS for what must be the hundreth time I was struck at actually how many times I have had that conversation. In one form or another I have explained to at least four Secretary's of State, a dozen Ministers and a bus load of officials how our fledgling movement has grown sometimes in spite of Government "support". We have survived to date because we are clever and able and we have members who respect and need us. But we could have done more with a leg up from BIS and if they want unprecidented social enterprise growth in the public sector, we of the supra local networks, would be a very good place to start.

Maybe its time to see a fully fledged return of social enterprise to BIS?

Going for Global

I had a wonderful chat today with Paul Martin, former Prime Minister of Canada. We met when we shared a platform at the Guardian Public Services Platform earlier on in the year. Paul is probably one of the world’s most high profile advocates of social enterprise, and of course on everyone’s lips at the moment. As a tough finance minister before he became prime minister from 2004 Paul is widely credited with eliminating the Canadian C$42bn (£22bn) deficit in just four years. So his formula for addressing national borrowing as well as his support of social enterprise makes him very much the man to talk to.

We chatted about lots of things. I wanted to share with him the work we're doing developing social enterprise, as his opinion is one that matters. I was delighted when he gave us his wholehearted support. He was interested in the work I have been doing recently in Korea and Japan and also Vietnam. Paul is a figure on the world stage and more capable than most of us in making connections that can really make a very big difference. As I have said many times, social enterprise is a Global movement and we have a real role in learning and sharing with the rest of the world that is using social enterprise.

I do have interesting days. To contrast with that phone conversation and the meeting I am about to have in Westminster, my day started at 7.30am worming one of our family pet rabbits, Bubbles, known fondly as Bubbs for short (one for Robin Bogg?). I then had a really interesting meeting with Ernst and Young’s Head of CSR Nicky Major about their Social Entrepreneur of the Year awards. It is always great to talk to someone who really gets us and what we are trying to do. If E & Y can also use their not inconsiderable know how to boost the skills of my members, that has to be a really good thing.

We will need all the support we can get if the popularity for social enterprise illustrated by our Richmond event yesterday is anything to go by. We had over 140 people turn up in Twickenham to the launch of Social Enterprise Richmond (SER) with keynote speaker local MP, Zac Goldsmith. Zac was in contact with me days after he was elected as he is genuinely passionate about social enterprise, which is great. My only note of caution, echoed by my friend Stephen Bubb's (no, the rabbit was not named after him) article in the Times yesterday (I'd link to link it, but it turns out you have to pay £1 for access these days). Stephen is worried that as we encourage more people to come forward to get involved with community business we need to be able to match their needs with capacity building.

Social Enterprise Richmond is a small group of enthusiastic, experienced people (including James Alexander, formerly of CAN and Terry Veitch, my predecessor as Deputy Chair of Acevo) who are, to date acting as volunteers. If only a fraction of the 140 people who turned up yesterday need comprehensive business support they will not be able to cope. Even a modest investment in local infrastructure is going to be essential, and local groups will not offer the best information if they are not supplied with it by coordinating groups.

I know the fashion is local these days and I agree. But local, needs regional, needs national and in my opinion (and I know Paul Martin would agree) needs international too. This is a global movement happening at local level.

Bubbs the rabbit with Katie

First Blighty and then the World!

Our member of the Government, Minoru Yonekura, Deputy Director General for Economic Policy, tells us that the Japanese Government estimate there are 8000 social enterprises in Japan contributing 25 billion yen to GDP. They identify the need for tools to grow the sector such as infrastructure organisations. As Stephen Bubb has suggested the need for a World Social Investment bank, and his willingness to Chair it, perhaps they have a starting point. Who says the Brits don't know how to think big?

Wakey wakey

Today I delivered my presentation to the UK Japan Social Entrepreneurship Symposium. Opening the symposium the stunningly charasmatic Professor Ikuyo Kaneko of the Keio Research Institute told the audience that the UK is, in his opinion the world leader of social enterprise. I spoke next and whittered on about the work SEL is doing with the corporate sector. To be honest the jet lag has really got to me this time. I have been waking at 4am since I arrived and this morning I couldn't get back to sleep. So being shattered and hilariously trotting up to the podium without my notes probably didn't lead to my best performance ever. Bless them our hosts are broadcasting the presentations live on a podcast, so if you've got nothing better to do you can see for yourself.

My questions were on whether I thought government contracts were a good thing and to define commissioning and full cost recovery. I immediately refered the FCR question to Stephen who is up later and clarified the other points, yes its a good thing as long as social enterprises can achieve scale and commissioning could be the most creative job in Government, but isn't. I told the audience about our education conference coming up in April and the social enterprise route map for local authorities we are working on.

Simon Tucker from the Young Foundation was next. I liked his take on innovation and we both agreed that future public sector contracts are an opportunity and also one we can exploit with investment and scale. He boldly told the Japanese that he thought the Social Enterprise Mark had failed, which was a sit up and take notice moment. Stephen is next and I can't wait. He has provided me with an audible monologue throughout the presentations which has been a hoot. Off for a diet coke now, must stay awake.

Stephen is up now. He's started with a story about Will Adams the first Englishman to arrive in Japan 410 years ago. He, Stephen told us, was shipwrecked and then went on to help establish the Japanese navy. Not the sort of social impact we are talking about today, but impact nonetheless. The audience loved it, so he's off to a strong start. He's telling the audience about his key role in persuading the UK Government in establishing the Office of the Third Sector and Acevo's role in lobbying Goverment. He explains the growing power of the 3rd sector by its growing economic power turning over £116 billion last year. All three of us have emphasised trust that comes with social enterprise, integrity and as Stephen has just said, energy. He's coming across as quite the ambassador for the UK, which will, I am sure go down well with our hosts the British Council, Keio University, and the Japan Foundation. They should have seen him at the Thai Seafood resturant we went to last night when we all had to wear these awful bibs!

I love Japan. Its elegant, ordered and so clean and the people are wonderfully hospitable. But I am really looking forward to going home in the morning. I haven't seen my boys for nearly 2 weeks as they were both on school trips last week. I heard from Sams guitar teacher while here that he has got Merit for his Grade III guitar exam which means that on top of a distinction for his piano and Joes merit for piano we have a lot to celebrate.

Back to Mr Bubb, he is getting folk to sign up to Jacevo the japanese wing of acevo and emphasising the work of the third sector in managing long term medical conditions, as an example. He has demonstrated our roles in innovation, lobbying, media, cost savings and professionalisation. We do come off rather well, all of us have represented the best Britain has to offer, but I do wonder what our hosts make of it all.

Osborne says yes to third sector offer

Stephen Bubb made a barnstorming opening speech at the Tory Summit today offering a new Government a third sector ready to marshall communities and deliver public services.

In response the Shadow Chancellor says, on behalf of the Tories, he accepts the offer. What can we expect from them? He tells us professional commissioning, competent procurement, and payment by results on defined outcomes. He goes on to explain the benefit of payment by results is you can see the benefits and savings. We want to talk to you, he says, about how we can get this going, get the Social Investment Bank and investment bonds going. "The other thing you can expect from us are longer term contracts, such as in Welfare to work we will offer 5 year contracts." "What you won't get from us, is bureaurocracy or a demand for National standards for everything." "What do we expect from you?" Osborne posed. "Delivering to scale, professionalism, and value for money more specifically greater productivity than we have had from the public sector." His final point is that he does not want the sector to be suffocated by big Goverment. "Its your challenge to resist that and ours to prevent it."

The beauty of blogging

Thanks to the magical way the internet brings people together I have just read the most exquisite blog, Ngorobob House: Life from the Hill. Reading this blog you realise what a privilege it is to be able to share the intimate thoughts of those whose lives are so different from our own. This latest post, brought to my attention by blogger, Family Affairs, is shocking, beautiful and unutterably sad. You can smell the heat, taste the sweat and salty tears and feel the tangible loss.

Social enterprises are trying to make the world a smaller place, bit like the internet. They are trying to get us all to give a shit about one another, whether we’ve been introduced or not. When I think of the work of enterprises like Divine Chocolate, Global Ethics and Greenworks, all investing in Africa, I am cheered that whilst we can’t bring back Francis Mgambi we can build ethical businesses that help people help themselves. We need to try harder.

Look at the attached David Tennant film about One Water and join their World Water Day.


Yesterday was International Women’s Day and what a great day for Katherine Bigalow to win the Oscars for best director and film. Go girl. She made a relatively cheap but none the less great film about the blood and guts of war whilst her ex-husband made a mind blowingly expensive one about blue lizard people. For once substance won out over big bucks, I was cheering. As an aside I do hope this fad for 3D blows over. I took the kids to Alice in Wonderland on Saturday and although the film was good, in my view, I hated the 3D business. It made me feel sick (maybe because I’m a migrainer?) I couldn’t suspend belief and I was aware of the devise throughout. Horrid.

Finally Stephen Bubb of acevo, having read my last blog post, asked me yesterday if I really had put in my first early potatoes. Although I am the first on our allotments I checked the RHS gardening website called My Garden and others have put theirs in, so although it is risky, given the dodgy weather, I am not alone.

Making a believer out of Boris...

London Mayor, Boris Johnson started to follow me on Twitter yesterday. I was able to welcome him and say how pleased I am when later on in the evening I bumped into him at the London Voluntary Service Council's 100th anniversary celebration at the Mansion House. It was a super evening with a great many familiar faces, including Drew Stevenson who was Chair when I was on LVSC’s board, John O’Brien (CEO at London Councils), Peter Lewis (CEO at LVSC), my old friend Stephen Bubb, CEO at acevo and of course Boris.

I always enjoy Boris’s speeches. As you travel with him to the destination of the point he wants to make, it often feels like a ramble, but it always turns out to be the route with views. He told us how incensed he was by the story during the snowy winter of the chap who was told not to clear snow from the path in front of his house in case anyone slipped on it, in which case he would be liable. Our mayor lamented a culture where people are put off taking responsibility. I thought of the heroic initiative taken by social entrepreneurs like those running the Parent Promoted Foundation, which was hinted at in Michael Gove’s interview with the BBC this morning, who are really willing to do something about my local, shambolic school.

Picking up Boris’s theme and that of schools I am very aware that we are entering the 'school trip' season. I hate school trips. I do not understand how schools that do not feel able to examine children for head lice feel confident in taking them abroad. Nor do I accept the ridiculous expense of these trips. To put it into perspective the state pays roughly £3000 per head for each child to attend a primary school per annum and yet parents at my school are asked to stump up a whopping £550 for each child to go to the Dordogne where they won’t speak French, eat French food or study French history. Instead they will bounce on French trampolines and jump out of French canoes.

In my day it was a day trip to Kew Gardens or memorably Southampton Docks to look at the cargo ships. I am particularly anti as my eldest Joe, an otherwise fit and healthy boy with manageable asthma has been hospitalised twice in his life, both times upon return from school trips. The last time I remember standing in a hospital ward watching Joe, oxygen mask on his face, fighting for every breath whilst I talked on my mobile to the Head teacher who explained that they had not been able to take him to a doctor in France, when he failed to respond to his medication, because she didn’t have sufficient staff. This is not in loco parentis but it is consistent with a society where teachers don’t feel they can put sun cream on kids on a sunny day, and need a signed parental permission slip to lead a class to the post box in front of the school to post a letter!

The number of parents struggling to make ends meet is rising in our neck of the woods, as the recession continues to bite and yet the cost of these mad trips is rising. The pressure on parents not to stigmatise their children by failing to come up with the goods is immense and yet seems of no consideration. As these jamborees occur during term time, children not on the trips have to go to school, by themselves. I think all such ventures in primary schools should be limited to day trips and while we are at it teachers should be able to put on sun cream, and every school should have a 'nit nurse' to stem the rising plague. Then and only then I might trust them to get as far as Southampton docks but would only want to sign up if the cost was affordable for everyone, and I mean everyone.

Tonight is the big night. We have our AGM and hustings. The line up includes our minister, Angela Smith and her Conservative and Liberal Democrat counterparts Nick Hurd and Jenny Willott. We have over 150 social enterprise leaders coming and chocolate and condoms to pass out. Thanks to Divine and Global Ethics for sponsoring the event and illustrating the fabulously diverse world of social enterprise. I hope to see you there, but if you can't make it you can follow the whole thing on Twitter under #VoteSocEnt10.