Year End Goals

My year of On Purpose is coming to an end. Last week was our last official training session on Friday afternoon. It was an internal meeting, just the 11 Associates alongside the OP team of Tom and Kate. Part of the time was taken by evaluating how well we had achieved the goals we set in the beginning of the year and by setting out our new goals for 2012. Friday’s group setting gave us a chance to individually reflect on the direction we are taking with our careers. How often do I sit down on my own and do such an exercise? Of course it’s not obligatory to “share” with everyone; these are personal goals. But, being surrounded by 10 strangers who have become friends, I found myself glad for the opportunity to ask them to challenge my explanation as to why I have chosen my next path and to ask me to describe the ways in which I will achieve those goals. I don't get too many chances to ask people I respect to challenge my thinking. The other associates are like close colleagues without the competition. They have an insight into me that my friends do not have since we came together for professional reasons. But we also have become friends by sharing experiences such as our weekend retreat to Embercombe in Devon, attendance of social entrepreneurship events, and Friday evening drinks after training. A goal I didn’t set for myself, but now realise I have achieved, is a firm place in a tight network of dedicated SE professionals with whom I can continue to grow alongside professionally. I don’t just have the experiences I have had in the past year to accelerate my career; I have their experiences and contacts as well. There is no Schadenfreude among this group. Only is there a sense of mutual support, where one person’s achievements actually boost everyone else’s chances rather than diminish them. This is a rare trait among colleagues along similar career paths. And, for these relationships alone, I’m grateful to have been an OP Associate for the past year. So, did I meet my goals that I set out in January? 2.5 out of 3 with a bonus it seems. I’m not quite the excel whiz I had planned to be (see a previous post!). But, luckily, I know another associate or two who are.

How Marketing needs to adapt to Social Media

Here's a video we liked that we saw in our training last Fri, shown to us by Adele Barlow who was giving us the basics on all things digital.

More Social Finance

As the Eurozone seems to continually teeter on the brink of collapse, Western governments strain to control budget deficits generated by bailing out failed banks and the stagnant economies left in their wake, there are growing demands for new ways of doing business. The Occupy Wall Street protests have swept the globe, now totalling some 951 cities in 82 countries. Calls for reform are not just coming from the radical left and anarchists; public sentiment for change has been growing worldwide, and this month David Cameron has reiterated the need for reform of "capitalism without a conscience".

As consensus grows on the need for changes in the way businesses are managed, the real question is what needs to change and how can this change be brought about?

Back in March Dominic Barton, MD of McKinsey, expressed his view that “business as usual was not an option”. Top of his list of reforms was to "Fight the tyranny of short-termism". Put simply, the vast majority of major corporations are focused on short-term profits over long-term value.

Breaking this tyranny has much to do with changing the way WE own companies - by WE I mean the 99% in the language of the occupy movement. By McKinsey’s calculations pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, and sovereign wealth funds hold $65 trillion, or roughly 35%, of the world’s financial assets. They hold and trade these assets on behalf of the 99%. The culture of investment that these investors have is, in general, the epitome of short-termism. Shares are traded based on quarterly profit targets, basic analysis and PE ratios over the short term. These investors who represent the many often fail to take any active role in the governance of the companies they own, and there is limited interest in the long-term vision or culture of management so long as profit targets are met. And if targets are not hit, there is no challenge to strategy, no block on executive pay: they simply dispose of shares and invest where profit appears easier.

Conversely, the 1% tend to take a very different approach to investment. Warren Buffet, for example, is famed for his active and long-term value-based investment strategy. This is where I see an exciting opportunity in a growing form of more “social” finance, one which offers a more direct route to ownership of growing businesses and, with it, a chance to influence a businesses culture and development.

Crowd funding is a way to raise finance by tapping into a “crowd” or community of people willing to invest smaller amounts of cash in exchange for rewards and a stake in the business. Recently crowd funding has been made much easier by the internet, online micro-payment systems, social networking and more recently by overcoming legal barriers on the marketing of equities.

An enterprise ranging in size from a start-up to an SME can pitch its idea or business opportunity, spread the word to like-minded people or passionate consumers and raise direct investment. The resulting shareholders have a genuine and long-standing interest, and, because the shares are generally not publicly traded, they will inevitably have a more long-term perspective.

This is an exciting time for crowd funding. In the UK the new crowd funding website Crowdcube has just celebrated its first funding request of £1m, the highest amount to date on an online crowd funding site. Crowdcube’s business model is very accessible: there’s no registration fee the site only charges a 5% commission on amounts successfully raised - this is extremely reasonable in comparison to the cost in fees of a typical IPO (c10%).

But sites like Crowdcube are not the only route to crowd funding. Brewdog, an innovative and unorthodox Scottish brewer, recently raised 0.5m in a self-issued online IPO dubbed equity for Punks. This year they are seeking a second tranche of investment, a further 2.1m. Shareholders receive a return on investment through dividends as well as drinks discounts and a sense of ownership of a business close to the heart of passionate beer-drinkers.

The investment mechanism is beneficial to both parties. Investors get access to growing businesses, potentially offering products or services they believe in, opportunities that have previously been restricted to institutional investors and high net worth individuals. There are often additional benefits for investors such as discounts and exclusive access. There’s also the potential for smaller investors to access the Enterprise Investment Scheme tax break for investing in start-up businesses.

The businesses get much needed capital for growth, capital that traditionally would only be available from venture capital. The cost of working with venture capital is often high; a large share of the business and short term focus on growing profits to allow the venture capital partner a lucrative exit via resale or stock market listing. By this point the vision and ethos of the founding entrepreneurs is often lost. Crowd investors bring other benefits, a ready army of advocates keen to promote and support the enterprise, or a wide range of supporters willing to offer skills or experience to support their investment.

It’s still early days for crowd funding so it won’t revolutionise institutional shareholding this quarter, but in the long-term it could play an increasingly important part in business finance and ownership. Firstly, at least some of the 99% get an opportunity to invest small amounts of savings in businesses they believe in – an important step in the right direction towards a culture of empowered share ownership. Secondly, I believe the crowd funding model could lead to the development of new governance relationships; investors being asked to vote on new strategies or product developments, attending online AGMs and crucially really caring about what happens to the business.

If this is a better way of doing business, in the longer term it will be these businesses that flourish. And when they do it will force a wider change.

Life's amazing and nobody's happy

This is a funny but also thought-provoking video we watched last week in training, courtesy of Steve Coles from Intentionality who was talking about well-being.

The Power of Networks

Building on Martin’s post about the Emerge conference last weekend, I wanted to share the insights from one of the sessions that I found particularly interesting. This session from the “Do It” breakout stream addressed the question of networks in the social enterprise space and how intermediaries could support social entrepreneurs. The discussion was animated by experts from well-established programmes such as Ashoka, the Schwab foundation and the Skoll Centre.

As we come to the end of the On Purpose programme and we’ve had nearly a year to learn about the realities of the UK social enterprise sector, I often find myself reflecting on what the sector really needs and what is the current missing piece of the puzzle that will allow it to grow exponentially. It became evident to me that money is not the issue. In fact, we are nearly at a point where there is more capital to invest in social projects than there are projects that satisfy both the social purpose and the commercial viability. “Investment readiness” seems to be the buzzword of the month. What it really means is that unfortunately this sector still has a long tail of small starters, relatively few more established groups trying to prove their business models and a scarcity of success stories which many aspire to (HTC, Fifteen, Big Issue).

Going back to the question of networks, could this be the magic ingredient? Andres Falconer (Managing director of Ashoka) opened the conversation by referring to networks as the holy grail of social enterprise and presented the way Ashoka endeavours to niche out individuals who could unleash the potential when paired with the right network and support. Similarly, Mirjiam explained how the Schwab Foundation moved away from granting financial prizes to simply offering their chosen members connections to other leaders and access to high profile circles such as the Davos Summit. Sarah Orr (Director of the Kravis Leadership Institute) explained how relationship building spanned from cooperation to coordination and ultimately collaboration, where the level of risk and interaction increases respectively. Then they all consecutively exposed their own approaches to finding these rising star entrepreneurs who they were going to help and plug into their web. Schwab has five criteria on the project idea; Ashoka looks for personal traits through in-depth interviews.

All these sounded like quite coherent and straightforward arguments until Indy Johar, co-founder of the newly established Hub Westminster, dared to challenge the status quo. He urged us to re-question the underlying principles in which these well-recognised entities operate and the way we’ve been framing the challenge, while proposing new ways in which the system could adapt. First of all, he urged us to abandon the theory of the hero entrepreneur. In his experience, the most successful ventures were founded by at least two people. By overly focusing on the single person, we are mystifying their capacities and hampering the rest of the supporting team. Members of the audience who were social entrepreneurs themselves were pleased to pitch in his favour: they could not have done it without their teams, they are still looking for more support and they do not feel like super-heroes. Indy also brought an innovative approach to the concept of due diligence. Although he admits not having the answers to this one, he’s convinced that something must be wrong if it takes so many and so long due diligence processes to in the end not find enough good social entrepreneurs to fund. Maybe that’s why he’s so pleased to host Village Capital at the HUB as an alternative model. Based on the group-lending mechanisms of microfinance, Village Capital is a social enterprise incubator where the seven organisation members decide among themselves who gets the funding prize of £50k at the end of twelve weeks.

Rather than picking out winners, Indy is more in favour of a user-based approach, where the individual builds the network once provided with the conditions. This would look more like a many-to-many exchange, building the network from the bottom up rather than with the pretense of a magic hand from above designing the ideal connections. That’s probably one of his inspirations for co-founding the HUB Westminster, in his words: “a place for unlikely encounters.”

Ultimately, all panel members agreed that there was probably room for more than one approach to support social enterprise initiatives and that, although these established programmes had been crucial for kick starting the movement and for building it from scratch, it was probably time to rethink the approach and open it up to others. Indeed, more and more individuals are willing to contribute with their unique skills. From university students to private sector consultants, the passion and interest are growing, but many do not find it easy to channel it given the nearly exclusive focus on the social entrepreneur persona.

In the end, hands were shaken and large smiles exchanged; nevertheless someone had rocked the boat.

The Emerge Conference

The Emerge Conference took place this weekend in Oxford with successful social business leaders from around the globe speaking to a few hundred delegates, mostly post-graduate students.

Application of technologies featured heavily. Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about his NGO’s provision of a free, open-source platform to send, receive and aggregate bulk text messages all from a non-internet enabled phone. One recent application of this service is for Mothers to Mothers, who prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child through a peer to peer advice service and currently 1 in 5 of HIV-infected pregnant women in Africa. They are integrating SMS messages into their services to remind mothers to take medication and attend. This exemplifies the fact that technology solutions work often because they are simple, effective and focussed on the nuances of communication and delivery, rather than any technological innovation.

In two impact investing conferences, it was striking that the vast majority of investors shunned rigorous measurement of impact for a simple metric of measurement, a story that resonated, and a balanced portfolio covering different human needs (education, health care etc). It’s probable that with the inadequacy of impact measurement, investors prefer simply to be wooed by an entrepreneur’s story and assess their ability to deliver on it.

Regarding the legal structures of companies, there were a number of not for profits that used hybrid models of funding. The profit arm of Embrace handles manufacturing, distribution and R & D, whilst the NFP arm makes a loss on delivering to the most needy and performs monitoring and evaluation. The not for profit holds the IP, which the for profit arm pays a royalty for its use, and therefore supports the unprofitable part of the business.

The conference closed with some wonderfully articulated pearls of wisdom by James Chin, founder of the World Toilet Organisation (check it out: it’s brilliant, http://www.worldtoilet.org/wto/). He recommended taking calculated risks: for example, naming your organisation the WTO because getting sued by the better known organisation by the same name would be worth it for the PR storm. Another gem of many: “There’s no such thing as work that’s easy or hard, just that which is fun or boring.”

O2 Learn Competition Winner

O2 Learn was set up by Kate Richardson and Harriet Barclay from the 2010 On Purpose cohort. www.o2learn.co.uk is a free video library of lessons for secondary school students - a bit like a youtube for learning. It allows great teachers to upload their best lessons to the platform, making them accessible to young people everywhere. The website is a supporting pillar of O2's core CSR brand: Think Big, which aims to support young people in every area of their lives.

A competition was launched on the site in November 2010 to encourage teachers to contribute video content. On Friday 14th October, the winner of this year's prize was announced and the O2 Learn team threw a surprise assembly at the winning school. Click here to see the winning video and here to see a clip from London Tonight from this past Friday evening.

Company Fundraising launches at JustGiving

It was a high point of my placement this week when we launched JustGiving’s new Company Fundraising product. It’s a really exciting new fundraising tool that enables companies to celebrate their charity partnerships and bring all their employee fundraising activity together in one place. JustGiving is built on the premise of fundraising as a social activity – and (although I’m a little biased!) this product seems to me to be a great way to build a sense of community and purpose at work.

Employees can view current appeals or sign up for company events, join teams, and even try to get to the top of the fundraising league table. It’s easy to see how your efforts contribute to the company’s overall total. Employers can promote appeals, get better visibility over their fundraising activity as a whole, and run reports to make company matched giving easier – meaning more money for charities.

Some of Britain’s best known companies have been trialling the product for the past six months – and it’s been brilliant to see it evolve. Waitrose, for example, piloted the tool with its London-based employees, and raised over £30,000 for sports charity The Lord’s Taverners. This paid for a brand new minibus to give young people the opportunity to get involved in more sporting activities. A 900-strong workforce took part in Barclays’ Step in to the Night event and raised over £50,000 for UNICEF and Have a Heart.

Of course, employee fundraising is only one aspect of corporate citizenship, and certainly it shouldn’t be seen as an alternative to embedding social purpose at the heart of a business model. But that’s no reason to celebrate it any less. During my time at JustGiving I’ve seen just how inspirational fundraising for charity can be (and, of course, how important this is to the charities themselves). And at our launch event this week we heard directly from Barclays the great effect it has on employee motivation and engagement.

And as for my own motivation – well, there’s times in any job when you can get a little weary communing with your computer screen . There’s nothing quite like getting out of the office to reconnect with your job’s mission. In the run up to the launch of Company Fundraising some of my favourite days have been those out and about with company fundraisers as they’ve walked, abseiled and cycled in aid of great causes. I met Gigi from Barclays who single-handedly raised over £2,000 for UNICEF and Have a Heart. And I got to hang out with Maria (you might recognise her as Superwoman in our short film!) who masterminded KPMG employees abseiling down the side of their Canary Wharf building in aid of Barnardo’s (they raised over £20,000 in 2 days). It’s been pretty inspiring stuff!

Walled garden's awakening

Sometimes people in social enterprise slip into detachment from reality behind their LCD screens as easily as their business-as-usual colleagues. When we start to confuse social impact metrics for real people, or carbon credits for, well, anything real, it is probably the time. It is the right time to get ourselves out of our offices and to dive into some offline, hands-on, local engagement experience. Luckily there is no shortage of opportunities.



Less than two weeks ago on a beautiful Sunday morning, I found myself amidst a gang of volunteering 'Garden Angels' in eastern London. The sun was shining, people were getting dirty and excited, and one walled garden was slowly awaking from its long slumber, sending ripples to the whole neighbourhood.



The garden, the people, and the whole project were an unusual mix, aiming to go far beyond just planting a patch of lettuce. Their aim was to recreate a meaning for the old place within the context of contemporary communities. Pulling together an award-winning singer Imogen Heap, design thinking and micro-urbanism expertise of Clear Village, a bunch of excited volunteers from all over the world, and committed local partners, it was a collaborative effort to inspire local communities. To inspire locals by retelling the forgotten tale of a vast, magnificent, Georgian kitchen garden lying hidden within its four-meter walls amidst a beautiful park on a hill overseeing London. A tale about a garden that used to serve those in a dire need as a food source of last resort, before it was shut down. A garden that was vandalised and erased from memories of common folk of that area.



This project by Clear Village saw the garden re-inhabited for a week, showed a glimpse of the garden's potential, and teased the locals with some thought-provoking questions: Should an enchanting place of such a deep soul and history stay neglected? Can it be helped to a grow into a new meaning in the 21st century? Can we find new invigorating modes of coexistence between the garden and the humans? Could it become a refuge, an organic food site, a place of gathering, a place of peace and joy? What effort and commitment would that require?



Such questions are not unique to this walled garden project, and they capture a lot of what a social enterprise is about in my eyes -- real communities and their places -- that is where social enterprise happens. And those of us whose sense of reality is too often endangered by an office space should get out from time to time to projects like this one to stay in touch.

Ten things I've learnt about effective partnerships between business and charity

Civil society organisations have at their core distinct social missions to tackle problems that are often outside the scope of conventional market appetite and may be ill-addressed by existing government institutions. However increasingly the lines between CSR, state intervention and social action are becoming blurred and new partnerships that cross sectors are emerging, galvanised by shared objectives and mutual benefit.

Many businesses are already engaged in programmes that have significant social value, either through their core business or through ancillary CSR endeavours. As a charity, identifying and partnering with these organisations can have profound benefits due to the reach and resource of big business. In return, the insights and access that working on the front line of social change can bring often hold wider commercial value to organisations working in complementary areas.

Here are a few thoughts that may be useful to those wondering how to create valuable relationships with business:

1. Have a clear idea of your organisational needs and priorities. It helps to know if you need funding support how much, when and for what, but remember that in these times corporate donations are hard to come by and companies are looking to partner with not just support charity. By understanding your core costs you may be able to find areas where you can benefit from in-kind support (for example space, time or training) which may have equal value and be a more realistic request.

2. Think about areas where a business could enhance the goods or services that you deliver. This may be expertise from their core business, technology, scale or geographic location.

3. Make sure you think not just about your organisational needs but also your end user needs. Holding end user/customer focus groups can surface up areas of potential for improvements that you may not have picked up on or may be less equipped to address than someone else.

4. Map the needs of your organisation to sectors and start to think where in that sector support could come from. Is there a tech firm that might help with systems implementation or could a bank help with impact measurement? Find out what priorities these companies have in the CSR space and whether they may be similar to your own organisation. Websites like Business in the Community or CSR networks like this can be useful.

5. Talking to the right people in companies helps ensure discussions are productive. If people in your networks work at or know people at the organisation you are interested in approaching they may be able to suggest the most appropriate person to contact.

6. When approaching companies be clear about why you are contacting them, what your organisation does and where you see potential to collaborate.

7. It's helpful to go to meetings with an idea of how you see a partnership working but be prepared to release your agenda. Take time to hear what they are already doing and about their organisational priorities, culture and business environment. Work together to identify areas of mutual interest.

8. Be clear about the value proposition of what you are suggesting. Where possible quantify it with facts and figures (for example the City of London released a great report on the business case for employee volunteering in education). Thinking from their perspective about the cost-benefit of their support is a useful exercise that may lead you to other areas where you can add value.

9. Understand how perspective may vary depending on the level in the organisation that you engage. Painting a creative and inspiring 3-5 year plan of collaborative innovation could excite a CEO but come across as completely unrealistic to someone less senior.

10. Remember that relationships take time to cultivate and what may be a conversation this year could be a pilot the next and grow into something deeper. Using a robust CRM system (such as Salesforce) is extremely helpful when maintaining a large number of relationships. Don't just cultivate the successful relationships, take time to explore and follow up on proposals that didn't get off the ground, there may be useful insight that helps you make more effective proposals in the future. Finally, be meticulous in your communication, ensure you follow up in a reasonable time, help where you can with information and be prepared to know the difference between gently pushing and hassling someone!

Dominic is currently Partnerships Manager at Teaching Leaders, a charity that addresses educational disadvantage by training and developing high potential middle leaders in challenging schools.

Guardian Social Enterprise Network: On Purpose Interview Series

Over the last 8 weeks the On Purpose Associates have been contributing to a series of articles for The Guardian's Social Enterprise Network. Each week, one Associate talks to a 'builder or runner' from a social enterprise or commercially-driven charity, many from our current placement organisations.

So far we've interviewed:

Charlotte Glynn, Head of People at Just Giving

Jonathan Bamber, International Sales & Development Director at Tough Stuff

Damian Peat, Operational Director and Financial Controller at Terra Plana and VIVOBAREFOOT

Ariane van de Ven, Head of Future and Trend Insights at O2

Sylvia Lowe, Head of UK Innovation at Comic Relief

Miriam Turner, Innovations Director EMEAI at InterfaceFLOR

Patrick Reyburn, Strategic Development Manager at HCT Group

Lucy Payton, Associate Director at Teaching Leaders


To check out the series of interviews click here.

Keep an eye on this space for the 3 remaining interviews!

Finding meaning behind the numbers

I’ve dipped my toes in the waters of Excel over the years, but the waves can get a bit large. When I wade too deep into it, I tend to get swamped. Yet I do admire a well-built model where the cells spin out their numbers like a slot machine in response to my toggling a single scenario. I just don’t entirely understand how it got to be like that. But as my accounting professor Tomo Suzuki likes to remark, the poets are necessary to interpret what the boffins create.

I’ve trudged through Excel when I worked in a bank to check a company's financials, grumbled as I’ve used Excel to inventory cases of wine (long story), and muddled through Excel when balancing my own budget. But I’ve never put numbers into one end of the Excel machine and had the impact on people’s lives be spit out the other side.

Two months into my six-month placement at ToughStuff, I’ve discovered the opportunity to do exactly that. Not all on my own from scratch, mind you. Let’s not get carried away. That would be the domain of the former consultants in our On Purpose year. But with some handholding from the CFO at ToughStuff, I think I might get my head around this.

ToughStuff is a social enterprise that sells affordable energy solutions in the developing world, mostly targeted at customers who live off the electrical grid. We provide flexible solar panels, solar lamps, mobile phone chargers, and radio battery systems starting at US$10. These replace expensive, smelly, and dangerous kerosene lanterns and candles, as well as removing the need to buy D-cell batteries for a radio.

So far, so good. I like what I’m hearing…

The benefits of this are huge, and we do have the stats to prove it. Generally, customers start saving on energy spending 2-3 months after buying ToughStuff products and save at least US$100 on their annual energy expenditure. Health risks like pulmonary diseases, burns, and poor eyesight are reduced. And it keeps carbon and batteries out of the environment – each lamp saves 24 litres of kerosene per year, and used batteries aren’t dumped into the soil. The people who sell the products for us also benefit; we’ve found that each solar entrepreneur can earn an additional US$450 by selling our products to their friends and neighbours.

These stats are averages from our existing programmes, and they are good to know. But let’s say a funding partner wants to kick-start a solar entrepreneur programme with US$100,000 of working capital and wants to know what the bang they are getting for their buck. After all, impact is the point of their investment. When they ask how many tons of carbon their money will save, there should be an answer for them. But what sensitive factors are specific to this situation that might influence the answer to their question? What scenario do I choose from the drop down menu in Excel? Ooops, they have yet to be built.

Cue the On Purpose Associate, who arrives on the scene to think strategically about what factors make or break a successful programme and to discover which inputs impact the outputs. Two months ago, it seemed that everyone here knew more about clean energy and distribution channels and carbon than I did. In fact, that’s still likely true. But I’ve discovered that my value lies in the places between specific roles. I found my footing by looking at the links between the work that people undertake across the company and the impact it has in the field on people’s lives. Essentially, I've found myself translating many people's opinions into the key variables that influence the outcome of a sales programme. Having an outsiders’ viewpoint to interview people across the company and ask “Why?” dozens of times and propose new explanations can translate the Big Picture into the direct impact. We know we are doing good overall, but we wanted to know how much good we are doing in each community.

So how was this poet-minded associate finally won over by the power of Excel? By knowing that the yearly savings per household in cell CD289 mean that these families can afford to send their daughters to school. By seeing how the average mother in cell AF36 can increase her family’s income annual by $450 just by charging her neighbours mobile phones through her fleet of solar panels. And by realising that removing the carbon from 24 litres of kerosene multiplied by the thousands of lamps per year in cell BH57 starts to clear the air.

I just have to figure out what inputs go into the boxes – but I’ll leave the formulas to the boffins.

Peter's Blog Post for Business Fights Poverty

Peter Babudu, one of this year's On Purpose Associates, talks about how Start!e will directly address one of the major challenges that impact investors currently face: finding investment-ready social enterprises. Start!e has been set up as an incubator to facilitate the rapid creation of social businesses that protect the environment and reduce poverty, accelerating qualified and viable ideas from conception through financing to sustainable operation. Check out his post for Business Fights Poverty here.

The Big Society Bank has been 'launched' - but what are we still waiting to know?

After a gestation period of more than a decade, the Cabinet Office recently announced that the Big Society Bank - recently rechristened Big Society Capital – had been ‘launched’ .

It would be fair to say that this launch was a media-focused announcement rather than an actual opening for business. EU and FSA approvals are still pending, and the Bank’s holding website itself states: “Big Society Capital is currently in the process of being set up and is not yet open for business”. The major component of the announcement was the unveiling of Big Society Capital’s board of directors and board of trustees – whose membership focuses on various City and Social Finance grandees and a couple of SocEnt and third sector trade-bodies. In June, prior to this announcement, an interim Big Lottery Fund-run £5m ‘Big Society Investment Fund’ had been established, and the recent ‘good and the great’ announcement was topped up by the heralding of a £1m investment in the Private Equity Foundation’s work on NEETs through this interim arrangement.

It’s likely that this buzz of activity will continue over the coming months as the government seeks to bolster the wider ‘big society programme’ by playing up its most solid component. However, underneath this, the answers to a range of key questions remain unclear, and so therefore does assessment of whether Big Society Capital will fulfill its huge potential.

It remains unclear how much money the Bank will eventually have available to it, and the scale of this is obviously crucial in determining its eventual impact. Estimates of the amount of ‘unclaimed assets’ vary but have stretched into the billions. Current estimates sit around £400 million. In addition to this, approximately £200 million will be available to the Bank through Project Merlin, the agreement between the Government and Britain’s major high street banks that followed the bank bailouts of 2007-2008.

Another key key question is the cost of finance. The Project Merlin banks have talked about the £200m being available at commercial interest rates, which would simply duplicate finance that is already available to social enterprise (but too expensive) and go against the whole concept Cohen (who understands this) has been trying to put together.

Scope is another key issue that has yet to be ironed out. Within what geographical reach will its capital be allowed to be deployed, and how will that be policed? For example, what about a solar lighting company (social benefit) that has its operational base in the UK (geographical fit) but manufactures in China and sells in Africa? Does that put it in or out of scope? What sectors will be allowed? How will social impact be measured / distinguished? What prevents a conventional business (such as Unilever or Pepisco) from applying and claiming a social benefit? Will it only be available to organisations with certain types of legal structures, e.g. CICs or Co-ops? What about charities? Or businesses with an embedded social purpose?

A further question is how long it will take the social investment sector to adapt. The Big Society Investment Fund calls for proposals from investment intermediaries who are based in the UK and focused upon England. Assuming that the Bank will take a similar scope, it would be fair to say that there are not many of these currently in existence - Bridges Ventures, Unltd, Venturesome, and new entrants like Merism Capital come to mind. How many will be needed to make this work? How long will it take to create them?

Beyond that, if the funds need to find a home within the SE sector itself, the scale of recent investment does not suggest this will be easy to do. Investments like HCT’s £3m ‘social loan’ to and Cool2Care’s £500k investment from a consortium of Big Issue Invest, Venturesome and CAN Breakthrough are news in the sector because they are - for social enterprise - big and rare. This suggests £600m will be very hard to deploy within the sector without investment in significant capacity building to both expand the sector and to improve investment readiness. While May’s interim proposal for the Big Society Bank did recognise this, it remains to be seen how the institution - which is seemingly being set up to run as a wholesale investment bank - will be able to rise to this challenge.

Introducing iX

By Stephanie Denamps

With the expansion of the social enterprise sector comes the need for social finance: designated capital that is earmarked for particular projects where the financial returns must be measured alongside the social benefit. This capital needs to be patient (returns will be made in the long term), flexible and innovative (returns are hard to grasp and measure) and most probably has to accept below commercial rates of return. Fortunately, such pools of capital are already coming together and the interest they get is on the rise. There are social business angel networks connecting high net worth individuals and other philanthropists with flourishing social enterprises (ClearlySo being the largest one in Europe). There are intermediary social finance funds such as Bridges Ventures, UnLtd and Venturesome that lend money to social enterprises expecting a long-term financial return. The Big Society Bank (or Big Society Capital, as it’s now called) will gather funds from dormant bank accounts to fuel these intermediaries and ultimately to spur social business activity. Loans and social impact bonds are the most common instruments so far, but the sector is relentlessly on the lookout for the next financial product that can align social and financial returns.

Alongside all that, there has been a related initiative taking place at a larger scale: a worldwide social impact stock exchange. The iX is in fact the first Impact Investment Exchange Board, developed and launched in collaboration with the Stock Exchange of Mauritius (SEM). A couple of weeks ago, some of the On Purpose Associates attended an event, organized by the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) and hosted by Nexii, to introduce the founders of the first approved and regulated stock exchange dedicated to social enterprises. During the presentation we learned about the key benefits of this platform. For the social enterprises that get listed, it brings great visibility, credibility and access to new sources of capital. For social investors, it’s a visible, accessible and trusted pool of social enterprises. To both sides it guarantees the time and cost efficiency of an organised exchange. The Mauritius stock exchange itself is recognised by its good international standards and regulations, advantageous listing fees and absence of tax on capital gains and dividends. Multi-currency trading (Euros, British Pounds and US Dollars) also means that currency risk is reduced. Finally, this project nicely fits the sustainability aims of the island.

Without questioning the need for and the merit of this initiative, it’s worth highlighting a few concerns that arose as the presentation unfolded and the audience raised questions.

Size: The projections so far are to have 15 listings by the time it launches in September 2011 and up to 35 within 18 months. This is really a drop in the ocean when we think of the number of social enterprises aspiring to grow and needing access to dedicated capital. The truth is that the entry requirements are prohibitive for smaller organisations. There is a US$3700 entry fee plus an annual fee varying with the size of market capitalisation. To be eligible, the organisations must have a least one year of published financial statements, over 100 shareholders or over 10% of public debt holders. Most importantly, they must have over US$700 thousand of capitalised market value (or public debt).

Social Impact: Although a condition for entry (and yearly renewal) is primacy of the intent to generate positive social or environmental impact, each organisation is free to demonstrate its mission and impact as it chooses. There are no standardised metrics of social impact or common indicators that gets reflected live for all enterprises at it does for the share price. Instead, once they are listed all organisations become comparable mainly by their financial attractiveness, and the impact side of things runs the risk of falling behind the scenes. Admittedly, reflecting live social impact in a stock exchange way would be very difficult. It is not even granted that all organisations could convey the impact they generate using the same metrics. Therefore, it will rely on the investors to do the proper background check and reading the lengthier reports that the enterprises are required to submit at the time of their listing and the subsequent performance reports. This is not unrealistic, but one must be aware that this is how it works and not expect otherwise.

Other similar platforms: There are other trading marketplaces being developed to bring investors and enterprises together effectively and reduce transaction costs for impact investing. Some people may have heard of Pradeep Jethi’s Social Stock Exchange (SSE) to be launched in the UK, and there are already an Asian Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) founded in 2009, which will eventually seek to attract dual listings from social enterprises outside Asia, and Brazilian and Portuguese initiatives. Although they may all be addressing the same issue and appear to be redundant, there is an argument for the need of multiple social stock exchanges. Just as for the traditional securities market, most social enterprises and investors will likely prefer to engage in platforms that are in their proximity, both geographically and culturally. Therefore, each social stock exchange will be stimulating their regional activity to start with.

The iX may not be perfect as it stands and it may not be the solution that fits all social enterprises or all groups trying to support them, but it is A solution. It certainly has room to exist and a role to play in the promotion and aggregation of social enterprises. It’s still in its nascent phase and needs to be seen as a long-term project, as most things are in this sector. We need to adopt the patient approach if we want to ensure a sustainable growth of social businesses and social investment, and we must absolutely not succumb to the preference for perfection, speed, volume or short-term gains. Who knows, in the future this may be the alternative to the current financial system and its unruly market crises.

Finding Inspiration at Embercombe

This past weekend Tom and the Associates ventured to Embercombe, a social enterprise and valley in Devon that inspires individuals to take action to help build a socially just and environmentally sustainable world.

The weekend served as a pause for reflection as we begin our second placement of the year. In a few short days we experienced firsthand what sustainable living can look and feel like, and through conversations and individual self-exploration we discovered more about who we want to be as individuals and how we want to contribute toward shaping our future world.

At least a few of us were skeptical of what we assumed would be a weekend filled with trust falls and similar ‘team building’ exercises. Instead we found rejuvenation and renewed motivation through activities like woodworking, gardening, campfire story-telling (and rapping!), people planting (a bit hard to explain…), even playing on swings and monkey bars. Oh and do remember to ask when you next see one of us how to play ‘Zip, Zap, Boing.’

Every moment at Embercombe somehow led us to learn more about ourselves and about each other. Who knew- Peter can really rap, Dom's into Flamenco, Dalibor's an excellent woodworker. Through an exhausting yet immensely insightful feedback circle on our last morning, we shared with each other what we we respect about each other, what we perceive our strengths to be, and how we might improve upon those strengths.

Perhaps the most important lesson was that being an effective leader is not about telling others what to do, project management, or delegation. And as Liam Black noted earlier this week, it’s not about being the saviour, the tyrant, or the ‘I can do it all’ superhero. Instead, being an effective leader is about being yourself and using your personal style and strengths to move and inspire others. Strong leaders are genuine. They live the transformational change they hope to spark. They make their motivations transparent. They empathise with those they’re leading. They inspire as much by doing as by giving others space to do and grow.

The list could go on and on, but we challenge you to discover for yourself the rest. Come Sunday afternoon we were all reluctant to leave our yurts and to say goodbye to the breathtaking valley views and the amazing home-grown and home-cooked meals. We'll definitely be going back, and we'd urge you to go whenever you get a chance too. We promise that you'll be welcomed with open arms and a warm pot of lovingly cooked lentils.

Fond of the social impact bond?

In an age of government austerity, there is particular focus on spending public money wisely to achieve desired social outcomes. New schemes will involve variants of payment by results and outcome based commissioning. Another similar tool is the Social Impact Bond (SIB). It involves targeted interventions to prevent social problems occurring and the consequent public spending, for example truancy resulting in NEETs and the cycle of re-offending resulting in greater criminal justice costs. Investors fund interventions up front and are paid by the national government in proportion to the spending cuts achieved. The model is likely to work best with the following conditions:

• Timing: reasonable gap between interventions and results, say seven years or less.
• Causation: there is a demonstrable strong causal link between interventions and outcomes.
• Savings: there is a potentially large cost saving for identifiable government departments.
  

An example is an SIB vehicle put in place for St Giles Trust, along with other organisations, to provide support to 3,000 short-term prisoners over a six year period. If successful, investors will receive a return from 7.5% up to a maximum of 13% in proportion to the government savings.

With great expectations of such projects come great risks that must be allayed. The Young Foundation's paper identifies 4 risks:

• Execution risk: there is the difficulty of the outstanding results of a local project run by passionate people that can not replicated on a larger scale. Selection of providers with the ability to scale is imperative.

• Measurement risk: even if a provider can show that the results are statistically significant because the sample size is large enough, and that there is no systematic bias judged by comparison to a control group, there is still the underlying danger of gaming the measure. For example, the apparently robust measure of reoffending is vulnerable because it is measurement of the criminal justice process and not fundamental change of an ex-offender. A pressurised manager could hit targets by persuading the police not to prosecute their users of relatively petty offences for exceptional reasons or by reducing the detection rate of criminal activity by their clients, for example, by moving to a different part of the country where they are less well known to police. Fundamentally, the contractor must be trusted or measurements must be changed to capture the change in an ex-offenders' maturity, social ties and personal identity.

• Basis risk: the reality may be that there are no great savings. For example, the local authority does not save money if a provider prevents young people from going to prison because young offender institutions are funded by the Ministry of Justice. Likewise, to save on prison costs a whole wing of a prison may have to close before government achieves any actual savings. Carefully agreed outcomes and sharing of rewards may make the difference here.

• Unintended consequences: where a current provider of services affecting the target group is not included in the SIB and withdraws support for what could be a host of reasons. For example, in the Peterborough prison example, prison staff not included in the SIB may obstruct its progress so that their lack-lustre performance is not highlighted by the new initiative's success.

I have high expectations that the Peterborough project will be a success and pave the way for greater uses of social impact bonds in the criminal justice system and beyond. The next challenge will be to introduce this at a micro level by overcoming high transaction fees through a simplified model.

Corporate Conundrum

During my placement at O2, I thought about how both Social Enterprises and more traditional businesses can benefit most from working together.

What do big organisations want?

Corporations work hard and spend a lot of money to find out what their customers are thinking. In addition to understanding what services their customers need now, corporates are trying to predict the needs their customers will have in the future to help them design and improve their products and services.

The UK government is starting to act and move resources to the idea that communities can be better agents for change than government acting on their behalf. Insight and knowledge of community is a valuable and expensively acquired resource for private and public business, but Social Enterprises have geographic, social or ideological communities at the heart of what they do. This understanding of their communities is a tremendous asset.

What is the opportunity?

Corporates are big, very big. They have huge reach and potential to unlock resources. However, corporates are feeling the financial crisis too. Investing in innovation and producing new products is expensive and large companies can often be restricted in what they can do without risking their share price. Even fierce competitors are using collaboration and partnership to provide what customers want without betting the farm.

Social Enterprises can add value to corporates because they have insight and practice that other businesses need to improve their services. Social Enterprises do the responsive, community focused thinking and doing that corporates find very difficult everyday.

In return, corporates can provide the exposure and reach that Social Enterprises need to grow and increase their impact.

What not to do?
Don't assume that, because it's a corporate, they will have a lot of money to spend. Much of their spending will be tied up in untouchable budgets promoting their current products/services.

Don't assume that the social benefits your organisation delivers alone will ensure a partnership. Your aims may align with their CSR policy and with their brand image, but they will receive lots of partnership offers that may do this and more.

What to do?
Corporations are always looking for new ways to add value to their traditional offers. A few ideas are to:

• Design a new product just for them. Elvis and Kresse are experts at this, as evidenced by their work with Apple and Brompton Cycles
• Offer to work in partnership with them; don’t ask for sponsorship. Corporates have spent a long time building their business, and they didn’t do that by giving money away. Work out a way to help them to make money while contributing to your aims.
• Help make their staff happy. Replacing staff is a costly business. Lots of people in big companies wish that they could be doing more. Find opportunities to give these intrapreneurs access to the great stories and results you create.
  

If it doesn’t work out this time?
Don’t despair, keep trying and remember to help the people that have helped you! If you have got a meeting in a corporate, it’s most likely because of someone working within that organisation who believes in what you are trying to achieve. The chances are they will be taking a risk/doing a lot of work to get your voice heard.

There are many reasons why large organisations don’t do things. It may be nothing to do with your offer or the work you and your advocate have done.

Stay positive and stay in touch; you may get another chance at a different time.