Creative Co-orporation

By Martin Underwood


With the increasing appetite of private organisations to procure services from the third sector (see the last blog entry), many purpose-driven organisations are taking up this challenge.

With respect to the provision of training to the private sector, a well developed opportunity is to develop coaching and mentoring skills of private-sector employees whilst making a social impact. Employee Volunteering offers a service for emerging leaders in companies to build their coaching skills by assisting long-term unemployed youths for a 6 month period. Others seek to embed long-term change in the public sector by developing management and leadership skills of staff in the public sector. For example, Teaching Leaders, an education charity that develops outstanding teachers into front-line leaders in challenging schools, has a peer mentoring scheme between the high-potential teacher participants and business employees. The rise in user generated products, like Apps for Good that teaches young people the skills to create apps that change their world, may provide more great opportunities for private-sector employees to develop coaching and mentoring skills in an entrepreneurial and rewarding context.

Certainly, the more creative opportunities to offer products and services must be tailored to the particular company. Legal & General has partnered with, amongst other third sector organisations, Macmillan and Nationwide to find out how cancer affects individuals' financial affairs, with the British Heart Foundation to help employers to encourage their workforces to be healthier, and with the Bicycle Helmet Initiative Trust to save young people's lives by promoting cycle safety. Graham Precey, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Legal & General, advises third sector organisations to articulate what their expertise is and to develop products that meet the needs of the private sector. In this way, it is possible to both create a sustainable source of income and charge commercial rates.

More generally, an answer to reduced government funding and to sustainable and diversified funding streams may rest in this. Those organisations that can use their staff's detailed knowledge of their organisation's expertise and adapt this creatively to companies' needs are more likely to succeed in this end.