Social enterprise awards: big companies step in to provide support (External Post – Guardian Social Enterprise Network)

Rose Marley, co-founder of youth social enterprise Motiv, is very happy to be one of the 126 social enterprises through to the second round of the Deloitte Social Innovation Pioneers Programme.

Her venture, founded in 2005, gives rewards to school pupils to encourage attendance and has been very successful. But she is now at a crossroads and is hoping Deloitte will help Motiv move forward.

“There have been so many changes across the education sector over the past couple of years. We are looking for strategic input to enable us to gain greater financial stability and social impact long-term,” she says.

“The Deloitte scheme is exactly the kind of support we’d benefit from right now, and it seems like a genuine and fair exchange of value. Applying was straightforward.”

Big private financial companies such as Deloitte, Santander, Lloyds and Ernst & Young have all opened social enterprise development schemes in recent months. Both Santander and Deloitte say they’ve had around 300 applicants, and Santander will get more when the scheme goes nationwide in June.

Many in social enterprise are glad of a new source of support, a little funding and the potential to get known people in the private sector world.

But what impact will these new awards and programmes have?

Most provide mentoring, advice on business development, networking, and sometimes cash and in exchange they get good PR, access to new clients in a fast-growing sector and insights into how that sector does business.

Several support agencies such as Social Enterprise UK and UnLtd, which are running some of the sessions on the schemes, think social enterprises should take this chance to further their own message and see what can be gained.

“Not only does it help some social ventures directly, it raises the game overall, and brings social conscience into the commercial sector in a much more dynamic and compelling way than simply donating cash or time would do,” says Cliff Prior, chief executive of UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs.

Yet some social entrepreneurs aren’t satisfied with what’s on offer from these programmes.

“Are they getting social enterprises into their supply chain, in the way Wates is, for example? Or is it just mentoring to within an inch of your life?” says Sara McGinley, deputy chief executive of Social Firms UK.

“Our members want business. They could also do with some free services; what about a free CD on taxation, as a basic example? They need something simple that doesn’t involve them filling in countless application forms and going on more beauty parades where ‘young and sexy’ social businesses always get picked.”

Social entrepreneur Craig Dearden Phillips, who runs Stepping Out , agrees. He was asked by one company to apply for their awards, but refused. “People [who win the awards] seem to get bit of mentoring and a few set pieces. Some free services would be a lot more helpful,” he says.

A handful of social entrepreneurs also told us they’d been hotly pursued by some of the companies but had turned down their offer. Dave Dawes, of preponline, an e-learning social enterprise for nurses refused Goldman Sachs, and he says several of his peers also refused. But several hundred social entrepreneurs will be going on these schemes this year alone.

What might the effects be of these new awards programmes? Prior says UnLtd is encouraging privates to be really specific and to consider joint call-outs. “There is a risk that a large number of overlapping schemes could be confusing and result in too much time spent applying for quite similar awards to the neglect of running the social venture,” he warns.

One commentator on the popular Beanbags and Bullsh!t blog suggests that corporates might even support social enterprises to grow and then take them over and turn them into private businesses. His comments are part of a provocative discussion on this topic at the blog led by David Floyd, founder of Social Spider. Floyd suggests the awards could mean the types of social enterprises coming through in the next 10 years could be fundamentally different to their predecessors because they’ll be guided by input from corporates. Another possible consequence, he adds, could be “growing numbers of social enterprises that actually break even or better by selling goods or services.”

The awards and programmes

Santander Social Enterprise Development Awards

The prize money on offer ranges from ??15,000, ??30,000 or ??50,000, depending on turnover. Alongside the money, winners can access a package of support from mentoring, business advice, bespoke university training courses, paid interns and help to assess community impact. The pilot phase ends in March 2012 and the Awards will be launched nationally in June.

Robin Foale, managing director of Santander Business Banking: “The Awards have been created as part of Santander’s commitment to supporting small businesses in the UK. The social enterprises we spoke to when we were developing the awards gave us a clear message: there was a lack of support to help established businesses in their next stage of growth.  Through SEDA our aim is to help social enterprises looking to expand to realise their goals, and at the same time support local economic development and job creation.”

Deloitte Social Innovation Pioneers programme

Delopitte says that it will shortly announce  up to 50 social businesses that demonstrate strong growth potential to be part of its new annual programme. According to Deloitte, the winners will receive a bespoke package of support including access to a specially selected Deloitte support team to manage their growth plan;  the opportunity to participate in skills workshops and  networking opportunities, support in finding investment and a possible chance to become a supplier to Deloitte.

Bob Thust, Head of Corporate Responsibility at Deloitte, says “The response to Pioneers has been fantastic and we’re very excited about the calibre of the businesses that have applied.  We believe we can help the Pioneers realise their potential, thorough using our expertise and networks, and by developing joint partnerships that add real value to both organisations

Lloyds/School for Social Entrepreneurs

According to Lloyds, each year, over the next five years, 100 start-up and developing social entrepreneurs will be able to secure a place with the School for Social Entrepreneurs through the Lloyds Banking Group Social Entrepreneurs Programme. Lloyds says that, launching in April 2012, the programme will create an enduring legacy across the UK by building the confidence, skills and networks of 500 local people working to address a social need and regenerate their l
ocal communities. Lloyds believes that social enterprise is set to play an increasingly important role in the economy, and it says that social entrepreneurs will be given a place on SSE’s action-learning focused Start-Up or Scale-Up learning programmes and access to grants of between ??4,000 and ??25,000.

To find out more visit here or to register your interest email Alexa Kellow

Ernst & Young Accelerate scheme

Starting last month, up to 300 young business leaders and social entrepreneurs ??? recommended by UnLtd, Striding Out and others ??? will participate in 14 workshops in London over five months. Devised in consultation with entrepreneurs, the sessions will cover various aspects of developing a business, including social return on investment.

Iain Wilkie, partner at Ernst & Young says “Ernst & Young has a long standing relationship with entrepreneurs.  Accelerate is an opportunity for us to provide practical support to the future engines of the economy and for us to make the difference to them.  Through the workshops, we hope to help young business leaders and social entrepreneurs to grow and develop their businesses and employees by providing a quality of support and advice that they may not otherwise have had access to.” &nbsp.

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via socialenterprise.guardian.co.uk

Co-Producing Shared Value

I attended three very different events last week – all of which in some way strengthened my confidence that there’s a real market for  shared value supply chains.

The first event was the CUTEC (Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club) Technology Ventures Conference.  One of the key speakers was Mike Addison, Global Head of Business Development at P&G speaking on open innovation.  You don’t tend to think of P&G as a hugely open company, but he had some strong examples and ended on a plea to all the entrepreneurs in the room to approach P&G and challenge them on how they do everything and help them co-create better products.  A call-to-action for co-production between supplier and customer.  No explicit reference to social entrepreneurs or social value – but an interesting insight into how even quite traditional businesses are now thinking.

Later that evening I attended Matthew Taylor’s excellent President’s Address at the RSA – Enlightened Enterprise.  Matthew focused a great deal on the power of big business as a tool to instigate behaviour change amongst consumers: “by helping us to align our desires, needs and social values, companies can themselves align commercial opportunity with social purpose. By doing so, they can create both deeper customer relationships and new business models.” – and followed with great examples from Nike to Dove.  He also referenced ‘downstream’ CSR – how consumers behave after they have purchased a company’s product.   Finally, he ended with “If an enlightened company has insights and capacities which can improve the efficiency and sustainability of those in its supply chain, it will see the benefits of sharing that wisdom around. Some of the best and most innovative responsible practices are in the SME and social enterprise sectors; enlightened partnering by larger companies can tap into and enhance this potential.”

The Video is embedded below and I’d recommend anyone to take an hour to watch it.  Hopefully it will be RSA Animate-d soon.

Matthew was joined by Ian Cheshire, CEO of Kingfisher (parent organisation of B&Q). Ian seems genuinely to have a sustainability agenda at the core of his beliefs and has worked hard to integrate it through the company.  But he admitted that convincing shareholders of the value was much tougher, lamenting that  there is nothing in the valuation of a company that reflects its sustainability.  “You just can’t discuss life beyond 5 years with investors.  I only do it because I think it’s right”.  He added  that in order to do this we must change pension funds from quarterly reporting to longer term. (Interesting aside – the comment from Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever at a recent conference: “We cannot choose between growth and sustainability – we must have both. If you buy into our approach to long-term value creation… then invest in us, if not… don’t”).

Matthew Taylor ended his talk by saying he sees success as an end to the use of CSR as phrase – as it suggests it’s not a mainstream and inherent part of business.  I couldn’t agree more. 

Finally on Friday I attended UnLtd’s Social Futures event: a coming together of social entrepreneurs, UnLtd staff & trustees, civil servants, private sector staff and some of our partners to help co-produce some of our new products (insightly written up by the ever-insightful Nick Temple here).  One key piece of research, commissioned by UnLtd and delivered by Sidekick Studios, showed that for our Award Winners  the most important step along their journey was finding the first big customer.  It was also the number one request for support they didn’t feel UnLtd currently offered.  I took the opportunity to lead one of the break-out groups tasked with developing products that UnLtd might launch to target this problem.  It was a rapid exercise, resulting in a poster and 2 minute presentation – but we developed a concept of brokerage: UnLtd providing a consultancy service to big businesses (understanding their supply chain needs) and then scouting, filtering and connecting relevant social businesses to them.  Richard Tyrie of Good People was in the team and he is obviously very interested in this area.  His research suggested a £150bn market for the Social Value bill alone.  And he had strong examples of other areas where consumer-facing companies make financial benefits from social value creation including Tesco’s mobile phone recycling initiative that saw huge growth in sales of new phones for Tescos – great shared value through what Matthew Taylor would call downstream CSR. The 9 pitches went to the public vote and ours won (positive comments ranged from ‘this is bringing CSR into the mainstream…’ to ‘this is bringing social entrepreneurs into the mainstream!’).  Sadly no big money prizes – but a good indication there is support from varied stakeholders for the initiative.

One of the other key findings of the UnLtd research was that there’s a commitment gate that entrepreneurs pass-through.  Confidence is needed to get through each gate.  I feel these three events mean I’ve past through one commitment gate.  This blog is now live…

 

Building Shared Value Supply Chains

It seems to me that the three problems outlined below have one solution.  Big business can help social businesses and social businesses can help big business.

But to actually deliver genuine social and financial growth, we need social entrepreneurs and big businesses to actually work TOGETHER.  This means social entrepreneur actively seeking out private sector contracts, doing everything they can to make themselves as competitive as possible in this marketplace (including proving they are a sustainable organisation themselves) and zeroing in on the one piece of social value they are set up to deliver in the process.  Beyond that, their focus should be on creating financial value for big business – like all other supply chain partners would.  Unless they do, they won’t ever be a real part of the business world, they will remain an act of charity.  As a genuine part of the supply chain, social entrepreneurs aren’t relying on hand-outs (of time or money).  They’re doing what they should be doing: creating social value whilst building a sustainable organisation.  Crucially this is achieved through regular contracts with clients that aren’t grant-funders or a broke public sector. 

Recent research commissioned by UnLtd identified “finding a ‘good’ customer” as  the key tipping point in the journey of a social entrepreneur and also the one thing they most requested from us as a support organisation.   So why not look to the private sector?  It seems to me that social entrepreneurs spend far too long worrying about whom to have in their own supply chain and much less trying to get into other organisations’.

As someone who’s worked for two huge global businesses and now with dozens of tiny social enterprises, I can say the idea that they operate in entirely different, incompatable worlds is crazy.  There are far more similarities than differences in the kinds of people that work in each, and though maybe the language is different, the only real problem I can identify is the age-old ‘fear of the unknown’.

For big business, there is value too.  They get to create genuine social value that we know engages staff and customers, just by picking the right partners: a simple decision between two partners in their supply chain that offer equal financial value to them….  Only then can these businesses test the hitherto-unexplored-by-most-businesses-but-seemingly-obvious-to-the-rest-of-us hypothesis that building social value in the places you work actually creates, not hampers, longterm financial value.

This is particularly important for those private companies looking to deliver public services – and this is where this process has already begun, for instance in the forthcoming Work Programme.  There are many advantages to big businesses delivering public services: scale and efficiency to name but two.  But such is the social cost big businesses  often create that the public (and sometimes government) are, rightlyconcerned.  Having private sector firms with social entrepreneurs at every stage of the supply chain should go some way to easing these concerns.