The Big Society Blog

Randi is the founder of Good Giving Limited, a consultancy providing philanthropy education and advice to donors and their professional advisors, as part of strategic wealth management. As a trusted advisor in this emerging sector, she leverages her investment management, strategic planning and nonprofit experience. She also calls on 30 years of formalised personal and corporate giving.

Randi’s early career was in global financial services, working for Mellon Financial Corporation (now Bank of New York Mellon) in a number of business areas and international locations. She later co-founded Darwin Property Investment Management in London, a boutique investment firm focused on the leisure property sector.

Randi was recommended in Spear’s Philanthropy Index of the advisors to know. She serves on the Advisory Boards of Family Office Recruitment and Family Office Advisors LLP.

Randi studied in Madrid, holds a BA with honours in Economics and Spanish from Allegheny College in Pennsylvania and has done graduate work in investment management at London Business School.

An American national, Randi relocated to London from Australia in 1989 and now divides her time between the UK, the USA and Spain.

Written by Ashley Goodall

For about three years I’ve believed one of the great opportunities is for the city to embrace social finance. Towards the end of 2011 the idea finally broke cover; Deutsche bank put £10m into an investment fund, Big Society Capital are limbering in with £60m in 2012 , and other players like Big Issue Invest and Bridges are galloping into the market.  These are the early outliers, they are market making and will precipitate a deluge of funds into this new category. But – why now?

I believe there are a number of reasons.

• Nationally we have an appetite to reinvent the way we do things – people and government are inspiring change: The Coalition are deregulating the procurement market, encouraging social enterprise and localism. This means there is opportunity for new forms of business to run things (e.g. social services) and do things differently; social investment models offer a new innovative way to solve our problems and deliver better services and communities.
• Social pioneers have been hammering away at this one for a number of years and now receive a much higher media profile – like Mohammed Yunus. Then Deloitte, RBS and Skoll Foundation are influencing thinking at the intellectual entry points among business schools and management consultancies.
• The ethical investment market, which now takes a healthy 5%+ of city funds, is not dissimilar to that of Social Investment. And, if you look at sectors like clean tech which did not exist 10 years ago, you have the potential for a rapid growth market.
• Demand is also growing from people who want to invest their earnings in and patronise ‘socially good businesses’ whose ethos and practice delivers social benefits. At the same time, underpinning much of this is the opportunity to deliver moderate and even excellent financial returns.
• Finally, the incubators have arrived: NESTA and the Big Society Network’s Nexters platform, is focused on supporting social impact businesses, and nurturing them to success, giving confidence and tangible opportunities to innovative social businesses.
• All of this means that the market has reached a maturing tipping point where the risk is being reduced so fast and the benefit so strong that the decision to Social Invest has become inevitable.

The time is right; government growth opportunities, new innovative solutions, prevailing consumer trends, more pervasive champions in the sector, and early adopter financial organisations on the move, support mechanisms and the opportunity to make respectable returns…

What’s not to love?

Ashley Goodall is the Project Lead for Nexters, our programme to support the UK’s best Social Entrepreneurs.

For more information please visit http://www.nexters.co.uk/ or email frances@thebigsociety.co.uk

As a key partner of our Nexters programme, we are delighted to support Deloitte’s Social Innovation Pioneers programme which will support up to 50 inspiring entrepreneurs and social businesses.

The programme will deliver a package of support to entrepreneurs and social businesses who have the potential for growth and a desire to make a positive impact in society. The aim of the programme is to help these social businesses achieve scale and become investment ready.

The level of expertise and experience that will be invested in this programme is unparalleled, which makes this is an exciting step forward for the social business sector.

Heather Hancock, Managing Partner for Talent and Brand at Deloitte, said:  “Innovation and enterprise in the social business sector are increasingly a success story for the UK. It’s a highly dynamic sector, and in the vanguard of a movement that’s also seeing leading businesses re-connect their core business purpose with their impact in society.  Business can so often be a force for good – driving innovation, investment and skill that enable social progress and tackle some of our biggest societal challenges.  There can only be more opportunity and shared progress in harnessing this global movement with energy and fresh directions that social businesses contribute.

“However, social innovation and enterprise needs support, investment and advice to fully realise their potential.  Through the Deloitte Social Innovation Pioneers programme, we want to help those businesses fulfil their potential by offering our Partners’ and people’s expertise in realising high growth opportunities.  At the same time, we in Deloitte are keen to learn from their innovation and creativity.”

Those selected for the programme will receive:

• Skills sessions and workshops that combine Deloitte skills, experience and expertise in an interactive learning environment
• A Deloitte support team to manage the relationship, maximise benefits of participation and coach the business through their bespoke investment-ready plan
• Opportunities to network and work with a range of Deloitte professionals and a selection of their major client
• Introductions to a range of financial investors
• Support from key players in the Social Enterprise sector
• Access to a Deloitte programme logo

This is a great opportunity for anyone with a social business who wants to take it to the next stage. Businesses eligible for Deloitte Social Innovation Pioneers must be:

• UK based
• Any legal structure
• Achieving a turnover of £50k to £50m
• Stable and sustainable, with a clearly defined business model
• Delivering a clear social impact

For more information and to apply, please visit: www.deloitte.co.uk/pioneers

Written by Mary Jane Edwards

Even for their simple layout and straightforward questions funding applications can often still be daunting. I sat down to pen an application before Christmas, and after not having tackled one in a while I was much in need of a refresher. I compiled a rough checklist, which made me revaluate my approach and think about all the things I wish I’d known when I was starting out!

Every application will be different depending on what type of funding body you approach and what fund you are applying for but this mini briefing aims to cover the very basics of how to approach a funding application so you best communicate with your funder.

Making a start

Talk through the funding application with your colleagues making sure those you work with have the opportunity to input into the proposal. Once you’ve pulled together an initial proposition designate one person to pull all the information together, making sure any further contributions from other departments and or, persons are passed directly to this individual to avoid confusion.

Read the application several times, breaking down each question into a several mini-questions. This will help you to stick to specifics and avoid penning vague, generic statements. Applications often have limited word counts, so use clear and simple language to be succinct. If your application becomes too convoluted funders will lose interest.

Let it take shape

Build a checklist to ensure you have:

• Questioned what do you want to do and why what you want to do important.
• Chosen a title for the project that is accessible and self-explanatory to any reader.
• Asked yourself, are you responding to a problem? If so, outline why this needs to be solved.
• Made time for expansive research around your subject, collate statistics, facts and quotations that support, and prove the need for your proposed activity.
• Detailed how you will go about achieving your ultimate aims, referencing short, medium and long-term objectives.
• Understood what you will create/provide?
• Decided who you will be working with to implement these plans and why.
• Outlined what progress have you made to date?
• Built a timeline moving forward to detail what is needed to take the idea further: outlining any roles that you would like to recruit for, the next steps you want to take and the time this will take you (e.g. 6 months)

Budget breakdown

Create clear costings, include a budget outlining the costs for a: pilot, development phase or investment ready proposal. Be realistic when breaking down costs, budgets should accurately reflect the planning, research, project delivery and evaluation. Grant and funding assessors will always be on the look out for over and under estimated costings. If you don’t have a financial officer in your organisation it is well worth seeking external financial advice to enable you to be precise about how you will achieve your aims if your funding is successful.

Most funding bodies will want to know if you have approached any other funders or secured any other funding, and on what terms you have done so. Make sure you have researched as to whether the funding body you are applying to prefers to be the sole funder or understands that there may be a need/necessity for other investors. Be sure to detail in your application potential institutional investors, charitable foundations and funding bodies that you have approached or are already working with, and in what capacity.

Measuring Stick

As we are seeing more and more voluntary and community sector projects are becoming harder to evaluate, due to the nature of work they carry out, especially those that focus on social change and social outcomes. Thus it is important you carefully considered the expected returns of the project be they financial or social. Question whether you have a robust way of identifying your impact, will you engage a third party to assess and provide a true measure of the improvement in outcomes. Prove your organsiation has the capacity to manage, deliver and evaluate your proposed activity.

If you are capitalising on pre-existing models, don’t be afraid to make references to similar projects that have been successful. Offering a selection of case studies can reassure the funder that you have carried out relevant research and understand where your proposal would fit in the related sector and current economic climate etc.

‘I know nothing..’

Assume your funder isn’t familiar with your organisation, as after a while the text, which seems clear and coherent to the person writing the application may not be transparent and obvious to fresh eyes. Where appropriate mimic the language funders use in their guidelines. Be assertive, choosing confident words like ‘increase’ to describe your outputs and remind yourself of the funders’ objective at every stage. Think about what will set your application apart from others, is the proposal imaginative, will it capture the funders attention?

Depending on the type of funding you are applying for you may be asked to submit an exit strategy or risk mitigation analysis. Most funders will want to know what will happen when the funding comes to an end, therefore it is essential to carefully consider how you will promote and protect the sustainability or legacy of the project.

Thinking ahead

Even if the application is just an expression of interest and there is no requirement to detail timelines or provide development and or, delivery budgets, building the rest of the package will help enable you to have clearer vision of the whole. Fully understanding your proposal and the impact of the project as a whole will better equip you to breakdown, outline and respond to individual parts of the process or project delivery. Ask yourself honestly whether your vision, aims and objectives are achievable. Having a mental picture of the project coming to fruition could help you identify where will you need assistance; will you require legal advice, marketing and public relations support separate to your organisation’s current strategy?

If your application is successful you will be required to supply key information about your company/organisation; data, accounts, memorandum of articles etc, to prove you meet the eligibility criteria. Ensure you have assembled this prior to possible consultation dates with your funders.

Before submission

Get someone impartial to proof your final draft. Requesting trusted individual’s opinions and perspectives on your approach is vitally important: be open to criticism and constructive feedback, as it will encourage you to refine your answers and project plans. Don’t make any schoolboy errors at the final hurdle – be sure to complete all sections and submit everything requested.

And finally… good luck!

Read Mary Jane’s article in the Guardian here.

Written by Steve Moore

On Christmas Eve Billy Bragg tweeted ‘the best thing about this time of year is that everything stops for a while. I hope you find some peace this Christmas’. He added a link to a YouTube video of one of my favourite tracks of 2011, Holocene – go have a look; it is wonderful song. But the message of stopping at Christmas struck me as being particularly powerful after a hectic 2011 and before , what everyone seems to have concluded, will be a very tough 2012. Stopping to spend time with our families and cherished friends. Stopping to sleep longer and better. Stopping to catch up on music movies and reading. The Christmas and New Year was for me a required stop. I hope you stopped too.

Reacquainting myself slowly with the life in real time in the first few days of 2012 I was struck by how – perhaps serendipitously – much optimism, or rather, clamorous pleas to think optimistically about the year ahead I came across. As an irrepressible optimist I do tend to heat seek these kind of voices and views but three in particular struck me as having particular resonance going into this year.

Firstly, two consecutive posts here and here by the revered JP Rangaswami on ‘Why I’m Excited about 2012’. What is so striking about JP is both that he makes no attempt to understate the scale of the challenges we face; ‘a whole new class of problem for humanity to face, global in their construct, immense in their complexity’ but of confidence that we can create new tools to help us solve them; ‘So we need new tools, tools that allow people to collaborate with low cost of entry, low cost of operation, low cost of change, low cost of exit; tools that work globally, consistently, across culture and geography and language; tools that are device- and location- and scale- (and for that matter socio-economic grouping-) agnostic’ ne

Secondly, I chanced upon an interview on The Browser with Roman Krznaric. Krznaric’s new book The Wonder Box asks the question ‘what am I doing with my life?’ I am naturally wary of this time of thing being very sceptical about the self-help movement, but I stuck with it and am delighted I did. It is brim-full of insights drawn not from philosophy, religious teachings or psychology but drawing on the writing and lives of great writers including Tolstoy, Thoreau and Orwell which he uses to answer the question about both the Art of Living and the Art of Dying – or deathstyle as prefers to call it. The book also introduced me to Albert Schweitzer a now largely forgotten 19th century literary and intellectual superstar who trained as a doctor, left Paris and went to work in a leper hospital in the West African jungle. He went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize for his medial work there. He uses all these insights to weave together a compelling, fresh argument about how we conduct our relationships, make decisions about the life we lead and the crucial importance of empathy. He concludes that ‘The traditional way to think about social change is about changing political institutions – new laws, new policies, overthrowing government and so on. I think social change is actually about creating a revolution of human relationships’ 

Finally, yesterday, the think tank Policy Exchange published a short pamphlet by Anthony Seldon the distinguished historian and teacher on The Politics of Optimism. It sets out not just an abridged history about how 20th century Government succeeded and failed but also sets out a framework to  revivify the Big Society concept and to rediscover the entire purpose of Government in the 21st century.

His central supposition is that the Coalition Government needs to take a more activist role to redress the damage done by government over the last 50 and more years.

“This creates the ironic position that government action is needed to help ensure that the role of government is reduced in the future. Since the advent of the welfare state, government policy has eroded the capacity of individuals, families and communities to look after themselves. It has degraded individual autonomy by its intrusion into the lives of individuals and families, and by reducing personal responsibility. It has nurtured the belief that others are to blame for difficulties and misfortune and that others will solve the problems, rather than the individuals and families themselves. It has corroded autonomous bodies and actions within communities, often for the very best of motives, but with a diminution of individual and community agency’

Seldon goes on to argue that schools and universities need to play a more prominent role in developing a Big Society, that more should be done to support the traditional family, to recommend a whole suite of community initiatives and to champion more ‘early intervention’ measure around public health, youth unemployment and social housing.

Seldon calls for activism and optimism to be a the heart of the next stage of the Big Society evolution to restore trust in Government and institutions, to help the Coalition define its domestic programme and to help Britain come through the current economic crisis as a stronger more cohesive society.

Seldon is no naive optimist. He has a peerless insight into how modern British governments operate and the statecraft required to make them effective.

Seldon’s New Year political message is a measured but hopeful one. Krznaric sees the lessons in the past as guide to how we can develop an art of living,  a way of conducting our relationships and of bringing about enduring social change.  Rangaswami looks to the future and the technologies we have at our disposal and open data ‘the new raw material of the 21st century’ as ways of usurping institutional inertia and stalled progress.

From there different vantage points they offer up fresh ways of thinking about how Government operates, how we can conduct our human relationships and how we can harness the unique affordances of our age to create a bigger, better and more open society.

Over the coming days and weeks I will be setting out how the Big Society Network – an organisation built on optimist view of human nature and upon enriching human relationships and how technology can aid and support these ambitions – will engage with partners to deliver ambitious plans for 2012.

Happy New Year!

Written by Steve Moore

In December 2010 I accepted the invitation to provide interim leadership and direction for the Big Society Network. One year on I am delighted to be posting the first blog post for our new website.

It has been quite a year. It has flown by in a whirl of meetings, connections, ideas and events. Browse around the new site and you will see ample evidence of how busy, ambitious and bold we have been.

The Big Society Network of December 2011 is barely recognisable from the organisation I inherited a year ago. Our team is almost wholly comprised of people who joined us in 2011, we have a fabulous new home as part of a community of cultural and social enterprises based in Somerset House and we have launched a suite of new programmes, brands, partnerships and sponsorship arrangements.

We have created an organisation that reflects the passion, values, talents and experience of the entire team.

Our new mission statement, I believe, encapsulates our hope and ambition:

The Big Society Network exists to support the development of talent, innovation and enterprise that creates genuine social impact. By working with business, philanthropists, charities and social ventures we believe we can unleash an untapped resource of social energy that can help build a bigger, better, healthier society.

I am proud of the foundations we have laid this year.

Our Nexters programme supported by Deloitte, NESTA and the Clydesdale Bank has created a community of twenty five outstandingly talented social entrepreneurs who have ambitions that match our own.

Within the Nexters group we have the talent to:

- reinvent how businesses think about and enact their social responsibility,

- create genuinely disruptive innovations to promote new forms of charity giving,

- provide scalable mediation of professional giving of time to good causes,

- begin to explore the potential of the nascent sharing economy,

- launch a suite of new multi-source platforms for funding community and arts productions.

In 2012 we plan to create an impact investment fund to support Nexters and bring on board new partners and sponsors.

Our Spring Giving programme launched in October in partnership with the Nominet Trust and will publish its first report before Christmas. There is a real need and demand in the charity and philanthropy communities for new research insights to inform investments in technology innovation. We want to position Spring as a focal point for thought leadership and research and development across the giving sector. We will be launching some new projects early in 2012. If you have ideas you would like to explore with us please do get in touch.

The area of work that I inherited and have maintained and grown is focused on local democratic innovations – Your Local Budget – and community development – It’s Our Community With the Localism Act now on statute books there is a real opportunity to develop a rich body of development work supporting local community empowerment and engagement. In January we will be consolidating this work under the Fuse Local brand.

So nurturing a community of sustainable, scalable social ventures, ardently championing disruptive innovation in giving and promoting community entrepreneurship have been the key planks of the ‘new’ Big Society Network and next year we will build upon the confident start we have made in 2011.

But we also have a suite of major new launches planned for early 2012 including

-        Get In – our new partnership with the sports and fitness industry to help create the fittest, healthiest generation in our history.

-        Social Innovation Trade Missions – two new trade missions to the US to create new opportunities for British social ventures to break into new markets across the Atlantic

-        Bond of Hope – a new Youth Employment Bond inspired by a series of blogs posted by Matthew Taylor of the RSA to test a new approach to tackling youth unemployment

So the scaffolding has come down on the new Big Society Network. We have achieved what we have so far by seeking out and backing talent, by championing innovation and innovators, by working ideas hard and by attracting likeminded partners and sponsors.

We are a restless, passionate group; together we have created a dynamic, agile organisation. We see social energy everywhere and love how networked innovation can harness and unleash it to create social impact. We are optimists at a time when optimism is in short supply. We want be bold when others are playing safe. We want to be alive to opportunity but focused on making an impact.

In short, we are ambitious and want to seek out and work with those who share our notion of what is possible.

We want you follow us, challenge us and engage with us.

We hope you love the new website.

Our ambition is clear and compelling: we want to create the fittest, healthiest generation in our history. Get In is a unique new partnership that brings together the sports and physical-activity industry, 160 top businesses and three outstanding social enterprises to harness the power of sport and volunteering to transform the aspirations and enhance the fitness and diet of 460,000 children.

Read more »

Andy Hamflett has been working in the political and community empowerment field for over 15 years, both in the public and voluntary sectors. He was the Chief Executive of the Youth Parliament for nearly six years. Andy has spoken regularly to the media and at conferences on a range of democracy and policy issues, and has provided written and verbal evidence to Parliamentary Select Committees on related matters. He has advised Government on a wide range of youth related issues.

Andrew Dick started his career as an economic development consultant, this was followed by a period of time as a Senior Policy Advisor for the CBI. At TimeBank Andrew helped establish a nationwide refugee mentoring scheme working in 20 cities across the UK and helped create a volunteer recruitment campaign to support London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games which ended up recruiting 100,000 volunteers. He has also been the Chief Executive of Envision, an award winning youth charity.

Molly Bedingfield founded Global Angels in 2004, her passion having been created by over 25 years of active management, leadership development, mentoring and motivational speaking within the international charity sector. This has brought her alongside thousands of inspirational and dedicated charity workers on all continents and some of world’s most vulnerable children.

Over the course of that time she has also been practicing as a professional counselor, psychotherapist and life coach, working within the business and charity sectors, and entertainment industry.

In the 1990′s she was head teacher of two inner city schools working on a pilot program, reproducible in any culture. She worked closely with children, parents and teachers, experimenting with new models of education, focusing on what each child was good at and helping build their confidence.

In 1978, Molly qualified as a Physiotherapist, studying in Auckland, New Zealand. She is married to John, and is mother of Daniel, Natasha, Nikola and Joshua.

Inspired by the potential of social investment and social innovation Mary Jane has recently joined the Big Society Network. Previously she established The Old Vic Tunnels’ (TOVT) award winning Volunteer Scheme, opening up the process of creation to over 1500 young people in London. From TOVT’s inception Mary Jane supported and gained experience across all departments. She went on to programme The Screening Room theatre space, project manage original productions and coordinate external events including TOVT’s involvement in Wilderness Festival 2011. Mary Jane continues to work in a freelance capacity, notably co-producing comedy duo Robin and Partridge. With a background in European theatre Mary Jane forged links with the Grotowski Institute in Poland, supporting the Institute’s teaching activities and methodology of practice. Her studies, research and training have included periods at L’institute del Teatre in Barcelona and the Radnotti Theatre in Budapest.

Her passion to involve and provide opportunities for young people inspires her contribution to the Big Society Network, promoting profitable business models that have social objectives at their core.

Giles is a founding partner and the CEO of Good Business, a strategic consultancy that helps some of the world’s leading organisations to be more successful, by being more responsible. After business school, Giles began his career at confectionery giant Cadbury Schweppes, serving in the Marketing Department on the development and launch of some of the UK’s most successful consumer products. Giles then moved to advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, where he managed a wide range of domestic and international marketing campaigns. He then helped set up M&C Saatchi in 1995 before starting Good Business in 1997 with Steve Hilton. Since then Good Business has advised many of the world’s leading companies including L’Oreal, Fiat, Mcdonald’s, The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft and Everything Everywhere.

Giles plays an active role in the charity sector advising a number of charities, he is a Fellow of Wellington College and currently holds the Directorship of ‘We Are What We Do’, a Social Enterprise focused on creating consumer led social change best known for its book Change the World for a Fiver which sold a million copies and initiatives like Historypin and Internet Buttons. Most recently Giles has set up a new not for profit, called the Sustainable Restaurant Association, supporting restaurants in the UK to become the most sustainable in the world (www.thesra.org). The Sunday Times recently called the initiative ‘the Michelin stars of Sustainability.

Founder of The Social Kinetic and Senior Counsel to The Bell Pottinger Group and Director of the soon to be launched Adoptaschool, Claire is currently focusing on Big Society: democratic engagement, social innovation, corporate responsibility/partnership and behaviour change. She is Senior Counsel to Bell Pottinger in addition to working independently with Government and major brands. Her interest in the Big Society means she can help corporates and communities respond to the challenges and opportunities of localism and civic engagement – helping organisations develop strategies which build ‘social capital’ and engage their communities purposefully. She is currently a keen supporter of the Big Society Network Nexters programme and has an active interest in the growth of social enterprise. Claire has led global, national and regional projects for clients across the public and private sectors. Her clients have ranged from government departments to major brands such as PepsiCo, GSK, BAE, Deloitte, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank and media groups such as Sky. To deliver these projects se brings teams together including people from strategy, media, digital, public affairs, internal communications, CSR, marketing, research and engagement, stakeholder relations, change management and publishing.

Harry is Project Manager for Spring, which is exploring the potential of technology to increase giving, and he also supports the CEO and Director of External Relations with the Big Society Network’s wider work.

Prior to joining BSN, Harry worked for the Conservative Party Co-Chairman, the Rt Hon Baroness Warsi and for her predecessor the Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP.

He has always been interested in causes and the attempt to make positive social impact and has enjoyed volunteering for charities, such as SolarAid, which is having success with micro-franchise solar power projects, and The Dodwell Trust, which operates philanthropic projects in Madagascar. Out of that latter relationship grew a business idea; in 2009 Harry co-founded an internet company on the island of Nosy Be, off the coast of Madagascar.

He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford and English Literature at the University of Bristol.

This project will identify innovative forms of community-led services and models of ownership of local services by community organisations, through comparison across Europe. We will identify practical forms of delivering community-led services, including mutual and co-operative models.

The project will seek to answer the questions ‘How can people take control?’ and; ‘What’s the most appropriate method for specific services?’

Increasingly local people are seen as co-designers and even co-producers of services rather than mere consumers. This project will identify ways of highlighting the most innovative models of local ownership, drawing from European examples. The project enables the most ground-breaking models to be shared across Europe for the first time.

‘It’s our community’ is in association with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and NESTA