The Social Business

Social enterprise and the green salad test

We arrived in Cardiff this afternoon. I've come with Antonia and Francis pre-Voice, and we've been blessed with sunshine so far.

We've never been to Cardiff before so we thought we'd all come down. It's also all part of the vaguely-green-plan to stay in places longer when we travel. It seems a shame to come all this way for 24 hours.

We ate this evening at Jamie's Italian, Jamie Oliver's new chain of restaurants. We'd been walking through town earlier in the day and Francis had spotted a guy in the window, making pasta. Great theatre, great marketing, and as a result there was no chance of us going anywhere else.

One thing's for sure, if you've spent the last ten years going on about the importance of top quality ingredients, then you'd best make sure that your restaurant is up to scratch.

I have to say we were well impressed, and we clearly weren't alone; people were queuing around the proverbial block. The food was great, the service spot-on, and it was the most child-friendly restaurant I've ever been to. And not in a crayons and party hats way. More in a this-place-is-for-kids-too way.

If you watch Jamie on the telly he often says that the best way to judge a restaurant is to order a green salad. You can tell a lot about a place by its green salad. It might be iceberg, browning at the edges. Or it could be pseudo-posh lambs lettuce, straight out of a bag.

Or it might be juicy, tasty, artisan leaves, simply dressed. The point is there's no scope for adding false value, it's either top quality or it ain't.

So we ordered his green salad. He passed his test, with a bit of room for improvement (leave the daft yoghurt dressings to Pizza Express). But these leaves were clearly in a field til not too long ago, and hadn't come to us via a packing plant.

If you promise, you must deliver. Jamie taught me a lesson this evening, and it's one all social entrepreneurs could take note of too. We're going to spend the next few days banging the social enterprise drum. The Social Enterprise Mark will be launched, with big promises about how it will help social enterprise to break through into mainstream British life.

But will we pass the green salad test and live up to our hype?

OWL Energy Use Monitor - Review

I blogged a few months ago about buying an energy use monitor with the money I won for my post about plastic bags.  

That was a few months ago, and as planned, I'm passing the monitor on to some friends.  So here are my thoughts.  If you've tried to keep an eye on your energy usage, please let me know how you've got on - and share any tips below.

Grow it - and they might not come

It's always interesting to confront people with their worst nightmare early on a Saturday morning.  

I ran a marketing workshop on Saturday on behalf of the Soil Association, for a group of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects.  I'm a big fan of the CSA approach - the main idea being that local people share some of the risk with the grower by paying up front, in return for a regular share of the harvest over that year.  I was a member of a CSA at Swillington Farm - and they've also recently set up a CSA arrangement (to rear a pig) with Salvo's -  a local Italian restaurant which you may recently have seen on Gordon Ramsey's F Word.  There are plenty more businesses which have adopted the model - including a Community Supported Bakery which I wrote about here.

The marketing workshop was themed around the title - Grow it - and they might not come.  This in turn was inspired by the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams - in which rookie farmer Ray Kinsella hears a voice which tells him to build a baseball pitch in his field.  The voice tells him "If you build it, he will come" - and sure enough the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven other Chicago White Sox players turn up to play on his field.

As you can imagine people thought Ray was nuts.  People who want to set up CSAs sometimes meet with a similar response.  Getting people to pay up front to buy veg from you - when all that currently exists is a sketch of your planting plan and a seed catalogue - can be a challenge.  That's where an effective marketing plan can help.

A do-able marketing plan for your CSA

View more presentations from robg.

I talk about marketing as building relationships with customers.  This concept sits well with CSAs.  You need to build relationships if people are to trust that you will grow food for them.  I take people through my step-by-step plan - which requires you to think carefully about your business - and in particular your customers - but doesn't require you to have any formal marketing background.  

During the workshop we split into groups and each group creates a plan - using an innovation which, even if I say so myself, I'm very proud of - upcycled wallpaper - used in place of flipchart paper.  £2 spent in Oxfam has to be better than £10 spent in Staples, surely?

 

Aside from the eco-benefits (which won me early greenie points with my organic audience), I'm a big believer in thinking sideways along a page, rather than down a page.  There is something about a portrait flipchart which makes you anxious - you get to the bottom of a page and you start losing the will to live - because the stuff at the bottom feels weighed down by what's gone before (and you're now kneeling on the floor, writing like a four year old).  You're also wondering whether to squeeze a few more words on - or start a new page.   Whereas, with a roll of Upcycled Wallpaper  Flipchart ^TM you can keep on writing - and keep referring back, drawing lines where there are connections, etc etc.

The risk I take with this workshop is that I spend very little time talking about the things that some people expect me to talk about.  Some people want clear guidance - a top ten of the best ways to market your business - that kind of thing.  I don't believe in that stuff.  As my Iced Tea slide suggests, what works in one place doesn't necessarily work in another.  That's why I talk people through what they need to think about - so that they can then make their best judgement about what it's best to do.  That way, you also start thinking about ways to market your business which don't cost a great deal of money.

My four year old son was a bit confused on Saturday morning, given that I was going to work.  He asked me what I was doing.  I told him I was running a workshop.  

"Is it like Santa's workshop?"  he asked.   

"Son", I said, "Today I will give people a gift greater than any that Santa could give.  A do-able marketing plan."  He looked at me a bit confused, and carried on eating his breakfast.    

RBS - what a waste

I saw this today in Leeds City Centre.  Is it a business making it clear that they own the bin, or is it political graffiti inspired by Royal Bank of Scotland's role in the takeover of Cadbury?

 
 

Social Impact Camp

I'm on the train home after a productive and enjoyable afternoon and evening in London.

I'd spent the morning in Leeds working with people with whom I'll soon be setting up a social business (yes me, the second Earl of Pointing Out That Other People Aren't Running Their Social Enterprises Quite As Well As They Could Be, setting up a social business.  It'd best be good.)

I spent the afternoon at RSA House making the most of their library facilities.  It's nice to feel that there's a little bit of London that's "mine".  On a day spent thinking about social impact, it was interesting to be reminded of the RSA's goal - to remove barriers to social progress.  A neat mission.  

This evening I went to the first Social Impact Camp, organised by Bright One Communications at UnLtd.  The idea was to bring together a load of social entrepreneurs who are interested in looking at ways that they can measure and prove the impact that their business has.

It's a crucial issue - and one that I've written about before.  My interest - and the reason I went down today - is in trying to develop ways to measure impact which are do-able by your average small business - social or otherwise.  I've had a fair bit of experience of most of the social accounting methods that are used within our sector, and let's just say I have an open mind as to whether they are appropriate and useful for the majority of people with whom I work. 

The thinking behind them is sound, and the methodology rigorous.  But I'm not wholly sure they are an appropriate use of time and resources for many small organisations.  Traidcraft, yes.  The Guardian, yes.  Fifteen Foundation, yes.  But most people I work with - and me?  No.

My impression from chatting with people tonight is that there are plenty of other people who feel the same.  A number of people hinted at feeling that their attempts to measure their impact were a bit inadequate.  A number of people had started to do something which was quite involved, and then, understandably, gave up.

Others have tried more DIY ways - Ben Matthews, who hosted tonight's event, talked us through the work he's done - focusing on the impacts that his communications work has with his clients.

One of "my" big ideas - which I hope we can develop at the Social Impact Camp - is to develop social impact circles.  I took the idea from the lending circles used by people like Grameen - where groups of people borrow together, support eachother, and, I suppose, keep eachother honest.  I think we could do something similar to help us to keep an eye on our social impact.  We could collaborate to clarify what we're trying to achieve (it's usually easier for someone else to see it - and they don't need to be an "expert"), and then remain accountable to each other as we report back on what we've done.  Instead of Social Audit Panels you'd have the wisdom of circles.

This stuff really matters.  Times are going to be tough for the next 5 or 10 years.  We'll need to learn to achieve a lot more good with a lot less money.  So we need ways of proving to ourselves that what we're doing is worthwhile -  whilst also proving to others that its worthy of investment. 

Class, fairness and the social entrepreneur

I read a good piece by Will Hutton today in The Observer about class.

I find class a really difficult subject to write about.  That's partly because I can hardly believe that it still matters so much.  It's also a difficult subject to write about because it's so tied up with who I am, and probably with who you are too.  

I had a discussion a few weeks ago on Twitter with someone who suggested that David Cameron can't help the fact that he was born into a privileged background.  I'd seen Cameron on TV (post Gordon Brown's jibes about him being an Old Etonian) and he suggested that your background doesn't matter in 21st Century Britain. He said it's about where you're going, not where you're coming from.   

I suggested that it does matter - and that he's not really in the best position - as someone who by any measure is from a privileged background - to suggest anything else.   

Hutton considers the issue of class from a perspective of fairness and meritocracy, which is where my interest lies too.  He talks about the deserving/undeserving poor narrative - that those who work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps can go on to achieve all they want.  And that the rest are just feckless, happy to sponge off the State for evermore.

As he suggests this fails to take into account the disadvantages that so many children are born into.  The distinct lack of advantages - opportunities - which millions of people take for granted.  This, in my opinion, is why so  many people just don't understand why class still matters so  much.  If such opportunities were the norm when you grew up, you don't necessarily appreciate how much they matter.  

There was an actress on Saturday Kitchen yesterday.  She described how she just fell into acting by mistake, as if it was just one of those things.  I googled her and discovered that her parents are both famous actors. Becoming an actor herself just felt normal.  

Is that about class?  I think it is - but it's far more subtle and nuanced than just about accents, or wealth.  So much of it is about things like expectations, aspirations, and the norms which surround you as you grow up.

I wanted to be a journalist when I was a kid (get the violins out).  The thing was, I didn't know any journalists, and my family didn't know any journalists.  So it didn't really feel like something that I had a realistic chance of doing.  Needless to say the careers adviser (aka the crap Chemistry teacher who had a few spare periods each week) didn't really offer me much encouragement either.  I appreciate there's not a simple cause and effect here, but I didn't become a journalist.

Not all journalists are from the middle and upper classes, but I bet most are.  Of course I don't begrudge anyone their success, but I want to make the point that there are barriers which prevent kids who aren't from more privileged backgrounds (I'd include myself in that) from achieving all that they could.  Things like work experience placements arranged by your dad's friend, internships funded by your wealthy London-based parents etc.  

So, how bitter and twisted do you reckon I am now that you've read all that?  As I said earlier, this is a really difficult topic to write about, but as Hutton suggests it still really matters.   And, I'm afraid, all of us who are relatively privileged (I guess that includes me now - and it'll certainly include my son) can't pretend that this isn't a key issue as we try to create a more just society.  

I have flour, yeast and water (but no salt). I will survive.

I've just seen the following at my local Tesco:

I defy you not to panic just a little bit when faced with bare shelves in a supermarket.  

It reminded me to blog about a programme I heard on the radio the other day.  The Food Programme focused on bread, and featured a number of small-scale bakers.  I found it really inspiring.  They talked to:

• The Handmade Bakery - a Community Supported Bakery in Slaithwaite, where people buy bread weekly on a subscription basis - similar to the Community Supported Agriculture scheme I've blogged about at Swillington.
• A guy who knocked on his neighbours' doors and asked them if he could bake bread for them.  He now has a nice little business.
• A woman who is using small-scale breadmaking as a way to encourage young people to develop a few entrepreneurial skills.

It's easy to dismiss this kind of thing as self-obsessed middle-class food snobbery, and in some cases I'm sure it is just that.  But there is something quite profound in the desire of increasing numbers of people to take more control of where their food comes from.  It's got something to do with the empty shelves above, or perhaps more importantly, whose shelves they are. 

Free bulbs - not such a bright idea after all

I took in a parcel for a neighbour over Christmas.  It was a free pack of energy-efficient bulbs, courtesy of npower.

That was good of them, I thought, an energy supplier doing their bit to help us save a bit of energy.  Helping people to not spend their money with you doesn't come naturally to most businesses.  

In 1997 I worked as an interpreter on an Overseas Development Agency project to build hydro-electric power stations north of Lima.  One day we went to an event where the local energy company was handing out T-Shirts with the slogan "Apagando un foco, ahorras un poco"  - roughly translated as "You'll save some money if you turn off your lights".

The UK engineer for whom I was interpreting thought this was a daft strategy - particularly for a recently-privatised energy company.  As you might expect, I disagreed.  It led to some interesting three-way discussions.  Whether they ultimately took more notice of me or him probably had more to do with economics than ecology.  Yet it's a good illustration of the tension that exists in any business which is involved in the consumption of natural resources on our behalf.  

So I was interested to read a piece in the Times today suggesting that npower's handout of 12 million energy-saving bulbs may not be such a great idea after all.  They were sent out to help the company to meet their legal obligation to cut carbon emissions - just before a new law comes into force which bans companies from mailing out unsolicited bulbs.

The problem is that research suggests that the average household has half-a-dozen unused bulbs in the cupboard under the sink.  So four more bulbs are unlikely to have the intended impact.  But they have helped npower meet their obligations, and thus avoid a fine of up to £40 million.

And, of course, free doesn't really mean free.  Companies are allowed to pass on the cost of these schemes to customers, through higher tariffs.  So we end up paying for bulbs we don't want, and which don't have the environmental impact that we so dearly need.  Cheers npower.

This story demonstrates how first steps very quickly need to become next steps when it comes to preventing runaway climate change.  Low energy bulbs are a good quick-win, and as my energy use monitor demonstrates, they do make a noticeable difference to your energy consumption.  But consumers, energy companies and governments now need to raise their game.  Sending out light bulbs is the easy, cheap bit, and it ticks the energy-saving boxes for the energy companies.  Yet it clearly isn't having the impact that the government intended when it set up the scheme.  

An npower representative, quoted in the Times, said:

"There is nothing under [the carbon emissions target reduction scheme] that means that we have to get evidence that the bulbs are being used.  It's up to the customer."

Which you may read as we've done our bit, not our problem Guv (or more accurately, Gov).  

If we're going to stop runaway climate change, businesses need to take more responsibility for the social and environmental impacts of their actions. Hopefully this will encourage/embarrass companies like npower, and Governments, to do more.