I awoke at 630am yesterday morning and as I looked across the marital bed I saw my wife sat up with a cup of tea, reading a big wad of papers.

It turned out she was reading the papers for the Board meeting of social enterprise where she is a director. She had received the papers the day before, and the meeting was that evening. In between she had a life to lead and full time job to attend to.

The Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd, had tweeted something the day before that got me thinking:

On Radio Five talking about volunteering and #bigsociety. BBC poll says half people do not have time to give. Not my experience.

Here’s a link to a story about the poll that he mentions.

My initial reaction was my usual knee-jerk one which accompanies hearing a politician challenge a survey which doesn’t chime with their view of the world. I then, rightly or wrongly, found myself questioning his “experience”. I wondered what that experience is. I hear that he’s a decent, personable guy, and I don’t particularly have anything against him. And he can only have his experience, like we all can. But is that experience – probably a pretty decent upbringing, and then a life spent in a political bubble – really one which puts him in a strong position to challenge this research? I’m not sure.

But my morning wake-up call led me to think about this more. I actually don’t think it’s a question of time as such. Most of us have spare time. I spent two hours last night doing a combination of watching Boys from the Blackstuff, (which, incidently, should be required viewing for all sub 35 year old wonks in Whitehall) eating cake, texting friends and staring into space. I, like everyone of the Why Don’t You? generation, could easily have been doing something less boring instead. Like volunteering my time for the Big Society.

I think it’s more about capacity to take on extra responsibility. Antonia’s Board membership, on paper, takes up a maximum of 6 hours a month. And who doesn’t have six hours a month to spare? But who has the capacity to share the responsibility for a business which turns over a few million pounds, and which could, at any moment, call for more of your time than you have available, at that moment? Volunteering isn’t all Ha Ha Ha, Hee Hee Hee.

A few years ago I was on holiday in Mallorca and I got a phone call from a member of staff at the fairtrade social enterprise where I was a director (I’d previously been a member of staff). I was told that our landlord was calling in the receivers, as we were behind with our rent. I was then asked what I thought we should do about that. I’ve since learnt not to take my mobile on holiday.

So, yes, of course it’s nonesense for most of us to suggest that we don’t have time to do a bit more. But it’s perfectly understandable for many people to say that they don’t have the capacity to take on a greater burden than they’re already carrying. Big Society evangelists would do well to remember that.

This week seems to be the week when the Government has decided that it’s time for kids to take their fair share of the burden of cuts.

First there was the story about cutting free milk for young children, and then today they’ve announced that they’re cutting a fund which was to build a load of playgrounds across the country.

We know the story by now. These were unrealistic spending commitments. The scheme was brimming with daft bureaucracy and was costing a fortune. So you can’t have any more playgrounds, you feckless plebs.

What frustrates me in all of this is that I bet the Government has a bit of a point. I bet there is way too much bureaucracy involved in trying to get these playgrounds built. The Guardian Leeds Beatblogger is looking into it – and he reckons 10 are under threat in Leeds. I assume that means that only two have been built so far. Which, given that the scheme started two years ago, doesn’t strike you as particularly efficient. (see this story from Guardian Leeds for more up to date info) Just as Building Schools for the Future wasn’t efficiency’s greatest hour, you’d wonder whether more could have been built in the time available. But that doesn’t mean that it makes sense to just stop the programme.

It’s not often that I swear on Twitter, but this playground story really wound me up. I have a four year old son and few things depress me more than bad playgrounds. And in Leeds, most of them are poor. There’s the odd one that’s been updated – thanks to the funding that’s just been cut – but most are depressingly bad. We all know how important play is. How important exercise is. Fresh air.

We’re alright. We regularly join the weekend exodus from north Leeds to Harewood House. And why do hundreds of families go there every weekend? Because the playground is brilliant. So we’ve privatised our way out of playground misery. Millions can’t.

I looked through my photo album – and could have picked from a hundred happy photos and a handful of films to illustrate this post. Here’s one from a couple of years ago – Frank on the slide, and me and my sister cracking up in the background.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may well be fed up with hearing about my efforts to buy a house.

To cut a long story short, we sold our house in February and moved to a rented flat for what we thought would be a 6 week period whilst our house purchase went through. But, to cut more long stories short, that deal fell through close to completion, as did the next one. A few grand lighter, with blood pressure that bit higher, we’re no further on than we were when we started looking for houses last September. When they say buying a house is stressful, they’re not wrong.

What’s gone wrong? We’ve been pretty unlucky – both deals looked straightforward but both vendors then acted in ways which were anything but straightforward. The technical term is that we were shafted, twice. Some of that behaviour, I think, comes from the fact that the housing market is in a complete state. In the 11 months we’ve been looking, there are plenty of houses which have taken months and months to sell, or haven’t sold at all. Meanwhile, there are a handful which have sold within days. We’ve gone to closed bids on at least four houses – with each selling for above the asking price, in a supposedly depressed market. Dysfunctional doesn’t begin to describe it.

And what of our old friend the Estate Agent? Traditionally people haven’t been so keen on them largely because they make a fortune out of you whilst seemingly not doing a great deal other than drive around in souped-up Minis. Who couldn’t sell a house in a bouyant market, where all buyers believe that the worst that can happen is that they’ll move on in a couple of years, with a tidy profit? But how do you serve a market which is on its knees?

You don’t, as it would appear most Estate Agents believe, just carry on as if nothing’s happened. I have seen very little evidence that they have adapted at all to changing circumstances, other than the inevitable redundancies and closure of branches. I am not aware of much reflection on how they could serve their customers differently, in order to keep the market moving.

Here’s an idea for starters. Could they maybe be a bit more frank in how they describe a house? I know it’s a standing joke (“opportunity to stamp your personality = house is a wreck etc) but it’s actually not very funny when you spend hours looking round houses which, if you’d been given an honest appraisal on Rightmove, you wouldn’t have gone anywhere near. Estate Agents are obsessed with the outputs – aka viewings – so that they can show the vendor how hard they’re working. Maybe if they worked harder at understanding what buyers really want, and then tried hard to find people who were really interested in a house, then they may more likely achieve their desired outcome – a sale.

I have lots more ideas (I feel like I’ve undertaken in-depth undercover research into the housing market – there is nothing I don’t know now) but don’t worry, I won’t bore you with them now. But this is a classic example of where what we don’t need, in my opinion, is a social enterprise to enter the market. What we need is an Estate Agent that recognises that it could have positive social impacts – both in terms of happier customers and, potentially, stronger communities – if it was to start to think how it could really add value to an area.

I believe that to continue to have a role in an online world where the likes of Tepilo, Tesco and Rightmove will make the traditional Agent pretty redundant, they are going to have to think of how they can really make a difference to customers and to the communities in which they sell houses.

One type of social business that I particularly like to work with are businesses which are meeting some sort of environmental need.

At the Danone Social Innovation Lab last month, I chatted with several Danoners (and their NGO partners) from around the world who were involved in setting up social businesses which had an environmental impact, including Gonzalo Roque and Martin de Ferrari from Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were planning to set up a business to improve the quality and quantity of plastic recycling in Argentina. You can see my interview with them here:

The main thing that interested me in what they were doing was that there were clear social, environmental and business benefits from the work they planned to do. The way plastics are currently recycled – by people working informally, and selling plastic on to middlemen – was largely unsatisfactory. The prices people got varied a lot – as the middlemen tended to exploit people – who were themselves reliant on the prices being paid by China for plastic. That meant they couldn’t always make a living out of it – and as a result children would often join their parents in the search for plastic bottles. The quality of the plastic that was processed was often poor – making it more difficult to re-use. And that made it more difficult for Danone to reach their ambitious targets for use of recycled plastics in their bottles.

It makes it easier to do the right thing environmentally if it also makes sense financially. This morning I’ve spent an inspiring few hours with SCRAP – a scrapstore in Leeds which takes business waste and sells it on for creative re-use. It’s a great way to divert a good few tonnes of waste from landfill – whilst also helping people to be creative.

What I like about them is that they are really committed to finding a way to make their social enterprise stand up as a social business. Traditionally they’ve had some funding – but not much – and my work with them is to help them to develop further so that they can generate more income and do more good.

Our affluence has made us a bit lazy and complacent when it comes to how we use the world’s resources. Maybe now, with the environment and our economy looking increasingly fragile, we’re rediscovering that thrift and respect for nature make financial sense as well as environmental sense.

I’ve had a bit of a moan on Twitter this morning about some poor service we recently received from a third sector organisation. We booked a room for an event – and to cut a long story short they offered friendly but poor service. We did most of the running round to confirm the booking details, and then on the day they gave the projector we’d hired to someone else. Then, to round things off, they didn’t put enough postage on the invoice, so we ended up paying £1.14 for the privilege of collecting our invoice from the sorting office!

I’m interested in understanding the root causes of the poor service we received. I think there’s an issue about diversification and the need to generate income. I imagine the organisation in question started off years ago as a community development organisation, renting a room in a tatty corner of a council building in the neighbourhood where they grew up. And along came European millions to enable them to build a multi-purpose venue, which housed the work that they do and also gave them the opportunity to rent rooms to other people.

There’s no problem with that necessarily. And you can’t really argue that much with organisations which look to diversify in order to bring in various sources of income. But what if you don’t have the skills to compete in your new marketplace? Venue hire is a massively competitive market, and customers are very demanding.  To compete, you need to be good at what you do.

There’s a good argument to say that you should stick to your knitting. It’s tough though, particularly at the moment as funding streams dry up. It can be tempting to come up with bright ideas which will supposedly generate “free” money to keep you going.

The one that I’ve been asked to help with most is the community cafe which wants to expand into outside catering. The argument goes: “We can charge £5 per head for the kind of stuff we sell in the cafe for £1.50.”  True – to an extent. But it’s a whole different market – with different customers and competitors. That’s not to say that you can’t make it work. But it’s not necessarily the case that a community cafe can sustain itself through a Robin Hood strategy of selling paninis to office wallahs whilst offering cheese baps to the urban poor.

So what do I do about this? I work with people to help them to assess their ideas. Nothing particularly clever, and no scientific formulae to help us to understand whether a particular idea offers a chance to generate income. But we start by considering:

1. Does this idea involve selling more of our existing services to existing customers?
2. Does it involve selling existing services to new customers?
3. Does it involve selling new services to existing customers?
4. Does it involve selling new services to new customers?

The theory there is that there’s likely to be greater risk in developing a new service, and selling it to a customer group that you know nothing about. It may also require more resources in terms of time and money. That’s not to say not to do it – but grouping ideas like this at least gets people talking about risk – and their ability to take on new business ideas.

It’s hard to work out whether your idea is likely to generate income.  And unfortunately, the more outlandish the idea, the harder it can be to argue against it.  You can be accused of lacking vision.  But with money so tight, we have to try to find ways to help people choose the right way forward, instead of digging a deeper hole.

If I wrote about myself on the blog in the way that many third sector organisations talk about themselves, you’d probably have the impression that I was a 6 foot hunk with a beach body and sparkling wit and charm.

I’m not all that bad, but I don’t quite match up to that image. But all the talk of Big Society has seen politicians, commentators and sector leaders trot out the same old stuff about heroic third sector organisations, close to the people they serve, dynamic, enterprising, efficient and all-together miraculous. Social alchemists R Us.

Anyone who’s been within moaning distance of a third sector organisation will know that this is a daft caricature. There are plenty of fantastic third sector organisations out there who do great work. I’m lucky enough to be working with one at the moment – HALE – who do health promotion work in West Yorkshire. They’ve recently won a national award for what they do – and it’s well deserved. They have a clear mission, they’re enterprising and they have a positive can-do culture. I bet they deliver good value for health commissioners too.

But alongside the great organisations there are plenty who are good (good enough?) and far too many that are mediocre to say the least. You’ll probably know a few – they tend to have been around a long time, they like having a good moan, there’s never enough funding, it’s always someone else’s fault. And even though things are so awful, they’re convinced that they’re the only people who could possibly improve the lot of their service users. And yes, you can bet they’ll be service users. Such a beautiful term which tells you all you need to know about their relationship with the people they serve.

I don’t want organisations like that running services in place of the State. But if we spend the next couple of years in a Big Society love-in, with a load of hangers-on realising that this is the Next Big Thing (post social enterprise) that they can hang their hat on, then we’re really not going to make much progress as a society.

I’m not looking forward to the next round of cuts. I personally think it’ll be chaos. But amidst the chaos I hope that less funding will result in some of the mediocre and poor third sector organisations, which have survived through rounds of ERDF and the like, will finally get out of the way and give some room to people who might make a real difference.

At times of crisis it’s tempting to seek out the Big Idea which is going to make everything better.

There are many who believe that social enterprises are inherently better at delivering services to customers. The story goes that the social mission, combined with a lack of external shareholders to service, alongside an enterprising approach will result in happier customers.

It’s a compelling narrative. And I for one do believe that those three factors – clear mission, the absence of shareholders focused on the short-term, and a can-do culture can achieve big things.

But I think we need to be careful not to get too carried away. Social enterprises can have clear missions, can be focussed on customers rather than shareholders, and can develop an enterprising culture – but those three things can’t be taken for granted.

Allow me to indulge in a moan which does, nonetheless, make this point. I have been a happy customer of Yorkshire Building Society for ten years. But this year – as we sold our house and tried to buy another – their service was consistently poor. Without boring you with all the details, their two main errors were that they sent me the deeds for the house we’d just sold, and did the wrong survey on the house we were trying to buy. Our ID also got lost somewhere between our postbox and their mailroom, which may or may not have been their fault. And throughout, their new automated phone system was difficult to navigate, and I often ended up at the wrong department.

I’ve complained, and they’ve said they’re sorry but they won’t consider refunding any of the administration fees I’ve paid. My point is that their service was poor, and I paid fees for that service. I’m now taking it to the Financial Ombudsman, mainly because I’ve got no other option.

I chose Yorkshire because they were competitive – but also because they are a mutual. I tell myself that they’re better, and are likely to give me a better deal, because they don’t have outside shareholders to satisfy. I also think that being a member may be different to being a customer, particularly when things go wrong.

But am I just being naive? This article on Nationwide – another mutual – would suggest that mutuals aren’t immune from some of the customer-unfriendly practices of other shareholder-driven companies. And are we as a society being equally naive in assuming that mutuals and other social enterprises will do a better job than others at delivering services?

I believe fully that they can deliver better services, not that they always do. Obvious really, but as we hunt for ways to get ourselves out of the mess we’re in, I think we’re in danger of putting too much faith in one form of organisational structure.

I spent a fascinating couple of days this week at a Social Innovation Lab, hosted by Danone in Paris.

The Lab is an annual event for Danone staff to get together, with NGO partners (and this time with a handful of bloggers – including me and Mike Chitty from the UK) to talk about how Danone can be more socially innovative.

You may or may not know a lot about Danone. The extent of my knowledge about them was that they sell bottled water (not my favourite product) and lots of yoghurts, many of which supposedly help to make you healthy. You might, particularly if you’re into social business and read my blog, know about their alliance with Grameen in Bangladesh, selling nutrient-rich yoghurts, via self-employed women, who get support and finance from Grameen. And you’ll almost certainly remember their mmm…. Danone advertising.

Given what you may or may not know, you may be surprised to hear that their mission is this:

To bring health through food to as many people as possible.

I think that’s a great mission. Simple, understandable, and ambitious. And the Lab was partly about that ambition – how can Danone be socially innovative – at a bigger scale – and faster – than they are now?

It was genuinely fascinating and inspiring to see such a massive business where people where genuinely committed to how their business could have a social impact. This wasn’t some CSR nonesense, and there were no presentations from bosses who’ve just been on a course and who understood that “doing good” is the right thing to do.

Leadership came from the very top. On the Monday evening there was a Q & A with the CEO, Franck Riboud. He talked a lot about how for a business to be innovative, it needs to have humility in its business culture, and not assume that it has all the answers. This was true in the Q&A too – twice he said he didn’t have an answer to a question. Somehow I can’t imagine that happening in your average multinational, where the all-powerful CEO dominates – and influences the business’s culture.

I’m sure they’re not perfect, and I accept that we saw them at their best, but the two days opened my eyes to how powerful it can be when a successful, profitable big business puts social impact and innovation at the heart of what they do. Take, for example, the bonus system they have introduced for senior staff. One third of the bonus relates to personal goals. One third to Danone’s financial performance. And one third is related to social goals – including 22% linked to the achievement of ambitious CO2 reduction targets (30% across the business by 2012). This focuses minds.

Similarly, it was so refreshing to hear a big business talking comfortably and credibly about co-creation. Again, with the starting point of “We don’t have all the answers, let’s try to team up with people with whom we may find the answers”. That’s why so many NGOs – most of whom were partners of Danone in projects across the world – were there at the Lab too. This co-creation isn’t without its problems – one common issue related to the different pace (and speed of decision making) in some of the NGO’s in comparison with Danone. But the commitment is there to try to work things out.

I came away with lots of questions. Some about Danone – particularly around the long-term sustainability of bottled water sales in countries where the water is safe to drink (I understand the arguments in countries without safe drinking water).

But more of the questions related to the work that I do. Many of us get excited about social enterprise, and many people think that we need different ownership models – and that privately owned, shareholder driven businesses can never really help us to change the world for the better. But did Danone give me a glimpse of what a world could look like where big businesses went beyond CSR and put social impact at the heart of what they do? And should I be thinking how to work with other businesses to help them to do the same?

That’s partly why we’ve set up Social Business Brokers – which has an explicit aim to work with any business that is interested in having a social impact – not just social enterprises. As a social enterprise sector, might we need a similar shift in emphasis? Or are we going to keep telling people that we have all the answers? Are you listening Big Society people?

As I mentioned in my last post, we had to work hard to make sure our holiday money stretched to the end of our stay in France. Conveniently, for this story, £1 was worth around 25% less than it was last time we were in France. So the daily lunchtime beer in a cafe was out, replaced by a beer back on the terrace at the flat. The daily late-afternoon ice creams came from the supermarket, not the ice-cream parlour. It was hardly the 1930’s, but it wasn’t 2008 either.

So we changed our behaviour to adapt to our circumstances. The other time we did that was when Francis was born. We agreed that Antonia would take a year off. Again, handily for this story, that meant that we had to cut our budgets by around 25% (one salary lost for 6 months). We took advice from Alvin Hall, and tips from Martin Lewis. We worked out what money we would have, and set ourselves a budget. Most importantly, we went back to the cash economy. We agreed what we could afford to spend, and then took that cash out of the bank at the start of each month.

Handing over bank notes focuses the mind in a way that paying with plastic never could. It feels like real money, and gives you a greater sense of whether what you are about to purchase feels like good value, and is really needed. Anyone who gives you advice on how to spend less will tell you to start dealing in cash.

I’m fully aware that there are millions of people who are in a far worse position than me financially, for whom weekly budgeting, on far less money than me, is a painful fact of life. So my 25% cuts aren’t anywhere near as painful as someone else’s. But they are still significant – for me at least.

I’ve been thinking recently how (or if) I should work with organisations which are going to have to slash their expenditure by 25% or more. I enjoy a lot of the work I do. That doesn’t feel like the kind of work that’d be much fun.

But how could I help? I think that one thing I bring to my work is that whilst I’m driven by helping people to achieve social change, I’m also a realist and a pragmatist. I can separate the emotion of a social mission from the hard realities of the market. Maybe that’s one way I can help. Any discussions about budget cuts – particularly if there is a real/illusory desire to involve all staff – will be full of emotion, and rightly so. Trying to find a workable way forward in those circumstances will be very difficult. An outsider might be able to help.

Helping people to “think the unthinkable”, and challenge long-held assumptions, which have been sheltered from real life by the odd parallel universe that is the World of Funding, might be of use too. Could organised abandonment of that cherished, but less effective, project, be better in the long term than cuts across the board? And might it be worth looking at the way we work, and how we deal with our customers, to see where there is failure demand in our systems? In other words, demand (and therefore spent resources) that is only there because things aren’t dealt with properly first time. There is no one big idea which will help to cut expenditure less painfully, but I personally find the idea of failure demand pretty useful.

One thing is clear, any answers that I help people come up with won’t be my answers. Just as I don’t write business plans for people, I won’t be advising people on how to cut their budgets. But it might be that I can be part of something in Leeds or elsewhere where a group of organisations come together and share the burden of finding ways to continue to deliver change with less money.

If you have any thoughts please let me know by leaving a comment below.

Just back from a fortnight’s holiday in France. Rushing back into the country via Eurostar on Austerity Tuesday seemed counter-intuitive. In reality it felt like we should be traveling as fast as we could to anywhere but here. The holiday’s over in more ways than one.

In some ways the holiday was a bit of an austerity boot camp. Not that two weeks in France – including a week in Aix – one of the nicest places I’ve ever been too – could ever be described as tough. But we really had to manage our money. When you’re only getting €1.15 to the £1, France turns out to be very expensive. Having 25% less spending power than the last time you were there hurts, as does paying £4 for half a pint of lager.

It was a bit of a shock to the system. I’m very fortunate. Like many people, I’ve seen my income rise gradually as I’ve got older – leaving University, getting a job, getting a better job. So it doesn’t feel very nice to suddenly not be as wealthy as I was. And personally, and as a society, that’s something we’re going to have to get used to. It’s an understatement to say that it won’t be much fun.

As I’ve written before, as a family we’re trying to be more green. So flights are out and trains are in. This time we went to Aix – just north of Marseille – via Paris – with a stop-off in Lille on the way back. Around 2000 miles in total – and it all went to plan, with a grand total of 10 minutes of delays (on the Leeds to London leg).

I love traveling by train – and for me all the cliches are true – traveling becomes part of the holiday, when traveling is fun and relaxing. Compared to how you’re treated at airports these days, traveling by train is a dream, particularly in France. And if you plan it well, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Taking advice from Seat 61, door to door cost us £450 in total – which for 3 people, taking in 4 cities, isn’t bad – although obviously not 99p plus taxes (plus luggage plus fees plus a pound for having a wee plus the privilege of being treated like a potential terrorist etc).

And in green terms, this carbon calculator estimates that by traveling exclusively by train we were each responsible for just under 200kg of CO2 – whereas the figure for flights would have been 550kg. So it makes a difference. At least that’s what I tell myself.

In other travel news…. we’ve also been trying to cut down on how much we use the car. Since 1 March we’ve driven just under 750 miles – so we’re averaging around 250 miles a month. Which given that our target was 700 miles a month (a 15% reduction on the previous year) that’s not bad going.

Of course that doesn’t tell the whole story – we’ve been living in the city centre for much of that time – so the car’s been parked a few miles away – and we’ve had no excuse not to use public transport, with the bus station and rail station just a few minutes walk away. But that in itself tells a story – if you make it less convenient to use the car, and more convenient to use public transport, then the results are pretty obvious.

I don’t tell you all this as some smug green. That’s the last thing I am. But I tell you as someone who is trying to act consciously. I make loads of questionable/contradictory decisions when it comes to how to live my life in a more fair/sustainable way. But I engage with the issues, and I take responsibility for my actions. I also try to do things that are manageable – like using the car a bit less, or trying not to fly. It’s nice to be reminded how resourceful we human beings can be when we put our minds to it. We’ll need all that resourcefulness over the next few years.