The strategy paper delivered in 2006 was to produce several positive outcomes including the doubling of adoption allowances and a promise of 400+ rehab centres. Our proposal was to help leverage US support if government would demonstrate a commitment to social change.

Rather than supporting the social enterprise investment fund however, US response came in the form of a new foundation which attempted to promote CSR activity which would deliver the rehab centres. They don’t seem to have been very successful. We meanwhile continue to lobby US government for funds that would enable around 10 model homes/rehab centres. Why the British Council have shown up recently isn’t all that clear. We’ve developed a network of local activists on the ground who for their own safety in the increasingly authoritarian environment, can’t be identified.

What we do in the UK is generate 100% the core operations funding from software development and maintenance together with smaller scale community development work. It’s been frugal but we’ve kept it going for 6 years.

Pretty much all of this can be found on one of our web pages, describing services. I’d posted a link to this here, back in July, but the post is still awaiting moderation.

Jeff

Do let us know how P-CED are contributing to tackling the core issues on the ground, as opposed to all those PR merchants? Be fascinated to learn about the UK activity.

The real challenge in the current climate, from what we are seeing and hearing, is what Patrick highlights: that there’s no (or little) rationale / strategic analysis behind those who are being cut / being chosen.

I certainly agree with you that massive cuts in public spending are going to take out loads of good social enterprises as well as loads of less good ones.

On the ‘how can they tell’ point – this is another reason why it’s a big shame that the Social Enterprise Mark was not conceived as a proper kitemark providing commissioners with meaningful information on a social enterprise’s ability to deliver services.

It’s not too late for the Mark team to reconsider and turn their project into something that’s actually useful to social enterprises.

I don’t think any of us here are advocates for increasing the number of grant funded social enterprises, rather the deployment of sustainable business which delivers a social outcome. On the other hand, I’ll put my hand up to arguing the case for social enterprise being funded for defence insdustry security clearance as a reasonable alternative to claiming unemployment benefit.

Those in financial difficulty will naturally be constrained in their social impact, yet they still contribute a social function, when compared say to an anti-social enterprise like human trafficking with an overall negative contribution.

We can to some extent qualify the intent, for example with qualification criteria such as those of ‘SEE What you are buying into’ where anti-social enterprise can be filtered out, but not the extent to which we’re better at doing it than any other, if indeed any other is doing it.

In the Bill Gates perception of Creative Capitalism he sees the demand for a business being a reflection of the social outcome, yet as we all know those with the biggest PR budget will flourisn by this token.

Even the no loss no dividend approach proposed by Yunus may not be the most effective in what it achieves, but then it can’t really do that much harm either unless perhaps it undermines other grassroots economic development.

What I’m fearful of is that impact measurment become some form of freemason ring, as a closed circle, ‘doing good on your behalf because we’ve agreed that we do it best’

I’m not a fan of social enterprise in healthcare. We’ve already got a local case under investigation by auditors and with an organisation already having a 100% commitment to social outcomes, it’s difficult to make the case for this to be diminished for the sake of freemarket ideology, where perhaps 35% might be returned to private investors.

Recent developments suggest that the coalition doesn’t really think the currently existing social enterprise movement – as opposed to bits of councils and the health service that theoretically become social enterprises – is really the major vehicle for delivering most of their cuts and outsourcing agenda.

Politician advocates have used social enterprise to enhance their own reputation to the detriment of those actively engaged.

Arriving behind them now are the venture capitalist changing their spots to “invent” what’s been public domain for the last decade. Join me on Linkedin for ‘Social Business and For Benefit corporations’ and you’ll see at first hand how reticent these new social investors are to talk to those committed to social enterprise.

We end up with a PR pantomime of franchised social innovation under competing banners, while social enterprise is diluted into comfortable delegated projects which skirt around the core issues they haven’t got the spine to tackle.