UnLtdWorld News

                       What matters more - impact or structure?

It seems at times with social enterprise that structure is more important than social impact.  I would argue that a lot of that is to do with the fact that much of the interest in social enterprise is driven by the State, which is desperate (as it should be given the state we're in) to find ways to make the UK a better place for us all to live in.  Social enterprises - defined partly by their not-private-ownership models - offer a cosy patch of middle ground to politicians who recognise that the public sector doesn't have the answers, but who know that opening things up completely to the private sector would be political suicide.

I came across an entrepreneur this week who has been running his own business for the last twelve months.  He sells a product which has clear social benefits.  His primary customer group is in the public sector.  He was having no success selling his product.  He was advised to set up as a social enterprise.  He set up a bog-standard CIC and hey presto, buyers who previously didn't give the time of day were all of a sudden keen to buy from him - and be seen to be buying from him.  What changed?  Nothing other than his legal structure. 

You may argue that his structural change was a vital one.  But I would argue that in real terms, the fact that he now runs a CIC makes no difference.  It's not a business that will make tons of money, or develop valuable assets.  It will pay wages and, with a bit of luck, keep going like most small businesses do.  If he generates more income, he'll probably pay his staff more.  But in terms of social impact, I doubt the structural change will make much difference.

So why is he now successful where previously he wasn't?  In my opinion that's because the procurement processes are dumb.  You've got procurers who are being given directives about opening up to social enterprises.  That would be a good thing - if procurers were asking the question "So how we can achieve more social change with the money we've got?"  Instead, I think they're asking "How can we give an advantage in the procurement process to businesses with a particular legal structure?" 

This is why I think it's going to be increasingly important to prove that social businesses do what they say on the tin.  It's why I've called for social accounting 2.0 - impact reporting which is do-able and which doesn't rely on an army of social auditors. 

Skint taxpayers in 2010 and beyond will rightly question whether social enterprises are delivering better services than the previous providers.  The waffle about local accountability and not-for-profit structures won't wash.  Real honest answers about impact will. 

Rob Greenland blogs about social business at:  http://thesocialbusiness.typepad.com/the_social_business/

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           How the British Library can help social entrepreneurs

In the recession, we’ve found that lots of the entrepreneurs using the British Library Business & IP Centre are more concerned about having an ethical, social or environmental element in their business.  In the Centre, we help people at all stages of setting-up and running a business, by providing free access to unrivalled business and intellectual property information, workshop, events and advice sessions.  To help our customers with a business conscience, we’ve developed a range of new services especially for social entrepreneurs.  

Earlier this year we launched a new ‘Green & Ethical Information Guide’.  It’s an invaluable fact sheet for social entrepreneurs listing all the books, directories, websites and online databases you can use when doing your market research, understanding your competitors and customers, and finding support and networking opportunities.  You can access all of the resources listed in the guide in the Centre for free.

We have also just launched a wiki of useful web resources for setting up in business, which has an ‘ethical business’ section.  Anyone can use the wiki, to see other people’s links, as well as adding your own. 

We work with lots of other organisations that support social businesses, some of which run workshops and networking events in the Centre (such as our networking breakfast with UnLtdWorld in Global Entrepreneurship Week).  We also promote our ‘success stories’ that have benefited from the Library’s support, and have set up businesses with an ethical, environmental or social purpose.

One example is Richard Woods and DIY Kyoto.  Richard co-founded the company which developed the “wattson”, an energy monitor that shows you how much electricity your home is using.  In this video you can here him talking about his product, and how he used the Centre.

Find out more about the Library’s services and see more of our case studies at www.bl.uk/bipc

You can also get in touch with us on Twitter and Facebook

Frances Taylor is the Marketing Manager of the Business and IP Centre at the British Library

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             Enhance your social enterprise’s reputation with PR

PR - or public relations - is all about reputation. It's the result of what you do, what you say, and what others say about you. It is used to gain trust and understanding between an organisation and its various stakeholders, whether that's employees, customers, investors, or the local community.

PR isn't just for big companies using national newspapers or television. Even the smallest start up or social enterprise can use PR opportunities to catch the eye of its local audience. But PR is often misunderstood, its practises are often unclear and how to ‘do’ PR is a mystery to many people.

I’ve pulled together some top tips to help make the practise of PR a bit clearer, help you generate some positive PR with limited resources, and offer some simple advice to get your organisation’s own PR and communications activity up and running.

What is Public Relations?
As I mentioned before, PR is all about reputation. Public relations professionals use many different techniques as part of their PR campaigns: from media relations and lobbying, to speaking at conferences, and more. PR is different from marketing and advertising, because with PR you do pay the newspapers and TV channels for the media exposure it secures. It's the credibility of third-party endorsement that gives PR its power. For more information on the background of PR and its best practices, take a look at the free guides that the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) has put together.

The Media is a Channel
Many people misunderstand that PR is all about engaging the media and using the coverage generated to put a spotlight on your organisation. But should be made clear is that the media is just a channel, a way to reach your stakeholders. This means that your organisation needs to have its messaging right, its proposition and the impact it makes clear, before you undertake any PR activity. The basics of getting a PR campaign together are covered by Striding Out’s useful guides here.

The Rise of Social Media
Understanding that the media is just a channel to reach your stakeholders is especially important to understand with the rise of social media. Social media cuts out journalist and media organisations as a channel to reach your stakeholders.  Organisations can now interact and engage directly with their stakeholders, using sites such as Facebook and Twitter, in an affordable but effective manner. A blog is also an effective way of getting your organisation’s messages, news and recent announcements out to a wide audience. There’s too much to cover off on social media here, but here’s a fantastic video from Common Craft that explains what social media is in plain English:

There’s too much about using social media to cover it here, but if you’re interested in creating a social media campaign but don’t know where to start, take a look at Content & Motion’s excellent guide here or PR 2.0’s free ebook here.

Get Your Descriptor Right
To help with your messaging, it is worthwhile creating a descriptor for your organisation. A descriptor is a short sentence, no more than a few words long, that captures what your organisation is and does. This acts as an introduction for any press releases you send out and is often used by the media to help categorise your organisation and provide a neat intro into any stories they might write about you. For example:

"Bright One, the volunteer-run communications agency, announced today that it had written a fantastic descriptor for its latest PR campaign."

Other examples of social enterprises with good descriptors include Divine Chocolate ("The Fairtrade chocolate where the cocoa farmers own 45% of the company") and MyBnk ("The education charity working with young people to build the knowledge, skills and confidence to manage their money effectively"). UnLtdWorld.com's is very neat too - "a networking site for social entrepreneurs".

If it helps you to keep your descriptor clear and succinct, try and keep it to a 140 character, twitter-style description. You could even post your descriptor in the comments below this post and we can help refine it for you.

Register on askCHARITY
askCHARITY was set up to help organisations in their work with the media. It is an online contacts book which lists organisation’s details including their key media contacts. It aims to make it easier and faster for media professionals to get in touch with charitable organisations. askCHARITY also aims to open up, hard to reach sections of the media, so by registering your organisation (which is absolutely free) you’ll stand a much better chance of journalists, broadcasters, researchers, freelancers, and every kind of media professional finding out and taking an interest in your organisation. Find out

Get Professional Help
There are lots of PR professionals out there who are looking to give back to the community and help organisations such as yours tell their story effectively. If you’re interested in bringing on some PR support, I would recommend taking a look at the Media Trust’s Media Matching service, which brings together media and communications professionals (advisers) with charities and voluntary organisations that want to improve the way they communicate. Also take a look at Bright One, the volunteer-run communications agency, who are on hand to offer charities, social enterprises and other not-for-profit organisations affordable yet effective PR and communications campaigns. Bright One helps organisations get their messages heard and offer resources so they can focus on core activities, so find out more by going to www.brightone.org.uk.

Further Reading
The PR industry has developed a fantastic culture of knowledge sharing, which means that there is plenty of information available for you to learn more about running your own campaign. As a starter, I would recommend visiting Volunteer Genie for advice on using the media to recruit the volunteers you want, reading the guide that Business Link have put together, or visiting the askCHARITY blog for lots of advice on communications. You could even contact me for further advice or leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

Ben Matthews is founder of Bright One, a volunteer-run communications agency for the third sector.

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                                  Marketing a Mission
 
 

Divine Chocolate recently celebrated its first Decade – with the strapline ‘Building a brand for the 21st century’.  The concept of brands and branding has got itself a bad rep with all those sceptical of marketing and its aims.  There are lots of reasons for this – but what people really don’t like is discovering a mismatch between what a brand claims to stand for, and the company behind it, and worse, totally made-up brand values.
 

As social commentator Gareth Williams said in 2000, “Criticism of particular brands and products enfranchises consumers with a political and social voice that they may feel denied to them with conventional political processes”
 

We believe the opposite can now also be said to be emerging – that is, support for particular brands which give consumer a voice and the opportunity to make change happen.
 

Branding is important. A brand is how a product, company or service is perceived by its stakeholders and audiences and making sure every way a stakeholder (whether that is a supplier, consumer, employee or shareholder) experiences the brand reinforces the same message and values is very powerful. The brand is the shorthand for those things that make your company or product totally distinct from its competitors – and in a very noisy marketplace, the ability to stand out and stand for something different counts.
 

Social enterprises have a big opportunity to become the good brands of the future – with the integrity that many other companies cannot offer.
 

I gave a talk on branding at a recent conference organised by SEL with the aim of explaining why branding is important for Social Enterprises.  Just as the Fairtrade Mark alone won’t sell good chocolate, simply being a social enterprise isn’t enough to attract interest in your business. 
 

Using Divine Chocolate as an example I showed how a social enterprise’s mission should be at the heart of its brand and drive its marketing. Although Divine – which is a Fairtrade company and 45% owned by the Ghanaian farmers’ cooperative that supplies its cocoa – is an unusual social enterprise model, I hope that our branding case study is useful for other enterprises developing their marketing strategies.  You can download the presentation from http://bit.ly/47Yc8i . SEL also has a download guide to marketing at http://bit.ly/2uZh0F
 

I hope that together with other social enterprises we can all work towards a world people would really like to live in, and develop brands people are glad to buy

Charlotte Borger is the Head of Communications at Divine Chocolate

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Is the worker co-operative model at odds with entrepreneurial leadership?

As the worker co-operative membership officer at Co-operativesUK I’m interested in how they compare with the wider social enterprise movement.  As this is a guest blog for UnLtd; I thought I’d look at whether worker co-operatives and their values like equality, equity, and consensus working are at odds with the idea of the social entrepreneur as decisive individual agent of change.

What’s a worker co-operative?

Before I go on, if you have never come across worker co-operatives before, they are: Businesses that are owned and democratically controlled by their worker/employee members using co‑operative principles. They are an alternative to investor owned models of enterprise and usually operate with a more than profit ethos and operate flatter management structures than other forms of enterprise.

We have 400 known worker co-operatives in the UK varying from a 2 people web-design business to a 150 people wholesaler. But there are probably many more out their that just don’t see what they do as a “co-operative”
So back to the topic.

Can or should you have entrepreneurs and leadership in a worker co-operative?

Simple answer, yes. Slightly longer answer yes, but it’s a different flavour of leadership.

Like any form of business you can get strong individual driven worker co-operatives.  They might even survive for a while.  Inevitably I think they will falter when this key individual leaves. More importantly they miss the whole point of a worker co‑operative and its strength. That people take joint responsibility for the direction, approach and success of their enterprise.

If that is the case what is the role of leadership in a worker co-operative?
At their worst worker co-operatives are un-cohesive groups of individuals working on their own goals and locked into endless meetings. At their best they are a group of mutually inter-dependent people with shared vision and trust in each others ability to do their there thing for the common good of the co-operative.

It would be great if from the get-go, you could start from this second position; unfortunately most of us were not brought up in this environment, either at school or in the workplace. Creating a shared sense of purpose and an inter-dependent culture therefore has to be sown and nurtured so it can be self-regenerating.

For me the role of an entrepreneur or leader in a worker co-operative is to do this and has two main aspects - that of a teacher/mentor and that of a servant leader.

If working with a group with low skills, confidence or trust you may need a strong leadership role. Someone with a personal vision who can get things up and running.  Who can train-up, motivate and mentor others to develop their own confidence and ability. Finally and most importantly once they have shared their knowledge and responsibility, they can give up power and personal vision for the enterprise (which is probably the most difficult to do).

The second aspect is, an individual who is a servant first, making the conscious decision to lead in order to better serve others, not to increase their own power or driving their own agenda forward. Someone who says “Right we need to be proactive; what’s our options; who’s going to do it”. Someone who can be a catalyst for others to achieve their will.

Some examples
There are lots of examples of this style of leadership; Ricardo Semler at SEMCO a Brazilian private sector company is one example.

For co-operative examples Mondragon the world’s largest worker co-operative and seventh largest corporation in Spain was founded by Father José María Arizmendiarrieta.

Closer to home I have recently done a case study on my own blog about Whomadeyourpants where Becky John has fulfilled this leadership role within a UK worker co-operative.

To finish, one of Suma’s HR people recently told me that if someone looks like they are becoming too specialised and no one else can do their job, they split the role and get the person to train up someone else to share the tasks with them. That way no-one person becomes irreplaceable. 

Could a social entrepreneur’s ego survive finding out that they are not irreplaceable in their own social enterprise?

For more information
My blog
Our facebook group
Wikipedia – worker co-operatives page

John Atherton is the Worker Co-operative Development Officer at Co-operativesUK.

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                                     Finding Joy

When you think about the job I do, I really should be a very gloomy person. Like many people I can't watch climate change documentaries like Age of Stupid or read books such as Six Degrees without an overwhelming sense of despair at the situation we find ourselves in, yet in my work with communities I find stories of hope and people full of joy and laughter in the face of adversity. Is it wrong to feel joyful in such straightened times?

I would say not.

As UN climate negotiators gather this week in Barcelona to try to make progress towards a post – Kyoto agreement, it seems there are few options left to us, we need to slash our carbon emissions hard and fast if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. Those of us who call our selves climate change activists know this, we read the books, watch the films, believe the scientists. We know that changes in our aspirations and behaviours are needed by everyone – individuals, businesses – and policy makers if we are to make any progress towards a low carbon society. Most of us would also acknowledge that concern about the future is a poor mechanism for getting people to change their habits. So, where does this leave us? We live in a society where success is measured in the accumulation of “stuff”, where wealth and the acquisition of bigger, better and  shinier possessions helps us to identify our place in the world. No wonder then, when we ask citizens to “give up”, “save” or reduce their consumption they look at us in bewilderment.

Maybe the answer lies in low carbon communities such as   Cambridge Carbon Footprint, Stretton Climate Care, or Bollington Carbon Revolution who identify themselves as “low carbon” and among people who have taken the decision to choose to live with different choices rather than with less.

People who have encouraged their neighbours to consider free thinking, practical solutions to living rewarding lives that don't “cost the earth”. I met some of them at an event Jonathan Atkinson (who blogged here a few days ago) helped to organise in September called Communities for Change. I was invited along as a “keynote listener”, my brief was to listen to and report back on the experiences and opinions of people who run and participate in community initiatives across the North West. They were not “climate change evangelists”. They had not embraced carbon reduction as a new religion. These were smart people, able to make informed decisions about how they use energy in the home, travel to work or feed their families. People who have learned to be frugal with the earth's finite resources such as oil, coal and gas and at the same time take advantage of the abundance of nature. By eating with the seasons, buying very little imported fruit and veg I find myself coping with too much of seasonal crops such as apples or tomatoes each autumn and finding new ways to store, preserve and enjoy these fruits. For most country people this was a skill they grew up with, a preserving pan could be found in most kitchens and people in towns were able to buy locally produce in shops owned and run by local people. How different our lives are today. No visit to the supermarket ever gave me the sense of accomplishment I get from bottling fruit or presenting my neighbours with a bottle of sloe gin instead of the usual wine at Christmas!

In my work with communities, I have visited towns and villages in all parts of the UK and spoken to people who have discovered for themselves what psychologists have been telling us for years. When you make people scared and fearful they are less likely to take action on climate change. Instead, what really does seem to work is providing opportunities for people to live and experience a low carbon life. In these communities, walking the children to school, sharing lifts to work or college, installing energy saving light bulbs etc have become the norm, wearing a jumper instead of hiking up the central heating thermostat is common sense and insulation of cavity walls and loft spaces is a “no brainer”. But, where's the joy in that?

The joy and sense of fulfilment that I experience in my own low carbon life comes from a sense of achievement, call me smug if you like, but getting our family's carbon footprint (3 adults plus dog) down to less than 7 tonnes a year hasn't been easy. We've faced some tough decisions and made changes to our lifestyle which we would not have considered had it not been for other families sharing their stories and experiences with us. We're not finished yet, future plans include ditching the car, installing solar panels and insulating under  the floor. Before too long, low carbon behaviours like these will become the norm – either through choice – or necessity.

Which would you rather? Chose to make changes now that fit with your lifestyle and aspirations or wait for mandatory carbon rationing, exorbitant car tax and fuel prices? Get smart, get realistic and get happier, healthier and more fulfilled on the journey. Be bold, be audacious and surprise yourself with your own creativity.

Tracey Todhunter is a freelance writer and community trainer. She was a co founder of the Low Carbon Communities Network and is currently employed by 10:10 as Community Liaison. She writes here in a personal capacity.

To find out more about 10:10's campaign to get everyone cutting their carbon by 10% in 2010 you can email communities@1010uk.org

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               What does social enterprise actually mean? 

I can hear you yelling nooooooooooo! Not another existential debate about whether we actually exist, and, if so, on what parallel universe? Surely beers, a pub and a late hour are required to make such a question bearable.

But here’s the thing. I’m sick to death of not being able to explain to friends and relatives what I as a journalist for Social Enterprise magazine write about day in day out. I’ve used the Big Issue as an example so many times that I’m sure my parents think I write for a magazine that simply writes about what another magazine is doing (now there’s an indie film in the making).

I digress. My reason for assaulting you with this horribly vexed, and vexing, question on a Monday is not because I think I have the answer (will the branding exercise currently underway deliver us this?) but because I think I finally understand why people exposed to the term for the first time are so dumbfounded.

It’s not because the words ‘social’ and ‘enterprise’ are counterintuitive, actually the opposite is the case. When people hear of examples of businesses that are making money while doing good, I’m sure that it suddenly hits them how ridiculous, how counterintuitive, it is that we have allowed ourselves to create an economic system, to live in a world, where this isn’t the case.

People don’t ‘get’ social enterprise because to do so they must first take a step back and admit to themselves the crazy nature of most businesses now – where the poor old shop keeper whose instincts actually are to do good is forced to do bad to survive in our competitive, consumer society. It’s a big thing to take in and throwing out a bit of jargon at the very beginning of a sentence probably isn’t helping matters. In fact I can hear their brains grinding to a halt before we’ve even got started.

So here’s the thing, how about when talking to mates we forget the whole awareness/branding issue (which is more suited to a commercial decisions/discussions anyway) and take it back to first principles. Perhaps even get a little philosophical because greed and generosity exist equally in human beings. We have learnt to make an economic system work based on greed, now is the time to tell people, hey guess what, we’ve learnt that businesses work based on generosity too – and if businesses can work based on generosity then so can an entire economic system.

So next time someone asks me what I write about I’m going to say: ‘really creative businesspeople who base all their business decisions on generosity – not greed’. Hopefully that will lead to a nice long conversation with lots of questions asked and I can pop the term social enterprise in much later in the day.

Chrisanthi Giotis is the Assistant Editor and Reporter of Social Enterprise Magazine.

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Would the world be a better place if some social enterprises did not exist?

Hear me out before balking at the question- Is it possible that some social enterprises have failed so colossally that their existence has caused more damage than good?

I don’t have an example or a target in mind but it is important to think critically about our sector and discuss if just anything or any endeavor are a good thing. My question centers upon three points: good intentions, growth through failure, and collateral damage.

Good intentions—One essential for any social enterprise has to be the good intentions of one or a group of social entrepreneurs. Whether in terms of an enterprise’s social benefit or a community it is intended to reach, social entrepreneurs often cite their good intentions as their motivation for establishing their projects.

But what happens when good intentions are not enough? Projects often fail and companies go out of business but what kind of damage is left behind after promises to communities are not met and social problems persist?

Growth through failure—Contrary to social norms, failure is not inherently a bad thing. Within the entrepreneurship sector, people see failure as a learning opportunity—a chance to know what didn’t work and improve. Overcoming failure is seen as an opportunity to grow as an entrepreneur and as enterprise.

For the individual, it is probably helpful to think about failure from this ‘glass-is-half-full’ perspective, for the mere fact of being able to keep going and persevere. But for communities afflicted with social problems, individual growth of the entrepreneur is not that important. For the community that the entrepreneur has failed, it is not as sunny of picture.

Collateral damage—Although we would like to think of social enterprises as angelic companies who can do no wrong, the reality is that if they fail they have the potential to hurt the communities they were supposed to be helping. If communities are promised change or improved support and these promises are broken, who else is hurt other than the ego of the social entrepreneur?

This is the It’s A Wonderful Life dilemma… Would the world be a better place if some social enterprises had never existed?

In the movie, George Bailey wishes he had never existed, sees an alternate dystopia without him, and discovers at the end of the movie that family and community are what made his life rich. (Note: The Bailey Building and Loan Association which created an affordable housing project could be considered an early form of social enterprise.)

Is this Hollywood depiction of failure and vindication analogous to the value of failed social enterprises today? I’m not sure.

While I agree that innovation cannot come without risk and that taking risks should be valued in our society, I think some enterprises should be told ‘No’ and be stopped before they start, thus saving the potential communities they would work in from collateral damage or broken promises.

The final question I will leave you with is this: Who is responsible for saying ‘No’ to dangerous or irresponsible social enterprises?

Nick Mickinski is a researcher for Young UnLtd - a programme focussed on youth entrepreneurship at UnLtd, The Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs

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Are co-operatives the business model for today’s consumer activism?

Having been around for over 150 years, co-operatives are amongst the most successful and sustainable businesses in the social enterprise sector. One reason for this, I think, is that the most long-standing co-operatives are owned and controlled by their customers – the customers are members, they make up the board and provide ongoing feedback.

Not only are large co-operatives like The Co-operative engaging their members more and more. We’re also seeing a new wave of co-operatives thriving on customer ownership – from community owned shops and wind farms to online shops like Ethics Girls or telecommunications providers like the Phone Co-op.

So what are the advantages of businesses giving ownership and control of their business to their customers?

First – trust. In a time when trust in business and banks is at an all time low, co-operative businesses which are accountable to their member customers, not to profit maximising shareholders or executives, have become increasingly popular. As they’re based on values and principles, it’s not surprising that co-operatives are associated with trust.

Second – consumer activism. In a co-operative where customers are members and have a stake in the business, they are not just consumers. They are more committed, more likely to get involved, help out, support and develop the business.

With web 2.0, customer involvement is becoming commonplace. Sites like Amazon are driven by costumer reviews whilst Facebook, blogs, twitter etc make it easy for customers to influence the opinions of other customers. Members are more likely to act as online (and offline) advocates of a business than traditional customers.

Third – responding to customer demands. Businesses need to meet their customers’ needs. Your average business is one step removed from its customers so it finds out what customers want by conducting surveys, talking to customers and doing market research to determine whether it’s providing what its customers want.

A co-operative which has consumers voting, regularly feeding into key decisions and sitting on the board will be more instinctively customer focused – the customers will be a part of the business, not on the outside.

Getting consumers so actively involved in a business – and giving up some control of that business – might seem strange to some entrepreneurs. But co-operatives have been doing it successfully for over a century – and even the Chief Executive of Asda agrees. He recently said that retail now needs a business model in which customers are involved in decision-making – what he, following co-operatives across the world, calls ‘democratic consumerism’!

Giles Simon is the Communications and Development Officer at Co-operativesUK

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                        Knowledge is Power, Man

Never before has it been so easy to find and share information for free. Recent years have seen a vital paradigm shift, but are people conscious of it?

 
The advent of the Internet has not only allowed us to buy shoes on eBay, but has completely changed the way we think about communications and information sharing. For example, four years ago Wikipedia became the largest compendium of knowledge ever known. There are more than 10 million articles in more than 270 languages, all for free. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon have allowed us to find and share interesting articles and training tools from every corner of the world web. Countless videos on Youtube feature advice sharing, from guitar lessons to fashion tips to free-running tricks. Believe it or not, even social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have enabled us to share things like topical research findings and industry know-how.

Many politicians have started blogging alongside calls for government to be more candid in its operations. In a recent BBC News article, Andy Williamson of political research group The Hansard Society stated that "In order to effectively engage citizens, an organisation needs to believe that the voice of citizens matters...” Albeit painfully slow, there has been a move towards a more transparent and engaging ‘Government 2.0’, in which the average citizen can freely access information (such as the NHS Choices website where one can check definitive health information) and even have the chance to challenge government through an e-petition system. This all works in tandem with the recent Digital Britain report, which explores the impact of a more empowering and engaging government, driven by open and free information sharing online.
 

The corporate world has also been transformed in the way it thinks and does recruitment and investment. I’m not talking about reading through job applications and investing in the financial markets, but proactively scouting for talent and investing in employee training. Three short examples:

1)      Many law firms offer to fund young talents’ postgraduate law degrees in order to take them on at a later stage.
2)      Football clubs find young enthusiasts and pour time and money into training them up to be unbelievable sports stars.
3)      Large companies, such as KPMG, have launched free training schemes open to all (but aimed at young entrepreneurs), on things like pitching and public speaking, fundraising, and business planning.

We are seeing a corporate culture change focused on investing in people. Instead of being untouchable power houses, they are becoming more socially engaged by opening up their knowledge and expertise, and thus investing in their future employees. Immediate costs are not an issue here because they are looking at the bigger picture.
 

Perhaps the most obvious example of this trend is the rise of the social enterprise. I won’t start getting into the philosophy behind this business model, because a community interest company called The Philosophy Shop are holding a free session on this topic in November. In fact, Social Enterprise London regularly hosts free training events for young entrepreneurs on organisational management skills, writing policy proposals, and how to find information on key government portals. And of course, let’s not forget UnLtd, a fast-growing social enterprise that offers funding, training and development support, and networking opportunities for anyone who cares enough to apply and get involved. The list goes on. It clearly manifests this budding trend of sharing information and providing free education. As cheesy as it may sound, we are realising the potential of sustainable development, effectively planting seeds for the future.
 

So where am I going with this? I feel that there is still a barrier in the way – it just doesn’t make (traditional) business sense. When presenting my organisation’s vision to others, the most common question I hear is about funding, “How will you secure funds?” and “Won’t you just be losing money?” (here comes the plug for my organisation) We want to run an intensive one-year training programme for young talents for self-discovery and personal direction, employability and leadership skills, and developing promising ideas into real projects. Not only do we want to offer this for free, but we want to pay them to participate. Now, ignore your initial reaction of disbelief or doubt this can be done, and think about the trend we have observed above. I think it’s safe to say that it is in everyone’s interest to improve education, and we believe that having financial barriers into it results in excluding a large number of promising talents with limitless potential for change. By creating a movement that bases itself on values of free education, we hope to encourage a similar approach by others. But this goes beyond us; it is a movement that is picking up momentum in every developed country I can think of.
 

Take the examples above; now imagine a society with boundless free education and open information sharing for all...
 
If you are interested in this concept, please explore our website and show your support to make our vision come to life.
www.seeducation.org

Tal Wolgroch is part of a team creating Seeducation – an open source hub of social change; channeling decision making to the maximum of growing capacities while taking active steps towards nurturing seeds of the future.

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