WANT A BETTER FUTURE?

Then up the ante on community engagement and decision making

Opening out and digging deep

When we come together in facilitated meetings, citizens’ assemblies or community engagement ‘consultations’, often only certain voices are heard; perhaps the loudest, the majority, the ‘community leader’, or the voices the facilitator favours. Other voices at the margins that may differ from the majority or have conflicting views, go unheard. However, including all views may well lead towards futures that are preferable to the narrower ones many of us currently contemplate. Engagement and decision making needs to open out and include all voices.

In this era of increasingly polarised views, people who offer unpopular or alternative perspectives are often bullied or ‘trolled’. We are even exhorted from the top to be ‘quiet Australians’. This has the effect of making people reluctant to be different and flows down through workplaces, local councils, community groups etc.  Superficial discussion, simplistic arguments or passive agreements have become the norm. So, engagement activities need to dig deeper, way down to the beliefs and the stories underlying the situation.

Enriching possible futures through ‘opening out’

Instead of seeing them as problematic, we can welcome conflicting views and include the marginalised, the powerful, and all those in-between. By giving everyone a voice, we can ‘think outside the box’ and embrace richer perspectives. Such expansion is not possible where we all share similar views, follow ‘the leader’, feel pressure or be too shy to voice an alternative or unpopular view. This expansion is the starting point of opening out.

Certainly, working with conflicting viewpoints is not easy. The facilitator requires experience and expertise in applying the process. Tips include working toward developing expertise before including some participants who may be seen as adversaries. Also, enabling guidelines to be developed by the group sets the tone, and reminds people that this is a place for respectful debate.

Deepening discussions – reflecting on our worldviews and stories

Opening out is not enough by itself. There is also a need to dig deeper with our discussions. While we are quick to offer an opinion, analysis is often thin on the ground.

Here’s a real-life example of exploring the process of opening out and digging deep. In a workshop setting, the discussion topic was the potential for unconventional gas exploration and extraction (the most well-known being ‘fracking’) in the South West Coast District, Victoria, Australia. Participants from the region held a range of views. The workshop began with small groups where everyone ‘tried on’ different views, discussing and becoming more familiar with the similarities and differences of their own views and values compared with others in the group.

Questions to further prompt reflection

Bringing the group together the facilitator asked a series of questions linked to each level, (see diagram) beginning with the present and leading to a future ‘dream situation’.

Source: Inayatullah, S. (2017). Causal Layered Analysis, Prospective and Strategic Foresight Toolbox. Futuribles International, 1-21.

The facilitator asked participants:

1.  ’What do you see, what is spoken about, what is published when      you look at the energy situation?’ This is the most superficial visible level, such as statistical data and newspaper headlines.
2. ’What is the cause of this situation?’ This is the factual level that includes systemic causes.
3. ‘What beliefs are causing this to happen? (you may have to step out of your own beliefs here)’. This level taps into participants’ values as reflected at level 2, to identify worldviews. These may be dominated by economic, social and/or environmental concerns.
4. ’Is there a suitable metaphor or myth to help us understand why we behave the way we do in creating the situation we are in?’ and ‘what is a suitable metaphor or myth to describe a future ‘dream’ situation?’ This level goes deeply into the underlying story.

As the workshop advances, moving to the ‘dream situation’ and identifying a new myth or metaphor is vital to creating a new story as a foundation for change. For example, the group might identify the current metaphor as ‘be careful what you grow in the shadows’ and a new metaphor as ‘turn on the light’. The group then works back up the levels. These processes can contribute to decision making by progressing to the identification of preferred future scenarios and strategies for their achievement.

My aim in providing this summary is to encourage a grasp of the practice, although of course, it is best to ‘learn by doing’. You will probably have some concerns and questions. I briefly tackle two such questions next but feel free to voice your thoughts, positive and otherwise via my email details.

Question – For this practice to be effective, there needs to be power-sharing. Why would the powerful share their power?  Why would corporations and organisations (including charities and social enterprises) relinquish some of their power?

Response – Public trust in organisations has been badly shaken lately. Many need to build or repair trust. The pressure to be accountable is increasing. Add to this the financial and reputational cost of conflict to organisations and they may well become more receptive to democratic approaches to engagement and decision-making. Failing adequate responses to this need to ‘wake up’, a series of collapses may make them increasingly receptive to alternative future pathways. Unfortunately, it is not at all difficult to envisage collapses due, for example, to climate change.

Question – What about the facts?

Response – Facts are vital and are identified in level 2 as the systemic causes of an issue. Values also play a crucial role in the way facts are received. Division about the facts of climate change is a case in point.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/not-everyone-cares-about-climate-change-but-reproach-wont-change-their-minds-118255

Although successfully applied nationally and internationally, it is relatively early days in the development of this futures-oriented engagement practice called Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). The practice both progresses democratisation and engages the imagination in identifying alternative possibilities and strategies. Today, applying innovative new methods and imaginings is key in transitioning towards a preferable future.

Marcelle Holdaway (marcelle4487@gmail.com)

Marcelle describes her values as revolving around equity, empowerment and healing ourselves and the world around us. These values have consistently informed her professional and personal objectives of lifting the bar on matters social and environmental. As an active practitioner, including having had close ties with SAN, she has spent the past 4 years completing a PhD concerning her practice area. Marcelle’s thesis explored a practice-base for democratizing stakeholder engagement by corporations; a practice base also applicable to a wide range of organizations and situations.
Marcelle currently holds the position of Adjunct Fellow  Accountability and Sustainability,  University of the Sunshine Coast within the School of Social Sciences, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.

Keeping the ‘social economy’ on the right track

I believe that the proportion of our UK economy intended to make a profit for people other than investors or owners is growing.

The concept of a ‘social economy’ is also gaining traction in public policy – the West Midlands Combined Authority proposes a ‘model of economic growth that impacts positively on all our residents and communities’[1]. The Greater Manchester Local Industrial Strategy sets out an objective to ‘create the conditions in which co-operatives and social enterprises can thrive’[2].

This social economy is made up of a rich diversity of enterprises and organisations, including – co-operatives, mutuals, associations, foundations, social enterprises and charities, sharing many common values and features, such as, for example: trading which prioritises the social objective over financial; voluntary and open membership; democratic forms of governance; and reinvestment of most of the profits to carry out social purpose objectives.

However, at the heart of the social economy, there’s a difficult balance to be achieved for social enterprises – too much focus on the ‘social value’ can have a negative effect on the ‘enterprise’ which keeps the business financially sustainable.

Too much focus on the money and the ‘social’ benefit gets lost. The economy isn’t ‘social’ at all.

It’s as if you have to follow a train track – one side gets stuck and the train derails.

Keeping financial accounts is mandatory – so looking after the money is easy.

‘Social’ Accounting and Audit can be the way that social economy organisations revolutionise the way that they work and manage their business[3]. Quite a claim from the Social Audit Network (SAN) but what does it really mean?

Social Accounting and Audit is a process that creates a flexible framework for an organisation to:

Prove – report on its performance

Improve – provide the information essential for planning future action and improving performance.

Account – fully for its social, environmental and economic impact

It enables us to understand the impact an organisation has on its community, and on those people and other organisations who are directly involved with the organisation or who access its services.  At the same time, accountability is promoted and weaved into the process by engaging with the organisation’s key stakeholders.

The main benefit to an organisation is the ability to prove its value and to improve its performance! Proving and Improving has become a popular mantra for social enterprises since the phrase was neatly coined by the Quality and Impact Project of the Social Enterprise Partnership.    However, the ‘Prove and Improve’ mantra can overlook that other essential dimension of the process of social accounting: accountability – being accountable to stakeholders.

I could write more about how valuable the social accounting process is for organisations in the social economy to keep on track; but to find out more, meet organisations who truly do ‘prove, improve and account’, and hear from experts in the sector, join us at the SAN Annual Gathering.

Hosted this year on Wednesday 16^th October at the aptly named Impact Hub Birmingham, the SAN Gathering will bring together a huge range of people with a shared interest in social impact, social accounting or social enterprise.

Starting at 10am, the event will provide an opportunity for connection, reflection, planning and shared learning. It will include:

• Facilitated networking
• Keynote ‘state of the sector’ speakers
• World Café discussion
• Practical workshops and masterclasses facilitated by SAN Directors.

Please book your place at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gathering-of-the-social-audit-network-2019-tickets-64196148408

SAN will be joined by Liz Tapner of SELNET[4] in Lancashire – the 2018 Most Influential Woman in Social Enterprise, who will be sharing her experiences and tips for running a successful business in the social economy.

Liz knows how to keep social enterprises on the right track!

Anne Lythgoe
SAN Vice Chair

[1] https://www.wmca.org.uk/what-we-do/public-service-reform/

[2] https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/what-we-do/economy/greater-manchesters-local-industrial-strategy/

[3] www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk

[4] https://selnet-uk.com/who-we-are/the-team/

 

The importance of ownership in understanding social enterprise

I want to destroy ownership in order that possession and enjoyment may be raised to the highest point in every section of the community.
George Bernard Shaw

Over the years there has been a considerable amount of time and energy spent on discussing social enterprise – what it is, what it could be, what impact it has.  At times this has been quite a creative and stimulating experience, while at other times it has been negative and tiresome.

In all these discussions, I believe, not enough emphasis has been laid on ownership.  Who owns these social enterprises and are they accountable not only to themselves but also to the wider public?  Accountability is going to become more and more important for social enterprises as they take on public and community sector contracts and have to account for their actions to a variety of different stakeholders.

With private corporations, ownership is often a slippery beast.  The ownership of the ‘means of production’ can be difficult to determine as it is, at times, not fully declared – but is often the key to understanding why an organisation acts in the way it does.

Andy Wightman in his recent research and writings illustrates this in the following paragraph which refers to land specifically, but also can be extended to property and the ‘means of production’:

Land is about power.  It is about how power is derived, defined, distributed and exercised.  It always has been and it still is thanks to a legal system that has historically been constructed and adapted to protect the interests of private property.  ‘The Poor Had No Lawyers’ by Andy Wightman

Guy Shrubsole in his recent book, Who Owns England, writes that less than one per cent of the population owns about half of England and Wales.  This cannot be right if we are trying to create a fairer more equal society.

Faced with these glaring inequalities, perhaps the only way to fully understand them is to go back into history and trace the threads that lead us to where we are now.  Thus, indulge my historical and simplistic foraging…

Before capitalism, there was a feudal system in the UK where a reigning monarch could grant whole tracts of land along with a title as a reward to the aristocracy for some form of favour.  This ownership of land meant money could be made and inequality could persist – land being the primary source of wealth.

At the time of the British Empire, European imperialists conquered foreign lands and introduced a form of ownership applying European laws – in effect taking control of whole areas through the ownership of land.  As an aside, many tribes in Africa could not get their heads around the ownership of land as it was a concept that challenged their existing value system – land to grow crops, air to breathe, panoramic beauty where all things that existed for all the people and, prior to colonisation, could not be owned in our sense of the word.

In Victorian times ownership and property became all-important causing increased social and economic inequality as ownership of property would be passed on within families.  In fact, those not owning property were excluded from voting, which reinforces Wightman’s comments cited above.

In the mid-19^th century, the co-operative movement emerged as a way that goods and services could be produced for the benefit of the workers and the wider community, not just the factory owners.  Workers co-operatives were created so that they themselves owned the means of production.

In the last two centuries, many voluntary organisations and charities adopted a form of ‘trust’ where ownership was not held by an individual or indeed a group of people.  Rather, those organisations were run and managed by ‘stewards’ operating in the best interests of the organisation to provide maximum benefit to beneficiaries.  A similar structure was adopted by many housing associations.

In the 1970s, Community Co-operatives were established in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland responding to negative economic factors – such as depopulation, dwindling services and a lack of employment opportunities. This model was largely copied by Community Businesses – functioning business enterprises that were owned and controlled by local people for the benefit of those living in local communities.  In these cases, ownership of the business was held by the ‘community’ and not by individuals.

This now brings us to the current situation with social enterprises.  They are not public sector organisations, nor are they part of the private sector where individuals own organisations or companies.  Social enterprises sit somewhere between these two much larger sectors – and this, I would argue, is why ownership of a social enterprise is key to our overall understanding of what is and what is not a social enterprise.

Yvon Poirier, a French-Canadian pioneer within the social economy, explains the origins of the term ‘social enterprise’ stating that its meaning originally…

…relates exclusively to the type of ownership. By ‘social’, one means that the ownership is by humans (persons) and not by shareholders
Social Economy and Related Concepts Paper, 2012

He then goes on to explain that in the 1990s the term ‘social enterprise’ – particularly in the English-speaking world, took on a totally different meaning. The term ‘social’ in recent times has come to mean the purpose or sector of activity and not the ownership of the enterprise. 

This shift in meaning is significant as the end result of social enterprise activity has become more important than the type of organisation they are.  This has led to current thinking which stresses the dominance of social impact over how that impact is delivered and crucially linked to this, the ownership of the organisation.

In trying to understand the creation and evolution of social enterprise, we have become too bogged down in what a social enterprise does and what impact it claims. We are guilty of overlooking the issue of ownership and this is a situation I feel needs addressing.

In response to the ownership of a social enterprise, some activists have stressed the need for an ‘asset lock’.  This ensures that individuals do not, and will not, benefit directly from their involvement in the enterprise.  In a way, this skirts around the central issue which is about who owns the enterprise – indeed, who owns and thus controls, the means of production.  Ownership, in my view, should be more central to our understanding.

Many organisations that claim to be social enterprises are up-front about their social impact credentials, hoping that no-one will look too closely at the ownership of their enterprise. Of course, those private sector businesses with strong Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) statements should be applauded – particularly if they genuinely report on what social benefits they provide and do not only use it as a marketing tool.

However, praising these private businesses for their CSR reporting does not qualify them as a ‘social enterprise’.  In my view, a social or community enterprise is about collective ownership maximising benefit to a wider society.

When thinking about social enterprises, the first questions to ask are, who owns it and what is the ownership structure.  This will help in understanding where that organisation is coming from and why it is acting in that particular way.  The key issue around ownership is whether or not the social enterprise is acting in a way that maximises social or community benefit, or is acting solely in the interest of the owners.

Collective ownership operating on behalf of a wider community ensuring future sustainability to benefit society has to be preferred to privately owned businesses masquerading as social enterprises.

In fact, I would go further.  I believe that all organisations that have a central social or community purpose should keep regular and transparent social accounts.  These ‘accounts’ should affirm the key things about the organisation, including ownership, and at the same time provide an indication of the social and community impact backed up by evidence.

And going even further, I believe that in order to give social reports integrity, they should be subject to an independent audit.  For information on a practical way forward, see www.socialauditnetwork.org.

You will have noticed the George Bernard Shaw quote at the start of this blog.  He used the word ‘destroy’ which indicates fairly drastic action.  What he is arguing for is the destruction of ‘private ownership’ as opposed to ‘collective’ or ‘communal ownership’ so that owning things and living contented lives is not in the hands of the few for their own purposes but is shared by the many for everyone’s benefit.

Alan Kay, April 2019

Alan was one of the original founders of the Social Audit Network (SAN) which encourages social and community organisations to keep regular social accounts and have them independently audited – www.socialauditnetwork.org.
Alan is retired but during his working life, he had more than 35 years of experience in community development and social enterprise sector in the UK and overseas. Alan’s background was in overseas development. Since returning to Scotland in 1988 he mainly worked with community-owned enterprises and social enterprises.  He remains loosely attached to Glasgow Caledonian University as a Senior Visiting Fellow of the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health.
Email: alan.kay20@gmail.com or alan.kay@gcu.ac.uk

 

 

Giving social value a mandate to flourish

Over the last couple of months, I have had the pleasure of speaking at several events where ‘social value’ featured strongly on the agenda.

In Liverpool, the Social Audit Network Annual Conference examined how social accounting can support civil society organisations to tackle poverty….

In Edinburgh, at an event convened by Community Enterprise, social and community enterprise organisations debated the changing practice of social impact measurement….

Social investment and the eradication of poverty

The Social Metrics Commission recently issued the report on their work to measure poverty in a more meaningful way. They estimate that 14.2 million people in the UK live in poverty, including 4.5 million children. These stats are shocking and underline the vital role of so much of the charity sector and social economy, working in many ways to address the root causes or the effects of poverty.

Big Society Capital (BSC) believe that social investment (i.e. repayable finance used to create impact) can be (a small) part of the solution alongside the social economy sector’s other funding sources. Money provided upfront by social investors is used by social enterprises and charities to finance income-generating models so that they are able to make a greater difference in addressing poverty.

SAN Presents… understanding poverty

‘Facts alone don’t change how people think… We need to understand how people think about poverty and why… Our society’s shared values can help build support to solve UK poverty’
Joseph Rowntree Foundation[1]

The true purpose of ‘charity’ is to tackle poverty and disadvantage. That’s what charities and other social purpose organisations do – address inequality, help people who are less fortunate, and protect, campaign and lobby on their behalf. Arguably, what is variously referred to as responsible or purposeful business, or even social value, will include actions to tackle poverty.

To truly understand poverty, and the outcomes and impact in terms of how an organisation’s actions are tackling poverty, we need to hear the views of stakeholders who are in poverty… including those in need, but also the people who donate, who invest, who collect intelligence, and who work to tackle poverty in all its forms.

We need to understand the forms of poverty. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has described, poverty is not only about not having enough money – it’s about not having enough food, poor housing and heating, poor wellbeing, and a poor environment to live in.

We also need to learn from the intelligence available from research, case studies and reports drawn together to inform our planning, decision-making and investment.

…and we really need to give ‘value’ – meaning and worth – to the work that we are doing to tackle poverty.

The Social Audit Network has 8 Principles[2] for social accounting and audit:

• Clarify Purpose
• Define Scope
• Engage Stakeholders
• Determine Materiality
• Make Comparisons (benchmarking)
• Be Transparent
• Verify Accounts
• Embed the process

These principles are all based in creating a logical and consistent approach to collecting and using data as part of an organisation’s arrangements for understanding and reporting on addressing social deprivation and its social impact.

On 17^th October, SAN Presents… an exploration of poverty in the eyes of a range of stakeholders, including Big Lottery, Big Society Capital, WOCAN, the 2030 Hub, the Universities of Huddersfield and Salford, Halton CAB and the Bolton Social Business Collective.

And across 3 aspects of poverty – food, social wellbeing and money.

Taking inspiration from the work of the JRF, and also the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, we will explore how following the SAN principles and embedding social accounting into your organisation’s work can help your social economy organisation get to grips with robustly reporting on the effort to tackle poverty.

We will also explore an international dimension with the help of WOCAN; Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management, a women-led international membership network of women and men professionals and women’s associations.

The event also coincides with the 26^th anniversary of the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Book your place now to join in the debate!

SAN presents… Understanding Poverty

The Social Audit Network’s Annual Gathering

Wednesday 17th October 2018

54 St James Street, Liverpool. L1 0AB

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/san-presents-understanding-poverty-tickets-48057029870

Social Accounting and Audit allows social economy organisations to build on existing monitoring, documentation and reporting systems to develop a process to account fully for social, environmental and economic impacts, report on performance and draw up action plans to improve on that performance. Through this process, an organisation can understand its impact on the surrounding community and build a role as a catalyst for tackling poverty.

Anne Lythgoe
www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk

[1] https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/talking-about-poverty-uk-what-works

[2] http://www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk/getting-started/what-is-social-accounting-and-audit/

A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved

“There are always two people in every picture, the photographer and the viewer” Ansel Adams.

At Give2Gain, in Stockport, we offer a range of networking meetings and workshops that promote local cross sector relationship building. We are big fans of the stakeholder experience. As we account for the social good we believe we provide, the process is brought alive by the role our stakeholders play in exploring information and testing assumptions.

Making social accounting relevant for you….

If nothing else, the Social Value Act has led to an explosion in the number of ‘tools’ to measure social value…

Social Value UK offers 36 online tools and software to help people like you and me use in accounting for and reporting on social value. The Social Value Hub, hosted by Social Enterprise UK, includes a vast range of tools, case studies and advice about measuring social value and the Inspiring Impact programme has many similar resources available.

Emancipation from the need to prove…. how social accounting can break the shackles of burdensome reporting

A couple of weeks ago I attended the first ever National Social Prescribing Network Research Conference at the University of Salford. Currently engaged in attempting to understand the nature of social prescribing across Greater Manchester, I found the conference both informative and inspirational.

I didn’t expect to be struck with a need to speak out about the obvious link (well it’s obvious to me…) between social prescribing and another of my ‘social’ interests – social accounting.

Social prescribing is a means of enabling GPs, nurses and other healthcare professionals to refer people to a range of local, non-clinical services. This approach is gaining momentum as an alternative to clinical care and prescribed medicines.

Reflections on Social Enterprise: has it lost its way?

The role of a retired person is no longer to possess one. Simone de Beauvoir

I have been thinking about retiring but with the above quote in mind, I do not want to lose my ‘role’ in society.  I recognise that my role will change and, perhaps because of this, I have been reflecting on the changes that have happened within the social and community enterprise sector – an area I have worked in since 1988.  The essence of this ‘area’ is how organisations can trade in goods and service to maximise social and community benefit.

Mulling over the progress made by the sector in the last 30 years has got me wondering whether or not the world of social enterprise has lost its way.

Since the 1980s when I first started to work with community-owned businesses in Scotland, there have been huge and undoubtedly positive developments.  The idea of enterprises and trading businesses having a central social purpose has become much more acceptable – the proverbial person on the top of the No. 33 bus is now more aware of the term ‘social enterprise’.

Furthermore, governments now see the potential of enterprises delivering a care-bound service and are trying to support them with policies, strategies and the offer of funded contracts.  The prevailing infrastructure (sometimes called ‘eco-system’) within social enterprises is more developed than ever before, and encouragingly, more and more young people want to work within, and startup, companies that create a better and fairer society.

Many of the winds of change in the sector have been positive.  So, why am I left with a nagging negative feeling that the social enterprise ‘movement’, if that is what it is, has lost its way? There are three areas that cause concern.

Firstly, there is no widely agreed definition for a social enterprise.  Instead, there are many slightly different definitions – some are loosely defined and ‘broad church’; while others are very specific.

Without a widely acceptable and recognised definition, it is difficult to say what is a social enterprise and what is not.  This means that some private businesses can self-declare themselves as social enterprises while their trading surplus finds its way eventually into the pockets of its owners.  At the same time, there is a push to encourage organisations that are patently charitable and dependent on volunteer work to make money when there is little or no money to be made.

In my view, this lack of a clear definition has hampered the expansion of the social enterprise sector.

In Scotland, there has been an awareness of this problem and many social enterprises and support organisations have signed up to the Voluntary Code which provides a helpful definition. The Code recognises five basic criteria for social enterprise, and in a short appendix, identifies some less ‘defined’ values/behaviours/influences familiar to the social enterprise movement. Although this has helped, the Code is constantly coming under attack from those that want ‘social enterprise’ to include a wider range of companies – many of which are patently privately owned.

This tug o’ war over definitions is really a political battle – with those on the ‘right’ pushing for privatisation of services, and those on the ‘left’ wanting to retain the benefits from trading entirely for the wider social good.

Secondly, there is an issue about whether or not a social enterprise exists to primarily benefit the individual or the community.

Over the last 40 years or so, there has been a switch in thinking in society in a collective way where there is a concern for the common good, to one where the individual is paramount.  This focus on the individual is so pervasive that it is often considered it to be the norm.  It manifests itself in everything from commercial marketing with a focus on the individual needs of consumers, to psychological profiling of individual persons.

Society is now increasingly more structured these days on the individual and less on the relationships between people.

Mutuality, reciprocal working and looking out for the less fortunate has not disappeared – but it has been given less importance.  We are a society more obsessed with the Self; and less with the Group.

Thirdly, there is a danger that the social enterprise sector is losing its purpose and overall essence.  I think there are three sub-areas of concern here, namely:

• adoption of neo-liberal economics: Funding is no longer trustingly given to organisations in the third sector.  They have to compete for it causing divisions between similar organisations which due to their often, precarious financial existence should be collaborating and working together for the common good. Added to this is an expectation that growing an organisation is the only way to survive – biggest is best.  This is often not the case as smaller, locally based organisations with strong collective bonds are often more effective as they understand, and work within, the local context.

 

• overemphasis on management: In the 1980s there was a root and branch re-organisation of the public sector with the introduction of overt marketisation. This encouraged an emphasis on management, reflected in ambitious workers doing MBAs and learning how to manage departments and, indeed, voluntary organisations. The methods of traditional business were swallowed wholesale and not sufficiently adapted to the delivery of social needs. These days it has become entirely acceptable that numbers and finance became the currency of tracking qualitative social change.

 

• focussing too much on ‘innovative’ technology: This is a tricky one as the technology itself is not a concern – but rather it is how it is applied. Computers have had a huge influence on how we work and how we organise what we do.  There has been, in my view, too much focus on how we deliver what we do and not enough emphasis on why we are doing it.  In effect, there is a danger that the technology dictates the delivery and our sense of caring is subsumed in overly concentrating on method.

I am not sure if I have any answers to any of these concerns about the future direction of social enterprise.

Social and community enterprises can try and keep a grip on what they do by building into their structure time for reflection.  Social Accounting and Audit (SAA) is an integral way of keeping track on what an organisation is doing, how it is doing what it does, who it works with, and most importantly why it is doing what it does.  SAA is not complex.  It is a process which reports on the approach of an organisation, its values and procedures, as well as expecting regular reporting on the positive (and negative) change that happens as a result of the organisation’s actions.

It is about being accountable – not just to a funder or to an owner, but to all the key stakeholders.  It is about helping to hold on to the essence of what they are as a social or community enterprise – and to keep focussed and not drift from their core mission.

Returning to the original quote at the start of this blog.  I think at every age we should build in time for reflection on what has worked and what has not.  The term ‘social enterprise’ is often overused, becoming more diluted and in danger of becoming a meaningless term. The social enterprise ‘movement’, behind the term, is, I think, beginning to lose its way.

But we still have time to address this… well, you do!   I am off to retire.

Alan Kay – Social Audit Network (SAN)
www.socialauditnetwork.org.uk