Urban Survival Project

Fundraising - Recruitment Strategies for Corporations & HNWIs

2009-11-18T18:33:00.002Z

One of the biggest fundraising mistakes that social organisations make is chasing anyone who might potentially have some money, without really assessing whether or not their goals or interests fit the project. This is why generic applications get nowhere, and why creating specific proposals often fails too. You absolutely must have some kind of selection criteria to filter the right organisations to approach, before you spend time on funding proposals.

The next mistake involves assuming that presenting the social need and tugging on heart strings is enough to get people (HNWI = High Net Worth Individuals) or organisations to part with their money. This is a hit and hope affair – you might get lucky, or you might not. The real trick is to understand what your target audiences needs are, then make sure you are actually able to deliver the benefits they might want from their association with your project, and finally, stay true to your promises.

Above is a real life example of how to select your fundraising targets and then work out the benefits that might attract them. Once you understand these you can then create the messaging and marketing needed to attract them, and the engagement plans to manage the relationships over time.

Fundraising In A Nutshell

2009-11-18T18:32:00.000Z

[Taken from my new blog @ http://www.socialeffect.org]

This is more for social enterprises and charities that are raising funds in order to continue to operate and/or grow rather than for startups.

The trick is to do these in parallel. Start your research and network to build relationships with potential funders, while simultaneously putting the platforms in place. This means that by the time you've built your relationships with the people interested in your work, you've also got all your messaging sorted out and ready to go.

Additional notes:

Networking = emails and conversations (phone and face-to-face meetings)
Recognition = not just for brand but also methodology in terms of getting accepted as experts in the type of work being done
Shareability = having the technical ability to share your content in social media, as well as creating and chunking it so that it is valuable and motivates people to pass it on.

Aviva Community Fund Competition - Vote now!

2009-11-18T14:04:00.003Z

Round 3 of the Aviva Community Fund up in Canada is under way. The slogan of the competition is “Supporting what’s important to you”.

I've just been in touch with a great project called Charity CHAMPS, which is promoting microphilanthropy amongst youth, the most important, but least engaged demographic in philanthropy.

Also unlike a lot of the other ideas competing for votes, theirs has a fundamental online and micro-action foundation which there needs to be more of. Philanthropy needs to benefit from the huge changes in technology like every other industry.

If any of these things are important to you go vote for Charity CHAMPS at http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf2300

2009-11-18T13:56:00.001Z

Globosocial Adventures: Journeys into the Social Unknown

2009-11-04T17:21:00.003Z

Over the past few years I've slowly been moving more and more towards a focus on social enterprise. Along the way I've worked on grassroots projects, run initiatives, joined and chaired charity boards and provided advisory help and input to social enterprises; all with the end goal of covering enough ground to be compelling as a consultant in the social space.

However, as I began to understand the UK social sector, I began to develop a curiosity about how things work in other parts of the world. How relevant is UK best practice to other regions? What impacts do different cultures and economies have on social and charitable enterprise? What new and exciting social innovations and approaches are budding in countries outside the western sphere?

Since there's only so much you can grasp from books and blogs, I figured the fastest and most effective way to build a global picture of social endeavour would be to travel through different countries working with social or charitable enterprises, helping address the challenges these organisations face.

So I am now traveling to different countries around the world, working with and understanding social enterprise in different cultures and economies. I'm interested in understanding cultural and economic impacts on the scope and success of social enterprises. My long term goal is to see if it is possible to design better global support systems for small social enterprises, and to improve the connectivity between people working to address similar social issues.

My first leg will be Central and South America, starting in Mexico City on the 12th of October 2009. The overall time-frame is unknown, but is expected to involve about 3 months per region, with 6 regions overall as listed a little further down.

My broad areas of focus will be as follows:

Challenges
Social innovations
Hybrid Business innovations
Local (Best) Practices
"Health-Check" Toolkits for Social Enterprises (based on http://tinyurl.com/l63og5)
Funding mechanisms
Governmental Policy and Support
Working partnerships
Key social entrepreneurial hubs and networks

The basic methodology is simple and for every country visited will involve

Spending a few weeks with 2 or more social enterprises, providing pro-bono generic consulting skills to help them address any organisational or developmental challenge they are facing (see skills profile below)
Connecting with local arms of global SE umbrella organisations (eg. Ashoka) and local Social Enterprise or Third Sector support organisations
Connecting with local Social Entrepreneurs

I am currently looking for

Organisations that might be interested in commissioning comparative outputs
Suggestions for local organisations that might need help in terms of advisory / guidance etc. in the following regions

South America
Africa
India
South East Asia
China
Japan

Potential funding avenues / support with travel and accommodation costs

-------------------------------------------------------

If you know any organisations that could use strategic help, or you want to be part of the journey, help fund me or simply provide connections, drop me an email at rizwan.tayabali@gmail.com

If you want to follow the journey, visit the blog at http://social-explorer.blogspot.com or get email updates here.

Thanks!

Rizwan
----
http://www.socialeffect.org
http://rizwantayabali.info

Why Brand Recognition Matters for Social Enterprise

2009-09-29T22:12:00.004+01:00

[Taken from my new blog @ http://www.socialeffect.org - Click here to Update your feeds, or subscribe via email]

Here's a quick snapshot of how brand awareness impacts the different audiences for Social Enterprises, NGOs and Non-Profits.

If you ever wondered why your organisation should be devoting time to building mass recognition, this should clue you in.

* HNWI = High Net-Worth Individuals (Philanthropists, Investors)

Why Social Enterprises Need Strong Brands

2009-09-08T17:41:00.004+01:00

[Taken from my new blog @ http://www.socialeffect.org - Click here to Update your feeds, or subscribe via email]

Having problems loading? View this presentation on Slideshare

Here's the jist of it...

A brand is what your audience feels , thinks , and remembers about your enterprise.

Brand used to be ‘ offline ’ and ‘ online ’ Now it is seamless , and primarily driven by how you are perceived via the web.

And now that organisations can create their own profiles , brands can effectively function as ‘ people ’ i.e. In the interactive web 2.0 world, your brand has a personality.

So… Brand used to just be about image, but now its about image AND personality!

Before the web, niche brands could only engage niche audiences. They relied on costly traditional PR and push marketing, which meant that their audiences were tiny and their budgets high. Now niche brands can engage mass audiences at low cost.

Social organisations sit in a niche that typically does not sell product. They are competing for attention. And when you're competing for attention, your competition is everything. You have to stand out to be noticed.

A strong brand is a core factor in being noticed, and therefore heard, which is why it critical for social organisations to get their branding right.

Project A - Journeys into the Social Unknown

2009-08-28T16:56:00.001+01:00

[Taken from my new blog @ http://www.socialeffect.org - please visit and update your feeds!]

Over the past few years I've slowly been moving more and more towards a focus on social enterprise. Along the way I've worked on grassroots projects, run initiatives, joined and chaired charity boards and provided advisory help and input to social enterprises; all with the end goal of covering enough ground to be compelling as a consultant in the social space.

However, as I began to understand the UK social sector, I began to develop a curiosity about how things work in other parts of the world. How relevant is UK best practice to other regions? What impacts do different cultures and economies have on social and charitable enterprise? What new and exciting social innovations and approaches are budding in countries outside the western sphere?

Since there's only so much you can grasp from books and blogs, I figured the fastest and most effective way to build a global picture of social endeavour would be to travel through different countries working with social or charitable enterprises, helping address the challenges these organisations face.

So here I am. A few years and much saving later, ready to make it happen. If you know any organisations that could use strategic help, or you want to be part of the journey, follow what I'm doing, help fund me or simply provide connections, drop me an email at rizwan.tayabali@gmail.com

The plan so far is as follows:

-------------------------------------------------------

Project Bio/Summary

I am planning a year's self funded journey to travel to different countries, working with and understanding social enterprise and social innovation in different cultures and economies. I'm interested in understanding the relevance of UK best practice in other contexts and also the cultural and economic impact on scope and success of social enterprises.

My broad areas of focus will be as follows:

Local (Best) Practices
Developing Global "Health-Check" Toolkits for Social Enterprises (based on http://tinyurl.com/l63og5)
Governmental Policy and Support
Funding mechanisms
Business innovations
Social innovations
Challenges
Working partnerships
Similarities and differences with the UK model
Key social entrepreneurial hubs and networks

The basic methodology is simple and for every country visited will involve

Spending a few weeks with 2 or more social enterprises, providing pro-bono generic consulting skills to help them address any organisational or developmental challenge they are facing (see skills profile below)
Connecting with local arms of global SE umbrella organisations (eg. Ashoka) and local Social Enterprise or Third Sector support organisations
Connecting with local Social Entrepreneurs

I am currently looking for

Organisations that might be interested in commissioning comparative outputs
Suggestions for local organisations that might need help in terms of advisory / guidance etc. in the following regions

East and South Africa
India
South East Asia
China
South America

Potential funding avenues / support with travel and accommodation costs

My Skills Profile i.e. where I could help you or organisation:

Management and Social Enterprise consultant specialising in Financial Sustainability, Start-Up, Scaling and Business Models for Charities and Social Enterprises. Areas of focus include Strategic Development, Social Design, Business Model Innovation, Organisational Scaling & Transformation, Project Management, Raising Investment, Branding, Marketing & PR, Web 2.0 and Social Media.

Social experience and achievement includes direct involvement with grass roots projects covering issues ranging from youth exclusion to literacy, discrimination, conflict, civil rights and disabilities; advisory input to a wide range of charities and social enterprises; board membership as Chairman of the London charity BANG Edutainment and Director of the communications charity Imediate; and Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts.

Commerical experience includes large scale management, technology and digital consulting; at Charteris and Conchango to the UK's top 100 Retail and Financial Services organisations; and strategic transformation and change at Logica to Government and the Public Sector.

More information @ http://www.rizwantayabali.info/

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5 Steps to Successful Free Websites for Social Enterprises

2009-08-27T14:15:00.006+01:00

[Taken from my new blog @ http://www.socialeffect.org - please visit and update your feeds!]

A year of working with different social startups and growing enterprises has highlighted one very unfortunate trend. Too many social entrepreneurs are wasting precious resource on building websites for their startups. If you're about to hand over a few thousand pounds to a designer somewhere to create you a logo or build you a few pages, STOP!! Read this first...

Here's a few key fundamentals you should grasp before we get started.

A Logo is NOT the same as a Brand.
A brand is what your audience feels, thinks, and remembers about your enterprise. The logo is simply an iconic representation that should be able to adapt and change without affecting your brand. Define your brand first, then design the logo.

A Website is NOT just a set of Pages.
It can be any web-space you control, which allows you to showcase what you stand for and what you do. In today's inter-connected Web 2.0 world, you must think of websites as broad linkages of organisational content on multiple platforms, in multiple conversations and in multiple contexts. Whatever 'website' you have must therefore function as a content sharer/aggregator allowing subscription (RSS) and interaction (commenting), and NOT just as pages or brochureware (HTML).

A Blog is NOT different from a Website.
It is simply a type of website with rich content management features and the ability for readers to automatically subscribe to content and updates. You can easily use a blog as your organisational website with the various pages as linked articles.

That cleared up, here's the 5 steps you need to follow

Make sure your mission is simple (memorable), clear (followable) and focused (accurate). If it's open, vague, or all-encompassing, then rewrite it.

Develop your brand in a way that makes it a key strategy for achieving your mission, and NOT just as a marketing tool.

Focus on creation of content worth sharing, and focus on categories that support your organisation's mission and vision.

Use your branding to define how you present this content in terms of tone, style and use of visuals.

Use FREE blogging platforms on which to build your new 'website'. Don't spend a penny on building it. You may have to compromise a little on layout, but you gain so much in richness and flexibility for zero cost that the trade-off is a no-brainer. I recommend blogger for your website and Ning for your community.

If this makes sense but you're still a little unclear about how to put it into practice, feel free to contact me for a chat. Drop me a line at rizwan.tayabali@gmail.com

3 Reasons Why Your Great Idea Doesn't Yet Exist

2009-08-27T13:15:00.001+01:00

[Taken from my new blog @ http://www.socialeffect.org - please visit and update your feeds!]

I've recently had a number of people with ideas for startups come to me for advice on how to get these ideas going. In each case the idea has appeared to plug a perceived need in the market, suggesting a no-brainer that the 'inventor' is therefore about to take risks to pursue.

After a little investigation however, I'm usually able to find equivalents that already exist, or good reasons for why it's not already being done. So I always urge caution, as there are some obvious reasons why an idea you've had does not already appear to exist

You haven't done your research properly.
This is by far and away the primary reason people think their idea is unique. Don't just search for the most obvious term that reflects your idea. Look for words and phrases that mean something similar. Also look for news or releases that suggest that something similar is already under development.
Someone has thought of it, looked at all the angles and decided the ROI isn't worth it.
This is also very likely. Stay wary of your idea until you've covered these bases yourself. If the idea requires set up and development well outside your personal areas of expertise, you should know that many ideas that seem entirely obvious to the naive, often involve prohibitive execution, set up and development, or simply don't have the scale of market first imagined.
Someone thought of it, built it, and it failed.
Lots of companies, services and products come and go. Don't just focus on things that are out there. Make sure you've checked if anyone has tried it before and failed. Investigate why they weren't successful and be honest about whether or not you are really likely to do better.

Finally, if you get past all of the above you are in the fantastic position of being confident that no one has thought of it. Yes it's rare, but it happens. Protect your IP and get busy!

3 Reasons Why Finding Equivalents Shouldn't Stop You

On the other hand, just because products or services exist, doesn't mean that you should drop your idea right away for the following reasons

The market has already been primed and created (just make sure it isn't saturated).
You can easily evaluate what does and doesn't work, and you might thus be able to improve on existing products and services.
You could go niche in terms of design or target market, and focus on developing a specific variant of the idea instead.

The Urban Survival Project is Closing

2009-08-26T12:34:00.000+01:00

After a year and a half of development and evolution, what started out as The Urban Survival Project has finally changed so significantly that it is time to move on.

The core idea of USP itself evolved into a broader wikipedia-esque volunteering platform called iVolntr, for which I never really found a suitable funder and thus has largely been parked as a project. The blog too has shifted from a focus on the development of these projects into one that primarily provides ideas, help and advice for developing social enterprises. Finally I too have moved from being a part-time pro-bono advisor and mentor to social start-ups, into a full time participant in the global social development movement. I quit commercial work in April and now work solely with social and charitable enterprises.

The upshot is that I feel it is time to focus more on dedicated advice for social enterprises, and so I've created a new blog called "Social Effect". I will keep both blogs going in parallel for a little while but from October this blog will only contain updates on USP/iVolntr, while the other one will move forward as my primary blog on social enterprise.

If you've found my posts useful, please add the new feed to your readers and inboxes. Here are the links

RSS Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/socialeffect
Email Feed - http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=socialeffect&amp

Thanks for all the support and readership over the past year or so. Hope to see you at the new blog @ http://www.socialeffect.org/

Community Communications 101

2009-05-06T18:42:00.000+01:00

I recently had a very illuminating chat with Caroline Jaine, the Director of imediate, around community communications so I thought I'd share some of what I learnt.

Always start with a clear strategy,
Followed by an implementation plan, and
Finally outcome monitoring

Key point: Do NOT just rush into comms activity. There are lots of risks and sensitivities, and consequently these programmes often fail. Plan first!

The following are the key steps in developing communications for social change.

Comms Strategy

Gain clarity of purpose first, by validating the overall mission that the comms fits into.
- Research community and environmental factors for insights into what the real problem is and what is realistically achievable.
- Identify and understand risks, and develop clear mitigation strategies.
Comms strategies are about behaviour change, so
- Identify the specific behaviours that need to change.
- Use it to define and focus on the correct target audience.
Identify approaches and ways you might change these behaviours
- Identify key points of influence
- Identify the key channels of influence and communication
- Define key themes and messages
Evaluate how the audiences perceive the communications provider.
Use these insights to identify the most credible person/organisation/partners/network to provide the message. This is the basis of psychological operations, which are as follows
- White - Communicator takes direct ownership of and association with comms.
- Grey - Comms are provided with no direct ownership.
- Black - Comms are attributed to a third party without their knowledge. Unethical and not recommended.

Comms programme creation and delivery

Know what you have to work with
- Assess budget
- Assess resource
- Assess potential partners for delivery
Define timelines
Define success criteria
Create implementation plan

Post Implementation

Monitor success
Maintain relationships

(For more on community communications keep up with Caroline's thoughts on the imediate blog.)

20 Keys to Building a Successful Social Organisation

2009-04-17T10:44:00.000+01:00

Over the past few years I've looked at problems faced by a number of different social organisations, including new startups, developing organisations, and fully established ones. I typically see one common underlying factor; many of the issues stem from a failure to define some key points with the clarity and simplicity needed to make those definitions useful.

Before we continue, let me just say that this is not going to be one of those articles with 20 tenets or pieces of pithy advice. It is about 20 key things that you can and should work out for your social organisation.

At its core, everything I outline below can all be summarised into one overall key to success...

...FOCUS!!

Until you define your key points of focus, your limited funds and resources are continually wasted on attempts to cover all bases and do too many things. You end up with a Brownian motion of people’s activities; lots of ad-hoc decisions made around on a host of assumptions. It all heads in one general social direction, but with a lot of wastage and pain along the way. Prioritising becomes impossible and core platforms of long term development get missed. Over time, this leads to many of the problems and fire-fighting that social organisations face.

Here’s my list of 20 key things all social organisations should have written down.

Mission
The real reason you set up.

Goals
What you want to achieve & How.

Potential Revenue Streams
Split into core, supplemental and potential revenue. Think business model innovation.
- Strategy for long term Financial Sustainability.
- Core revenue – Grants, donations, and products or services you charge for.
- Supplemental revenue (opportunities for monetising your organisational brand, IP, audience and assets).

Target Audience
- Groups that you’re trying to impact.
   Primary, secondary and tertiary.
   Outline needs of each group.
- Recruitment strategies.
- Long term value for beneficiaries.

Services & Offerings
Make sure they are what your audience really needs, and not simply what you can or want to offer.
- Core.
- Peripheral.

SWOT Outline
i.e. A quadrant grid showing Strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats.

Vision
Where you plan to be in the Short, Medium and Long Term.
- Realistic short-term (1yr).
- Challenging medium-term (3yr).
- Inspirational long-term (5-10yr).
All your strategies must work towards this long-term vision. You must know how your org can best act as a springboard for long term value to the individual or community.

Development Strategy /Roadmap Plans
These need to be created specifically to achieve the vision – ideally for a 3yr timeframe. Include yearly changes for organisation size and structure, development focus, and revenue needed.

Cost/Revenue models
These must directly fit your roadmaps.
- Detailed costs of services inclusive of all overheads.
- Profit margins over and above cost. It is surprising how often organisations get profit assumptions completely wrong.
- Cost / Revenue grouping for ongoing comparison.
- Realistic funding needed and how it will be distributed.

Risks and Mitigations
Growth and Development challenges & how you’re going to address them.

Plans for ensuring long term value to your end audience
For example, alumni community platforms to enable interaction and ongoing engagement between beneficiaries.

Competitors and Similar Organisations
Regionally and globally (now that we’re all connected by the web, you are competing for recognition, funding and audience with organisations from all over the world). Knowing these can also help you build great collaborations and make a bigger difference (see 16).

Unique Selling Points & Differentiators
If you don’t have any, make sure you create them. Without these there is no good reason for funders to pick you over the myriad organisations out there.

Potential Funders
- Identify sectors and prioritise – typically
   Corporate CSR,
   Commercial Brands that want the association,
   Trusts,
   Government,
   Individuals,
   Community.
- Identify specific targets.
- Identify what value they would gain from being associated with your org (conversely rethink what you do to ensure that funders get clear value from their engagement with you).

Framework for displaying Social Return on Investment (SROI)

Support Networks
Organisations that you could partner / affiliate with:
- Social sector funders and developmental organisations
- Charities and NGOs
- Other organisations doing similar things – collaborating is a very fast way of scaling your outcomes and your reach.

Targets & Performance Management
Anything you’re trying to develop must involve something to aim for. Your vision roadmap should essentially define your targets for you.
- Short term activity targets that roll up into long-term impacts.
- Strategies or mechanisms for monitoring long-term impacts. In the long run this is going to be your best selling point for raising investment and support.

Brand Strategy
Brand associations drive both individual and corporate engagement.
- What image and personality you want to project
- Core themes and messaging

Marketing & PR Strategy
- Channels you’re going to focus on
- Messaging
- How you plan to involve/engage press media (online and offline)

Community & Social Media Strategies
The web is now ubiquitous and a global connector for communities. It can also drive funding and support from sources you never dreamed you could access. Social media refers to the free and open platforms that already have huge connected audiences, like Facebook, Twitter, Ning and Youtube. All you have to do is surf the wave.
- Plans for building global and regional support communities using the web
- Social media strategy
   Social media platforms and goals for each
   Codes of engagement and responsible resource

Once understood and defined, many of these points of focus roll into one another and can be prioritised, developed and managed with very little effort. You don’t have to be gung-ho and try and get everything achieved in one massive effort. Social issues are typically long term and have few quick fixes. As a social organisation you should be planning to be around for a long time so continual small steps in a clear direction are often all you need to be successful in the long run.

For each key driver, the trick is to avoid lots of words or huge business plan style documents that cannot be easily read or updated. Instead aim to have single PowerPoint slides or 1 pagers with short descriptions or a list of bullets that clarifies the essence of what you’re trying to achieve. Do NOT waste time debating semantics or making it perfect. Just brainstorm what you know, identify the gaps and dedicate some time to defining the answers. All you need is enough to provide clear direction and some decent guidelines for ongoing decision making.

Always think practical and focus on communicating simply and effectively. Check the following:

Can the definitions be used by people within your organisation?
Can they be reviewed and updated easily?

If the answer is no, make them simpler. Here are some 1 page outputs that you can easily pass around, stick up on walls, and review on a running basis...

Mission, Strategy, Tactics Pyramid.
3 year Vision and Strategy Roadmap.
SWOT grid
High Level Stakeholder Analysis (covers audience, funders, support networks).
Summarised Cost vs Revenue Charts.
USPs.

Create a review point every 6 months, plan in the resource and effort to make sure it happens, and away you go!

If you want help with any of this drop me a line and I’ll talk you through it.

3 Types of Partnership For the Social Sector

2009-04-11T16:10:00.000+01:00

In my previous post on whether Partnerships and Collaboration might save the third sector, I suggested that one reason why small charities are failing is the nucleation of the sector caused by self interest in raising funding. However, beyond a point they all have the same collective goal, which is to effect positive social change. Unlike businesses which are just out for themselves, this commonality of higher purpose means that charities and social enterprises are perfectly placed to cooperate and collaborate to survive.

I see 3 forms of partnership that are immediately viable for most small social organisations, none of which are being fully explored

Sharing operational costs and services
Collaborating with competitors to develop better and larger scale joint-propositions
Developing complementary partnerships with non-competitors to reach new audiences

Type 1: Shared Services

One of the biggest problems that small organisations have, especially when transitioning into the mid-sized space, is covering the cost of operational overheads

Physical space
Human Resources and Payroll
Finance and Accounting
Marketing & PR

You've got 3 options here.

Outsource all these activities, but not to multiple consultancies or commercial companies like some charities do, but to some kind of Shared-Service Centre dedicated to centralising and performing activities that don't really need much flexibility in decision making - like for example Payroll, Production of marketing materials, Execution of marketing campaigns, Street Fundraising, and Raising awareness through Social Media.

A few years ago when I was consulting to Public Sector, there was a huge drive to get local governments to band together and exploit shared service centres for exactly these reasons. Improved efficiency and effectiveness.

However, unless I'm missing something, I don't think anything like this exists for the social sector, which means that right now there's a gap in the market. I suspect that the reason for this is not that there isn't a viable business model here, but that no-one's really invested time in taking the idea to execution. I'm sure this service could be set up as a Charity so that fees do not become prohibitive, and I don't imagine it would be too hard to raise government funding to set it up either.

A point to note here is that one of the issues with outsourcing or sharing back office functions in the UK lies in tax (thanks Cliff for pointing this out). The Government actively encourages charities to collaborate to reduce cost, but the VAT system penalises those that do. If one charity supplies services to another it has to charge VAT on the supply, and the charity paying for the services cannot recover this. Apparently there is a lobby to get the Government to address this disincentive to efficiency but extending the Charity VAT exemption appears to be a no go zone for Treasury. All things considered however, I'd still suggest that even with the 15% VAT, charities could see benefits from sharing/outsourcing their operational costs.

The other option is to set up a collective of local charities and social enterprises, and for the collective to either share resource, or co-fund and set up an equivalent shared service centre with dedicated teams that perform these functions. These organisations will gain from efficiencies in use of space, resource, and shared best practice and if they take a risk and trust each other the way they should, it will simultaneously create a space for cross-fertilisation of ideas.

If you're starting up a social organisation, or are about to grow/scale yours, plan your restructure to split out your operational functions. Create a new revenue stream by using your team to offer these services to other smaller charitable and social organisations. It requires some strategic thinking and sensible management, but is neither as difficult or as complicated as it sounds. You may even be able to raise funding to offer this service.

Type 2: Joint Offerings with Competitors

Any social issue you're trying to address will have other organisations that do similar things to you. Typically you're going to compete with them for the pots of funding out there. However there really is little or no reason for this. If you're all working together to effect the same greater good, you've immediately got a clear commonality of purpose. If you collaborated and pooled your skills and resources you might be able to achieve much bigger things.

A collaborative network of organisations driving towards the same goal is significantly more powerful than a disparate group of small entities all pulling in different directions. Imagine how much more funding you would attract as an industry, rather than as single companies.

So instead of pumping money into Marketing and PR and networking to make your profile stand out from the competition, you should be putting your energies into building relationships and working protocols with other organisations like yourselves so you can set up joint propositions and pitch for bigger funding.

This is not a short-termist approach. It takes time and needs learning. Start by building relationships and connections with your 'competitors', and create forums or events where you talk and find out about each other. Focus on building trust. Find one other organisation that does what you do, and then pitch for larger projects and funding together. Evaluate and learn from your experiences, and then grow your network. At some point you will have created the basic framework that allows you to rapidly add new connections, and to help them slot in easily.

Be aware that there will be challenges you should expect to face, including

Trust
Personal and organisational egos
Contractual and legal definitions around distribution of finance and delivery of outputs
Programme management challenges across organisational boundaries
Quality control

Type 3: Complementary Partnerships

There are two sub-types here. One is complementary partnerships in a causal chain and the other involves partnerships to improve the impact and quality of services offered.

Full Chain (End-to-End) Partnerships are particularly useful for organisations that offer niche services, or focus on a particular aspect of a bigger social problem. What typically happens, is that as niche organisations grow, they keep trying to add the offerings that are needed to create the broad impact they really want, instead of looking for ways to plug the gaps more efficiently.

Taking the issue of youth social exclusion for example, the journey from exclusion to successful reintegration within the system involves transition through and from social care, into learning, and finally successful employment and stability. The learning bit alone involves literacy, numeracy, life skills, specialist skills, and entrepreneurial skills and ranges from drop-ins to accreditation. A plethora of organisations exist that support different bits of the chain, and yet they often work in isolation from each other, or try and grow to cover the entire spectrum.

A better approach is to identify and build relationships with organisations that aren't your direct competitors. Similar logics and challenges apply as in the previous point, but this is easier because you don't have a history of direct competition. Plugging each other's gaps will help you create broader, more compelling services and pooling together will make you significantly more effective across the board.

Gap Partnerships are ones where you look for ways to improve the quality and effectiveness of what you do by teaming up with organisations that have a complementary focus, products, services or skills that save you from having to employ or develop them yourselves. You can offer each other all sorts of value, from access to different audiences to new skills and capabilities and most crucially, credibility through association.

This form of partnership is particularly applicable to connecting and working with commercial organisations that are interested in your target audience, or could gain brand kudos through their association with your social cause. Their involvement may include financial support, access to commercial networks and platforms, specialist skills, operational services or progression pathways.

The trick for social organisations is to identify and develop their audiences, services and brand image in a way that makes them attractive to other organisations. Note that contrary to assumption, this has no correlation with compromising core purpose, and typically is only achievable by staying focused to the social cause and social outcomes.

Could Partnerships And Collaboration Save The Third Sector?

2009-02-26T13:00:00.000Z

In a recent post on whether the Retail Industry Could Save Itself Using Game Theory I discussed how retailers have exhibited classic non-cooperative behaviour, which has significantly damaged their abilities to survive the credit crunch. By focusing only on individual interest and survival, their collective hyper-competitive actions have likely damaged their entire industry's market size.

The charity sector is becoming similarly nucleated by self interest in raising funding. In my previous post on Small Charities Struggling To Survive The Crunch I discussed reasons why small charities are struggling to adapt in the current climate. What I didn't go into is the fact that there is a plethora of small and mid-sized organisations out there, all competing against each other for diminishing funding, and this is only accelerating their slide towards closure.

The trouble is that the funding they are competing for tends to be governmental or Trust based, or small scale social funding for Social Enterprises. This is because their small sizes mean that they struggle to tap into large scale CSR philanthropy or investment, because their brand recognition and localised outcomes are too negligible to return any associative value back to big corporations. The top 400 UK organisations handed out nearly half a billion pounds in 2008, and small charities and social enterprises probably saw very little of it.

However there is no need for things to be this way. More than commercial industries, the social sector is perfectly placed to cooperate and collaborate to survive. Partnerships can help reduce costs and increase the scale of funding that can be accessed. More importantly however, they can create connected support networks and buffers to keep each other going through difficult periods.

As the Chair of a medium sized youth charity, I can see potential in 3 forms of Partnership that could save many small charities and social enterprises from going under over the next few years.

Sharing operational costs and services
Collaborating with competitors to develop better and larger scale joint-propositions
Developing complementary partnerships with non-competitors to reach new audiences

I'll discuss these in more detail in my next post on the 3 Types of Partnership

Small Charities are Struggling to Survive The Crunch

2009-02-19T09:00:00.000Z

Children England, the umbrella group for children's charities just published results of a survey of small charities (under £250,000). Turns out 4 out of 10 are now in a vulnerable state and could be facing closure if their fundings don't come through. This is up from 1 in 10 in 2007, which is a clearly indictment of the current situation.

Unfortunately this is something I'd predicted a little while ago in my post "Will Charities Survive The Credit Crunch?"

The charities closer to this size are feeling it worst. It's a problem I'm seeing with BANG Edutainment too. The underlying issue that the funding needed directly reflects operating costs, which are based on contracted outputs or services. Raising funding in the quarter to half million bracket is very hard right now, because typically it relies on lots of small sources rather than one massive one. If even a small number of the sources of funding are impacted by the credit crunch it means that operating costs cannot be met and without the reserves of profit making organisations, debts pile up very fast.

Scaling down unfortunately is not as easy as you might imagine either. To do this in advance of a financial crisis requires significant strategic pessimism; which commercial organisations typically dont have, let alone charitable ones. If you haven't already anticipated problems, the tightly stretched capacity of charities means that there is little or no room to adapt, and their close knit nature means that letting staff go is an absolutely last ditch choice; one that is usually held off in the hope of new funding coming through and rarely made until its too late. The result is a pile up of salary, overheads and tax debts by this point, leaving the organisation little option but to close.

A survival strategy that is not being considered carefully enough by many small charities is partnerships. I'll discuss these in more detail in my next post.

Future Trends in Social Enterprise

2009-02-03T09:00:00.000Z

In my previous post I talked about Social Enterprise Trends to expect in 2009. I outlined 5 key ones:

Rise in social startups and skills available to the sector
Higher expectations from funders
More support for big ideas
More partnerships and collectives
Blurring of lines between Charities and Social Enterprises

The trends outlined below however, are not time-boxed to just 2009. These are shifts I believe will happen at some point between now and the next few years, and are therefore worth considering in your future planning.

Future Trends in Social Enterprise - 2009 onwards

Disruptive innovations will continue to flourish as commercial sector skills are turned towards solving social problems.
Social innovation from the developing world will begin to drive developed world commercial innovation. We are already seeing this in the way western banks are looking at micro-loans and telecoms firms are looking at mobile payment systems.
Corporate Social Responsibility departments will have to adapt and revise their policies, because social enterprises are redefining the parameters of giving and support as they continue to effect major social change.
Increasing pressure on social sector to become business viable will result in more social startups emerging as social enterprises rather than charities.
Charities on the other hand will get smarter in their trading setups, further confusing the definition of Social Enterprise.
As the Green movement embeds further into the global cultural psyche, both social enterprises and charities will face increasing expectation to be green just to be credible.
Social Enterprise will mobilise more people to enter the social sector by making it more competitive, responsive and modernised.
The CIC will start to come into its own, and will evolve into a more viable organisational definition.
As more organisations begin to deliver both financial return and social change, a more practical measurements of Social Return On Investment will arise. Over time we should expect to see clear standardisations of SROI for comparative purposes.
As SROI measurement standardises we should see increasing numbers of Social VC's, philanthropists or Trusts whose funding has social conditions. Some of these currently exist, but regardless of their mission statements, returns are still predominantly measured on financial profits or ability to repay these social loans and investments.
New business models monetising social need will continue to arise, as social entrepreneurs look to innovate under pressure of financial difficulty and social demand.
If social collaboration really does take off, we should also see an increase in collaborative shared services that let small social enterprises and charities focus on their core goals without worrying about peripheral activities like HR, accounting and fundraising.
As the social sector evolves down the commercial route, and as more commercial sector staff enter the social space, the general quality of skills expected from CEO's and managers is going to increase.
Consequently I'd expect a trend towards higher wages for nonprofit workers as demands cause skills profiles to increase.
Finally we should also expect to see more courses and better training for social entrepreneurs, with something like the IOMBA specifically for social entrepreneurs.

Social Enterprise Trends 2009

2009-02-02T17:42:00.000Z

Every January people typically start to wonder what's coming up in the year ahead for their industries. The social enterprise and the non-profit sectors are no different. It's just that fewer people publish anything of value, mostly because these sectors are not awash with analysts in the way the private sector is. Anyway in case you're curious, here's my thoughts on where things might be headed for social enterprise.

Let's start with immediate trends to expect in 2009. Most of these are inevitably going to be defined by the impact of the credit crunch and the increasing ubiquity and impact of the social web.

5 Trends in Social Enterprise for 2009

Rise in social startups and skills available to the sector.

Increasing numbers of highly skilled private sector employees are being made redundant, and many of these are looking for ways to keep their skills sharp and occupy themselves positively and productively. Some will join the existing wave of social and third sector enterprises, and others will take the entrepreneurial route. I'm seeing this trend already with one of the charities I'm involved with.
Higher expectations from funders

As the markets suffer and investments fail or continue to provide lower returns, many of the large trusts and social funders will rapidly find their liquid funds diminishing. While I doubt this will stop them continuing their missions, I would in turn expect them to become significantly more focused on quality and viability of financial and social return.
More support for big ideas

As social enterprises continue to leverage the web and mobile to effect social change, social funders like UnLtd will have to start catering for big ideas rather than simply grass roots start ups. Google has already upped the ante with its Project 10^100.
More partnerships and collectives

These should emerge as more forward thinking Social Entrepreneurs look for ways to partner together to stay afloat in the face of financial pressures. I'd expect to start seeing more collectives like the Hub bringing small startups together, and more web services dedicated to letting groups collaborate.
Blurring of lines between Charities and Social Enterprises

We already know social enterprise is blurring lines between the profit and not-for-profit sectors, but the rise in success of social enterprise in both social and financial terms is also increasing the pressure on more and more charities to become financially sustainable through commercial revenue streams. Conversely I'd expect to see a number of social enterprises abandon their financial goals under pressure of the credit crunch, and look to use their social impact to gain charitable status in order to survive.

(Note: I've explored some more trends in Social Enterprise in my post Future Trends in Social Enterprise, which covers developments to expect beyond 2009.)

Google Needs More Time For Project 10^100

2009-01-31T11:03:00.000Z

Those of us who put in our ideas for the Google 10^100 funding project were hoping to hear back about the shortlist at the end of January. I hadn't heard anything so I assumed iVolntr.org didn't make the cut, but thought I'd better check anyway. Turns out it's not over yet :)

Here's the official word from Google...

"Thank you to everyone who submitted an idea. We received over 100,000!

Due to the enthusiastic response we received, it's taking us longer than we expected to review all the ideas. Come back on March 17th to help vote for your favorite idea."

If you want a reminder to go back and vote on the 17th, you can pop your email address in here http://www.project10tothe100.com/reminder.html

What's in Store For Social Enterprise in 2009?

2009-01-29T13:31:00.000Z

As far as I can see, in the UK at least we're entering year two in the growth of social enterprise. Before 2008 I'm sure there were plenty of organisations doing good things sustainably, but the concept of social enterprise really seems to have become mainstream in 2008.

CICs are becoming more common, the concept of Social Return on Investment started to take hold, different models of Social Enterprise were identified, and we even saw the release of a new Self Assessment Framework for Social Enterprise. I no longer see discussions in the blogosphere around what Social Enterprise is and whether it is doing social things sustainably or making money with social or community benefits. I think that's been cleared up as closer to the former... "Enterprises effecting positive social change, independently and sustainably".

I reckon Social Enterprise will continue to embed as a way of life in 2009, and both new social startups and existing charities will feel increasing pressure to set up financially sustainable operations. I also reckon we're going to see more organisations leveraging the web to effect social change. In combination it feels like we're heading towards an exciting and dynamic future in the social space, where we're able to innovate without being dependent on hand-outs.

For me too, 2009 feels like it might be an interesting one. I got involved with a lot of different things in 2008, all of which have possibilities ahead. First and most importantly the Urban Survival Project, which evolved into iVolntr.org for which I'm still hoping to hear back from Google around the results of their 10^100 funding project. We hear back at the end of Jan, and even if iVolntr doesn't make the shortlist I will start a more dedicated effort to get the Google Foundation behind it, or maybe see if I can exploit the new networks available to me through the Fellowship to the RSA I was offered a couple of months ago.

Having managed to raise the funding needed to stave off insolvency, I'm also expecting to be heavily involved with the development of BANG Edutainment and BANG Radio for the next couple of months. Finally if things get worse with the credit crunch and I get signed off, there's always the possibility of getting involved with the development of social enterprise in Thailand or maybe even India with Trn Labs or UnLtd India.

So all in all, the future's looking bright, and here's to a top year ahead. Hope you're having a good start to 2009 wherever you are!!

Will Charities Survive The Credit Crunch?

2009-01-28T09:23:00.000Z

I recently wrote a post on whether or not social enterprises would survive the credit crunch, where I suggested that many would pull through as I believe the crunch will only help drive social innovation faster. It will embed the recognition that we have to be able to help each other, and create not just environmentally sustainable businesses, but also financially sustainable ones.

Unfortunately I'm not sure this ability to survive will extend to charities that are entirely dependent on individual, organisational or governmental funding.

Charities often start small and very community focused. Their goal is clear and staff voluntarily make it happen. They have a small number of funders, if any. At this stage they are agile and able to cope with change easily.

But as they get recognised, other people and bodies become interested and the charity starts raising more funds to increase the scale and quality of their impact. The organisation thus solidifies and formalises, and their ability to adapt and control their own destiny decreases – in a large part due to the way they have to be set up.

In the UK, Charities differ from commercial organisations in that they are exempt from all taxes except VAT. However, the tax structures for charities means that they cannot engage in any overtly commercial activity as profits made will become taxable and, at worst, the organisation may lose its charitable status altogether.

Members also cannot take any benefits and no dividends can be paid to them. Any funds must be applied for charitable purposes only, and if it is wound up, the funds must be transferred to another charity.

In small charities, this classically drives organisational and human structures that do not look to create or exploit commercial revenue streams even though they often have a range of intellectual and physical assets that can be monetised. At some point in the growth cycle, incoming funds stop adequately covering operational cost, and from then on it becomes an ongoing battle to raise money to survive. The social imperative of the organisation starts becoming secondary to the need to raise money.

What the organisation achieves starts becoming driven by what likely funders are looking for, rather than the core social impact it was set up to make. Over a period of time this often results in a dispersion of activity and diminished quality of outcomes - lots of small impacts rather than any major core difference. The diminished quality of outcomes then adversely affects the ability to raise funding, and alongside growing operational costs, forces the charity further into the spiral of doing whatever it can to raise money to survive.

Now that we're faced with environmental recession, the negative impact on grants and funds available might just mean that a lot of medium sized charities will simply go under as their funding dries up and they run out of revenue streams.

The sad part is that this does not have to happen. There are ways that charities can commercially generate their own revenue through the use of trading subsidiaries. I’ll explore this further in my next post, along with some thoughts on the need for new charitable structures that automatically work this way, rather than being designed to exploit structural loopholes.

The 15 Best Free Tools for Bloggers in 2008

2009-01-02T21:31:00.000Z

After a year of blogging, I've come across some fantastic free add-ons that really add richness to your blog. Also after having set up a couple of wordpress blogs, I think I can now safely recommend Blogger as the better bet for novices with ambition. Wordpress is probably more customisable, but only if you install software on your machine and know how to code. For anyone who wants it easy and painless, Blogger is the way forward!

Anyway here's my favourite applications. There's a couple more than 15, but I'm sure you can forgive that! They're all very easy to add, and you can see them all in action on this blog if you look hard enough :)

Best Free Add-Ons

Disqus - really improves the way your comments are displayed, managed and tracked. The best part is that it allows people to reply to specific comments in a thread, rather than the terrible linear approach that all standard blog platforms use. They also give you a cute "recent comments" widget you can use. Click on the comments link below this post to check out Disqus in action.

Dipity - creates you a visual timeline of all your blog posts and lets users read and flick through them within the timeline. Very cool. If you scroll to the bottom of this page you can see it in action.

Odiogo - automatically converts your blog posts into audio podcasts and lets readers listen to your posts, download them as MP3 or subscribe via their iPods. American accent aside, the speech conversion is unexpectedly good and convincing. You can try it out using the link just below the title of this post, or from the subscription links on the right.

Lijit - provides a very useful search box for your blog with a better display of results and suggestions for alternatives than the standard search provided on most free blogs. It also allows you to track and monitor what people have been searching for on your site. You can test it out in the box on the right of this post.

Feedburner - is easily the best blog support out there. It is the best way to manage and track all your subscribers and ensures that you never lose your audience if you decide to change your blog address. It also allows your readers to subscribe via email, and add your posts to social bookmarking sites. Finally and most importantly it gives you all the stats you need to monitor your blog's development. See the 'Subscribe via Email' box on the right, and all the sharing links below this post for Feedburner in action.

Blogcatalog - provides a 'News Feed' widget that allows you to highlight all your shared web activity, including posts from multiple blogs, dugg items, delicious items etc. Check it out in action about halfway down the right column of this blog.

Sharethis - gives you that cool drop down with links to bookmarking sites that your users can use to share your content with their friends or networks. Check it out just below this post.

Best Free Platforms and Services

Facebook Notes - allows you to import your RSS feed into Facebook, which not only lets your friends read your blog from your profile, but also allows you to tag specific people that you'd like to share different posts with.

Twitterfeed - automatically tweets your post titles on twitter, letting your followers know when you've posted new content. It's pretty cool because it basically keeps your Twitter account active even if you never bother to sign in or update it yourself. Check it out in action here http://www.twitter.com/rizwantayabali

Slideshare - is one of my favourite sites, and contains fantastic presentations on anything you ever wanted to know. For bloggers though it is the best place to upload your own presentations so that others can embed and share the content wherever they please. Here's an example of a presentation on Socialising Intelligence shared on this blog taken from my Slideshare space.

Scribd - allows you to upload documents you want to share, and then embed them wherever you want in a way that allows readers to scroll through the document directly through your blog. Here's an example of Scribd in action on my work blog.

Youtube - allows you to create your own public channels for your videos, and then provides you with the code to post, embed and share the videos wherever you want. Like with docs and presentations, uploading directly to your blog means that others outside your blog cannot find or share your content. Here's an example on my blog -
iVolntr.org - Concept Video streamed from the Urban Survival Project Youtube Channel.

Feed Analysis 1.1 - is a very cool online application that graphically displays all your traffic and usage results, using your feedburner URL. You don't need to sign up or anything, just pop your feed into the box provided and away you go.

The Blog Readability Test - is a great way of checking and monitoring the readability of your blog. All you have to do is pop your URL in and it figures it out for you. Unlike all the other tests and tools, it actually tells you the level of comprehension your audience will need to stay engaged. High school levels of readability are the way forward if you want people to easily get what you're blogging about. I must admit it's not easy though! If your post's readability is too high, here's an online test that will help you identify the sentences that are too complicated.

Best Free Bits of Code For Your Template

Related Posts - lists the last few articles that have the same category tags to the post being read, and is really useful for driving traffic to older posts. Here's an example of how it looks, below my last post.

Tag Clouds - are a cool way to display the tags on your blog. Frankly I doubt they really get used much, but they're a nice alternative to a list of categories, and make your blog look that little bit more Web 2.0! You can see this bit of code in action in the right column, just below the subscribe links.

Best Free Installable Software and Plug-Ins

Blogger Backup Utility - is the best backup software I've seen for free online blog platforms. You just input your blog username and password and it downloads every single post individually into a folder on your PC. You'll never have to worry about your blog crashing or migrating to a new platform. Get the latest release here.

Zemanta - is a cool browser add-on that automatically analyses your words as you write a post, and then provides you with linked articles and related images that might be helpful.

Luck and Lateness

2008-12-11T15:07:00.000Z

My first post since I left for India a few weeks ago. Wasn't supposed to take this long but after all the ups and downs in Mumbai, blogging sort of fell by the wayside. Been meaning to get started again, but at a loss for where to begin. Feels weird to be sitting here facing the laptop after so long, and very much like starting from scratch.

So I guess that's where we might as well begin. From scratch. Here's a quick brief on what's been happening since I last posted. I presented my ideas to BANG's investors and impressed them enough to keep negotiations in play so we might just avoid closure. I then left for Mumbai on the 22nd of November for a much needed break, and a week of weddings and good times. Made one wedding on the 25th, loved the parsi food and the after party. Got late for the other held in the Taj on the 26th and it arguably saved my life - stopped in a bar next door just as the violence kicked off. Got trapped in the zone for a few days before getting out in one piece and racing to make up for lost time. Met someone I want to see again but logistically cant. Finally arrived back here days later than expected with jet lag that I'm not sure has quite lifted.

Returned to find 20% of my colleagues made redundant and my project scaled down to almost nothing. Received a letter telling me I've got to move out by the 9th of Jan so another flat hunt begins. Was officially made a Fellow of the RSA but was less than impressed with their much vaunted premises. Accepted an invite by Global Retailing International to write for their magazine for the next year. Now juggling two jobs as I work to keep mine and also get operationally involved with BANG-Ed during evenings and weekends to try and ensure that we realise the revenue streams that will help the organisation survive to continue the great work it does with socially excluded young people.

(pic 1 - waiting for news in Busa)

(pic 2 - fireballs from explosions in the Oberoi)

(pic 3 - right dome of the Taj burning)

So here I am... missing sunshine and sev puri, feeling mildly jaded by another close brush with people who really shouldnt be allowed anywhere near weapons or political ideology, and struggling to find the motivation to tick off my arms length to-do list in the face of another cold and grey winters day.

But hey, just a small blip thats given me something to write about :) I could've been unlucky, and it all could've been worse than a little wobble in party times on the onward march towards getting older! So step by step eh? One more thing crossed off...

Grabbing insolvency by the scruff of the neck

2008-11-17T11:44:00.000Z

If you're wondering why there hasn't been much posting activity for the past week or so, it's not because I've hit writer's block. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, between deadlines at work and trying everything possible to ward off insolvency for one of the charities I'm involved with. I'll put up some of the things we've learnt once things ease up. Hopefully find out this week if my efforts have come to anything.

The credit crunch is playing its part here, and safe bets suddenly look like big risks when there's no margin for error. The real challenge has been trying to create viable commercial revenue streams for a charity that traditionally hasn't had any. A lot of lateral thinking later, we might be getting somewhere. The difficulties lie in financial modeling for a space that hasn't really got much else to use as reference.

Moving a charity from being grant dependent to becoming financially sustainable requires more than just identifying revenue streams. It requires a change of focus and ways of working. It requires new management skills, and new engagement skills. Dealing with corporations is a whole different exercise to dealing with government or third sector bodies. Lots of challenges but exciting nevertheless. Where there's a will there's a way... and in this case there definitely is a will!!

Watch this space for an overview of what I'm learning about the realities of financial sustainability in the third sector...

Meantime, many thanks to Dylan Tibbs, Binoy Mistry and Anish Shah for bringing time, niche skills and drive to making the change happen. You're all stars!!

iVolntr.org - Concept Video

2008-10-26T11:26:00.000Z

As part of applying for Google's Project 10^100 competition we were allowed to include a link to a short 30second video about our ideas. So here's the video for iVolntr.org... please watch it, rate it, share it, leave your comments and spread the word!!

If it doesn't play in your browser, here's the link http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7vR3O9_DbjU

I know the ideas spin past pretty quickly in the vid, so here it is in slide form in case you want to go through it more slowly!

Google Project 10^100 - iVolntr concept presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: volunteering socialenteprise)

Enjoy! Hope you like it!!

iVolntr.org - An Illustrative Example

2008-10-26T11:10:00.000Z

iVolntr.org is essentially a web2.0 concept for a social volunteering site that works by connecting existing networks, such as Facebook, with collaborative technologies that enable people to help others via the web. It will not only increase the exposure of physical volunteering opportunities through feeds in major social networks but will also allow people to volunteer from the comfort of home, using web-based document and media editing tools. Nothing this comprehensive has been done before (see the comparison grid in my previous post), and if we get it up and running, iVolntr will revolutionise the way volunteering is perceived and done, particularly amongst 16-35's or what I call the 'Facebook Generation'.

Here's an illustration:
A youth charity supporting excluded inner-city teenagers with career development, puts up a request for help with reviewing job applications and CV's. You've got the iVolntr application on Facebook and are interested in youth projects. Their request pops up in your 'Live Feed'. You have a little spare time so you click the link, which opens their profile and documents in your browser allowing you to edit them or leave helpful suggestions. When you have to go, you save and quit, and the document is free for others to keep working on it, until it can be marked complete. Their thank-you note shows on your Facebook profile, so your friends can see what you've been working on and your volunteering portfolio automatically updates for future reference.

Virtual volunteering thus covers anything that can be done for individuals or organisations using digital editing technologies. Other examples include:

Career and educational help;
Business plans;
Ideation (idea generation and validation);
Funding and housing applications;
Marketing strategies, and plans;
Graphics and video;
Financial or other spreadsheets;
Virtual meetings;
Experience-sharing;
Answering questions and providing advice;

These are just some examples out of a huge list of possibilities.

Connecting with existing social networks and using a crowdsourced volunteering model, addresses the major barriers to volunteering including findability, immediacy, physicality, localisation, commitment, and kudos; in combination helping more of us to make a collective difference on a global scale.

5 Light Alternatives For Anyone Who Doesn't Want To Waste Money On A New Computer

2008-10-26T10:03:00.000Z

I'm writing this post on an older laptop. It's not ancient by any means, and has Windows XP and so on, but it's not as fast as the newer bits of kit floating around. Unfortunately many of the standard programs are designed for these hugely fast computers with massive memories, and it just becomes a pain to use older ones.

Anyway it got me thinking that some of you might have the same problem (assuming you're using PCs and not Macs) and might benefit from knowing that instead of going out and buying a new computer, you can simply replace most of your core programs with some light and fast loading ones without losing any value.

Here's my list of the 5 programs you should consider replacing

Internet - Internet Explorer with Chrome or Opera or Firefox.
Yes I know I said Chrome didn't have support for toolbars and wasn't much faster when browsing with a normal computer, but with older ones it rocks. If it doesn't do it for you try Opera or Firefox which are more compatible with all websites.
Music - Windows Media Player with Winamp.
Winamp will do everything you want with music, and quite a bit of video too, and it'll do it fast and conveniently.
Video - Windows Media Player, Real Player, DVD player etc... replace all in one go with the VLC player.
The VLC player is light and fast and will play pretty much any video content with no need to download codecs and so on, like you need to for all the standard heavyweights.
Images - Windows Picture Viewer, Paint etc with IrfanView.
IrfanView is a very light image viewer that will also you to do all the basic editing you'll ever need.
PDF - Adobe Acrobat with Foxit Reader.
Adobe is the worst culprit of all standard programs. It is huge, bloated, slow and most of what it does is frankly useless to 99% of users. If you don't replace any of the others, get rid of this and replace it with the Foxit reader instead. You won't believe the difference!

You could also look at lighter operating systems instead of Windows for example Ubuntu, or try replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office, but these have greater variances from what you're familiar with. It would take more out of you in terms of learning new interfaces and there'll be a fair number of surprises both good and bad in terms of their comparative capabilities.

Hope this helps!

Green May Be Trendy, But Very Little Is Actually Changing

2008-10-22T09:00:00.000+01:00

Guest Post: This was written in response to Poverty Is Being Lost In a Sea of Green, by Joel Kimber - a friend of mine and Marine Biologist, working on how marine animals may or may not interact (positively and/or negatively) with offshore renewable energy developments.

---------------------------

Unfortunately, despite the green issue being "trendy", very little is actually being done about it. Very little at all. Politicians constantly talk about it - but predominantly to win votes - funding and positive action is actually very hard to come by (and this is coming from an environmental scientist desperate to make a difference). Companies such as BP pride themselves on their green credentials - but again - it's mostly bravado. They're still some of the most environmentally destructive corporations on the planet. Just riding the green wave, as you suggest, to attract more customers and therefore more profit. It's almost more frustrating that this issue is so widely accepted and high profile and yet nothing is being done.

I agree though - it is sickening that poverty still hasn't been addressed. I'm guessing it gets buried by governments, corporations and the media (point in case - the BBC refusing to show the information and messages about poverty during coverage of Live 8 - reducing it to merely a music gig that generated massive profits for the artists) mainly owing to the simple fact that the developed world maintains its power and wealth by using and abusing the undeveloped world - similarly for wealthier sectors of individual countries and poorer sectors. It's criminal. Pure and simple.

What can we do about it!?

The way the world is currently run - there probably isn't much that can be done about it other than on a micro scale. I hate to say it - but a revolution is probably required (don't call me a hippy!). Otherwise the rich and powerful will just maintain systems that make them even more rich and powerful. 'Dispatches' last night was a prime example. The 6 energy companies in Britain are pushing prices ridiculously high through clever (legal) price fixing. Despite recent increases in oil prices, these companies own every sequence in the energy chain and will therefore ALWAYS profit even if one sequence suffers, forcing millions of customers into energy debt (doubtless many older people will die) for no acceptable reason, while their shareholders make record profits - billions and billions. And the government justs let them do it. No morals. Again. Absolutely criminal.

But this (social networking used to discuss such topics) is a great step in the right direction.

iVolntr.org

2008-10-21T11:55:00.000+01:00

After about 3 months of working on the Urban Survival Project concept, I realised that to really improve opportunities for excluded young people, there needs to be a social and technical infrastructure in place. This involves

First, creating a flexible available and interconnected pool of literate urban volunteers
Second, enabling them to connect with and help young people and any one else who needs it, by making it easy to share time and knowledge immediately and online

When I started to design this concept, I realised that these two needs extend to all forms of volunteering and social projects, so I began to work on something bigger than the original USP concept. “A social network that mobilises the Facebook generation." I called it iVolntr.org.

The main issue is that in today's culture the volunteer has to do much work even before they start doing something helpful. So I figured if we could create something that works with all the major social networks, and allows people to volunteer from home with lots of people being able to do little bits of bigger tasks, we'd remove the pressures of commitment and also the hurdle of traveling to places that are difficult to get to.

No one seems to be doing anything like this right now. There are lots of sites that enable people to form helpful communities, but none of them address the core issues that stop us from volunteering. Here's a quick snapshot of where the iVolntr concept therefore uniquely fits in the current landscape.

TripAdvisor Is Giving Away $1m And They Want You To Choose Who

2008-10-21T10:37:00.000+01:00

In case you didn't already know, TripAdvisor is giving away $1m dollars to one of 5 causes based on your votes. The deadline is 9th November.

Conservation International
Doctors Without Borders
National Geographic Society
The Nature Conservancy
Save the Children

Following on from my recent post Poverty Is Being Lost In A Sea Of Green about brands positioning themselves to be Green, here too, interestingly 3 out of the 5 are environmental, with one addressing third world health, and only one that is focused on alleviating poverty. Personally, while I try and do my bit for the environment because it's a future we must protect, I'll always lean towards focusing on my time on making things better for people as a priority. The pain of poverty and hunger and sickness affects voiceless millions whose need is more immediate. See more about my efforts to do something about this with iVolntr @ http://www.ivolntr.org/.

It's fascinating also to see that although so much branding and media is all about aligning with eco-cool, when faced with a stark choice between immediate human pain and environmental issues, most of us will go with empathy. Doctors Without Borders and Save The Children are way ahead. I think they are both fantastic, but I've gone with Save The Children, partly because I've always supported them, and partly because someone took the time to connect with me personally by email. Thanks Wendy!

Anyway here's a little widget to support Save The Children. Please vote too.

Positives In Life Amidst The Credit Crunch

2008-10-18T16:30:00.000+01:00

Here's a presentation with some great observations on life after the credit crunch, collated by Ines Seidel.

Life After the Crunch

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social life)

It's got the usual fears, but what I really like is that she has drawn out some positive personal things like the fact that kids are learning to accept no for an answer, and people are discovering family as they look for more free things to do together.

How is the credit crunch affecting you? Any hidden rays of positivity she's missed? Write in and let me know, and maybe we can create our own presentation on silver linings :)

Poverty Is Being Lost In A Sea Of Green

2008-10-15T08:11:00.000+01:00

(I wrote this post for this year's Blog Action Day as a guest post for the Literacy and Poverty project, which is a social initiative and soon to be registered non-profit in New York focused on improving adult education and alleviating poverty. Check out their blog and website.)

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Nothing about poverty is cool. It is tough, brutal, painful and cyclical. But it doesn't affect most of the people who can afford the technologies to be reading this, so for many of us it's always been easy to ignore. A hidden evil lurking in 'third world' countries. The saddest development is that even the little attention poverty had when it was simply the most pervasive of the global problems that didn't affect us directly, is being washed away in the tide of interest surrounding the Green movement.

Green has gone from cheap and homemade to cool and chic. From 'tree-huggers' to corporate speak. It is becoming iconic, and a status symbol that brands are associating themselves with. It affects the world we all live in, and therefore directly impacts our own personal interests - and so we take it seriously. Better still, it also costs most of us nothing more turning a few lights off and maybe going easy on the heating... which basically saves us money and again furthers our own interests while making us feel good about ourselves. More and more I see it turning into a McCarthyism thing. Show a disdain for eco-friendliness and you're an instant pariah. Can't argue with that of course. We need sustainability. Maybe we'll even save the planet before it's too late.

My question though is - Why isn't poverty like this? Why is it perfectly acceptable to show no interest in poverty at all? Global poverty is basically left out of sight, and kept out of mind. The pictures have become just that. Glossy prints of someone else's pain. An artist's rendition of reality instead of calls to action. As for local poverty, I regularly hear people righteously blaming the victims for their own situation... these 'people' should stop being so lazy, go and get a job, stop with the pregnancies, get off the streets, and on and on.

The problem is that unlike Green, the only way we can really impact institutional poverty is by redistributing a bit of our money either through donations for global causes, or through paying higher taxes for local ones. And giving away 'hard-earned' money is a concept a little too close to the bone. Nothing cheap and cheerful about it. So we look at poverty in ways that help justify our lack of action. We make like its not there and give it a wide berth. Ignorance is bliss.

But ignorance we can tackle. And making a difference starts with awareness, so I'm going to use a 'rich' country like the UK as a case in point and share 5 facts about poverty that you probably didn't know, but really, really should...

Poverty has two definitions: Absolute and Relative.
Absolute poverty also known as 'extreme poverty', is defined as living on less than $1.25 per day. The world bank estimates that 1.4 billion people currently live under these conditions. Relative poverty is used when talking about developed countries and currently stands at about $30 a day for a single adult.

Poverty in the UK is defined as any income that is 60% or less than the average household income. 13 million people in the UK live on less than this.
Doesn't sound too bad? This threshold works out at about £450 a month after tax and rent for a single adult, and worse still, just about £1200 for a family with two children. £300 per month per person, to cover all their other bills, travel, food, and living. That's one big night out plus a pretty cheap suit, if you want it in context. A full fifth of the UK population survives on less than this. Think about it.

Over half a Million people in the UK are homeless
100,000 families in the UK are classified as homeless. That's families. Not just individuals. That the Government knows of. Because they only count those who've applied to be classified that way and then succeeded in being recognised as 'officially' vulnerable. Crisis estimates another 400,000 hidden homeless. People don't end up homeless by choice and they don't stay that way because they are lazy. The causes are brutal, and the effects are devastating. Resulting clinical depression and mental health impacts are a major reason why many never make it back. Over 70% of homeless people suffer mental health issues but are 40 times less likely than the rest of us to be registered with a GP. You don't get far without an address.

Children are not exempt. 3.9 million children in the UK are affected.
Half of these children are in workless households, which means the UK has a higher proportion of children living in unemployed families than any other EU country. It doesn't get much better for young adults. 1.2 million young people of working age are not in employment, education or training (NEET). In London alone, that's 25% of 16-18 year olds with nowhere to go.

Ethnicity only makes things worse. In the UK overall, 40% of people from ethnic minorities still live in poverty.
This is twice the rate for White people. Some migrants like Indians and Black Caribbeans, most of whom originally came from middle class, English speaking backgrounds, have closed the gap with about 25% living in poverty, but for the others it is much much worse. 55% of Bangladeshis, 45% of Pakistanis and 30% of Black Africans are in 'low-income households'.

Anyway, I know this has been a long post, but I didn't just want it to be another pontification on the state of the world today. So thanks for reading. I hope the facts make you think, and even if they've opened your eyes just enough to share this post and pass it on to your friends, we can both say we've made a small difference...

Will Social Enterprise Survive The Credit Crunch?

2008-10-14T08:37:00.000+01:00

I was just watching an interview with Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank, and it got me thinking. Amidst all this fear about our economies going bust with our commercial and investment banks, what's going to happen to Social Enterprise?

As Yunus says, food prices have doubled, oil prices have gone up, and the financial crisis is affecting people's purchasing power everywhere. But not all financial institutions are suffering. Microfinance institutions for example, have stronger portfolios because their loans are much more transparent. There may be no collateral and no guarantees, but it's based on trust and still has a much better quality of return. They are reaping the rewards of robustness and relevance, underpinned by ethically focusing on people's needs rather than making careless short-term profits.

Social businesses, in the same way, are about working with people and not exploiting them. They are collaborative more often than not, and held together by people who aren't simply working for a wage. This makes their offerings more relevant to their audience, their financial decisions less risky, and their audience more likely to support them in times of difficulty.

Many also rely on philanthropic funding, government grants or SROI based loans, and won't be quite as badly affected by the credit crunch because the financial instruments they depend on are not quite as compromised. It will be tighter of course, but how is that going to be much different from the normal state of affairs for most social enterprises? At the more commercial end too, they are also more likely to be given leeway around defaulted payments due to the nature of their work.

Finally, if this really turns into crippling economic crisis, I believe it will only help drive social innovation faster. It will embed the recognition that we have to be able to help each other, and create not just environmentally sustainable businesses, but also financially sustainable ones.

We can only do this collaboratively, so I believe the future is bright for social enterprise and social innovation. Watch out for new disruptions to commercial models that rival Grameen Bank, and keep your fingers crossed for a future with less money-mindedness and more taking care of each other!

Startup And Change The World!

2008-10-11T11:56:00.000+01:00

Here's a fantastic resource for startups put together by Dev Appanah, a social entrepreneur and friend of mine, along with some of his colleagues at www.ysei.org. It is basically a rough guide to starting your own social enterprise. It has some great stuff around making the most of your ideas, along with financial and organisational planning help, particularly related to raising the funds you need and managing your key stakeholders. If there was ever anything you should read around starting up a social enterprise, this is it.

Startup & Change the World: Guide for Young Social Entrepreneurs

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: business sustainable)

Addressing The Real Issues With Volunteering

2008-10-09T09:59:00.000+01:00

I've just read that the volunteering charity V is going to start referring to volunteering as 'favours', because apparently their research shows that two-thirds of young people find the word 'volunteering' a turn-off. Haven't they ever heard the phrase 'calling a rose by any another name...'. In this case if young people think its a pig, calling it a tiger isn't going to change anything.

Let's look at the two issues they point to... the reasons why young people don't volunteer.

They see it as signing up to the unknown - If you look carefully, there are two issues here. The signing up - in other words a commitment issue, and the unknown - in other words lack of clarity around what they are going to be doing
A third said volunteering was geeky - I'm guessing 'V' haven't taken into account the effect of the Orange Rockcorps campaign on shifting the perception of volunteering amongst young people.

Asking young people if they have volunteered, most said no, but 80% said they'd done someone a favour. So V have decided that renaming volunteering as favours would get more young people excited. Personally I think that's a poor approach. 'Favours' inherently suggest obligation. Does V realise that it might effectively be building a culture of young people who associate donating time and effort with actual return and reward?

In any event, renaming something does not in any way address the underlying issues, and therefore quite frankly should not be expected to do anything to improve the numbers of young people getting involved.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I believe there are 4 reasons why young people (16 - 35) don't volunteer. The barriers come down to perception, but usually underpinned by reality.

Effort required to find opportunities to help - I challenge you to find somewhere to volunteer for an hour this evening
Physicality and localisation - having to be there in person and doing something physical
Commitment - having to sign up to something regular and ongoing. The issue here is backing out rather than signing up. We have busy and social lives. A lot of people would rather not get involved at all, than face the embarrassment of telling someone after who needs help that they can't continue any more because they've got some other social activity that overlaps.
Kudos - personal kudos is a huge factor in young people's lives and right now there are no avenues to highlight anyone's volunteering efforts to their friends and networks. Even giving someone a ticket to a concert in return for volunteering as Orange Rockcorps are doing, is reward without kudos. Encouragement for one-off volunteering rather than a culture of a volunteering.

This project, through iVolntr.org, is explicitly aimed at removing these barriers by tapping into existing social networks and enabling real-time crowdsourced virtual-volunteering. By addressing the issues rather than playing with semantics, we can start to build a real culture of volunteering, enabling people to help each other and make a difference to millions.

As mentioned before, I'm going to be applying for Google's Project 10 to the 100th, so do help by spreading the word, subscribing to the blog at http://www.urbansurvivalproject.org/ and passing the link on to your friends and colleagues.

New Self-Assessment Framework for Social Enterprise

2008-10-06T09:00:00.000+01:00

(Excerpt from Third Sector Online, by Gemma McKenna, 2 October 2008 )

The social enterprise 'Investing in Governance' has devised a way for charities to assess and improve their governance procedures.

The 24-page document includes 69 best practice guidelines under 11 headings, which cover topics from recruitment to the induction and appraisal of trustees. Organisations that complete the document are scored so they can identify areas for improvement.

The document was drawn up by Stefan Kuchar, chief executive of Wandsworth Voluntary Sector Development Agency, as part of an MBA research study. He worked with five charities to develop the plan, which starts with a list of "10 things that hack me off about charity boards". It was posted online this week and is available to download for £29.50. Apparently charities can also buy in an expert panel to help with the evaluation for £3,250.

Project 10 to the 100th - May Those Who Help The Most Win!

2008-10-04T11:42:00.000+01:00

I mentioned this project in my post Finally, a window... some hope! If you are planning to set up a global scale social enterprise, this could be just the thing for you. I'm hoping it'll help the Urban Survival Project get off the ground. Here's a little more detail... Project 10 to the 100th

Google is looking for ideas that can help as many people as possible, in any way, and are committing $10m to launch them. You can submit your ideas and help vote on ideas from others. The deadline is Oct 20th and voting starts in January.

The categories are

Community
Opportunity
Energy
Environment
Health
Education
Shelter
Everything else

The criteria are

Reach
Depth
Attainability
Efficiency
Longevity

I'm going to submit the Urban Survival Project's online volunteering platform iVolntr.org as an idea. So watch this space, and please vote for it!!

You can help now too. Just tell me what category you think USP / iVolntr should fit in and why?!

5 Tips To Help You Start A Blog For Your Social Enterprise

2008-10-04T09:52:00.000+01:00

Blogging should be a key strategy for any social start-up or even an established one, primarily because of the collaborative nature of social activity plus the need to build profile and audience ahead of trying to raise funding.

After almost a year of posting I've learned a lot about the value of blogging and how to keep it going, both from a writer and reader perspective. Here's some strategic tips in case you're thinking about starting one either for yourself or your enterprise... social or otherwise!

Think about your blog strategy:
Figure out what you want to achieve from the blog, then figure out the audience you need. Find the common ground between the two in terms of topics, and start writing about them.

Stay focused on your topics:
Once you've figured out your strategy, stay focused on it. If you want subscribers you need to stay specific to the audience you want to build. People don't usually subscribe to generic blogs or those that try to cover too many categories because they don't want to be bombarded by stuff they aren't interested in. We're information overloaded as it is, so it may be good for driving search traffic, but terrible for building regular readership.

Don't go crazy with your Tags:
Select and reduce the number of Tags you use so that they clearly reflect what your blog is about. They should become like a navigation menu rather than a random list of words. See my categories on the right for example. Tag clouds are fun too, but people who aren't into blogs (and thats most of them) don't know what they mean. They also don't attract as much traffic as you'd expect.

Don't confuse your professional blog for a personal one:
If you've created an info-blog, don't use it as a dumping ground for your opinions on random things, however passionate you are about those. Your subscribers are a trapped audience but they really don't appreciate you abusing their time by switching into 'speakers corner' mode every so often. With the US elections I'm seeing a lot of this... social enterprise bloggers, retail bloggers, innovation bloggers etc etc all chucking in posts about their opinions on US politics. It usually makes me tempted to unsubscribe.

Maintain a sensible level of readability:
No one has time to read lengthy discourses on anything. They need enough detail to gain value, but short enough to pick it up quickly. Short bullet points make all the difference. With this post for example, I've written enough to provide an explanation if you wanted it, but also split out summary titles as bullet points in case you didn't have time to read all this text.

Finally, a window... some hope!

2008-10-01T08:47:00.000+01:00

As I'm sure all you long term subscribers will have noticed, I've been blogging less and less about the Urban Survival Project over the past few months. It's not that I suddenly lost interest and moved on to other things, but more to do with the fact that ...

When I looked at it closely, I couldn't see a way of reducing costs down to the small scale £10-30k funding available for social enterprises. For a good example, see my post on my experience with UnLtd
I similarly couldn't make a compelling case for financial return on investment for VCs that might provide the quick ROI to convince them to invest in the scale needed £100-£300k. It was easy enough to see scope for ROI, but the social imperative is a major psychological hurdle for most investors and you have to be really compelling to overcome that.
I never did meet any philanthropists regardless of scale.

So I've been taking a different route, building connections and working on related youth and social projects until there was some sensible glimmer of hope that made it worth pushing effort into developing the USP idea further.

Fortunately it looks like that might just have happened. I came across Google's Project 10 to the 100th the other day, which is a project to fund large social enterprises and looks like it might be just the thing. Check it out - http://www.project10tothe100.com/. I'll write more on it later but the strapline is "May Those Who Help The Most Win" - sounds perfect!!

Be ready for much more USP this month :)

Orange RockCorps - Corporates Mobilising The Community: A UK First?

2008-09-21T11:10:00.000+01:00

Orange RockCorps is coming to you. Volunteer for free concert tickets. The adverts are on TV now. You'll recognise the underpinning philosophy from the ads on the tube if you live in London. "I am who I am because of everyone". I used to see the ads, think it was a nice idea, but figured it was just some more corporate positioning. However, true to their strapline Orange have teamed up with RockCorps to bring an awesome community project to the UK.

Here's the deal... You do 4 hours of volunteering/community service at one of 50 projects being organized around London, covering everything from school regeneration to helping the homeless, and you get 1 free concert ticket.

The first gig is on September 26th at the Royal Albert Hall and involves Busta Rhymes, Guillemots, John Legend, Feeder and more artists are still signing up.

That appears to be it. No further catch. No idea how many concerts there are, or if the 1 concert will cover all volunteers, but since I can't find any other condition for getting a ticket I'm assuming they will have to keep them coming for as many people as do the volunteering. I love it!

It's already happened in the US, but this is quite clearly the first true example of a corporate mobilising the community in the UK. Orange provide the funding, publicity, platform, social media, project connections, scalability, and in return they get massive, massive kudos even though the idea really is RockCorps'. Still, someone had to be brave enough to make it happen, and respect to Orange for doing it.

Here's some more links

4 Phases of Innovation

2008-09-15T11:48:00.000+01:00

Innovation really has turned into the buzzword for 2008. In case, like most people, you still don't know what innovating is really all about here's a quick intro. According to Iris Mootee on the Future Lab blog, apparently going from idea to mass market adoption happens in 4 phases, all of which involve innovation.

The Fuzzy Front End (FFE), which involves a lot of insight gathering, ideation and early conceptualization
New Product Development (NPD) process, which involves design and engineering prototyping
Early-Stage Commercialization (ESC), where ideas are needed to inform how the product is being brought to market (usually small underserved or unserved market/segments)
Driving Mass Adoption (DMA), where innovation is applied to mass market the product/service and considerations include how to use this disruptive innovation to upset the market dynamics and economics.

3 Models of Social Enterprise: Creating Social Impact Through Trading

2008-09-12T09:57:00.000+01:00

The Charities Aid Foundations' social investment arm Venturesome has published a couple of papers this year on categorising social enterprises, so that both investors and investees understand how different business models create social impact and the consequences they have for generating financial returns. It is worth a look to see if or where you fit within their model as it might help you present your social enterprise better, and understand not only the management skills needed but the financial risks and potential social return perceived by your investors.

Anyway CAF divide social enterprises into 3 distinct business models, based on their research defining enterprises according to the social impact they are achieving rather than their legal form.

Model 1 - Profit Generator:
Trading activity itself is primarily seeking a financial return only. As such, it is deemed to have no direct social impact but gives some or all of its profits to charity. Financial risk of the investment is disconnected from the likelihood of achieving social impact.
Examples include Corporates with CSR programmes or those which give a percentage of their profits to developing charitable projects, Charities investing endowments in financial markets, and Trading subsidiaries of charities.
Model 2 - Trade Off:
Social impact is integral to the nature of the trading activity, but a balance has to be struck between generating financial returns and creating social impact. The firm could increase its social impact by decreasing financial returns, or vice versa. In other words, there is a trade-off. Model 2 firms may be able to attract commercial investors with an acceptable rate of financial return, while at the same time achieving a level of social return which is acceptable to its other stakeholders.
Examples include Fair Trade Businesses, Microfinance Institutions, and Firms that employ the disabled or other disadvantaged people.
Model 3 - Lock Step:
Trading activity has direct social impact, but that social impact increases or decreases in step with financial returns. Apparently these types of enterprise are scarce as they operate in clearly competitive markets. The level of financial returns that Model 3 businesses are able to achieve may be acceptable to a fully commercial (financial return only) investor.
Examples include Co-operatives, Wind Farms, and JustGiving.com.

Download Three Models of Social Enterprise (.pdf)

Download Three Models of Social Enterprise, Part Two (.pdf)

Listening to the Social Entrepreneur

2008-09-08T18:13:00.000+01:00

I recently came across this event so thought I'd share it. It's called "Listening to the Social Entrepreneur" and will be held on Thursday, October 09, 2008 from 10:00am - 05:30pm at the University of East London's Docklands Campus.

Looks interesting. Here are the main themes:

The Social Entrepreneurial Mindset - is a social entrepreneur just born that way or can those from other sectors transition their organisations to become social enterprises, and how do we make that cultural shift?
Procurement Versus Market Place Focus - is procurement really a long-term sustainable business model for social enterprise or is it time to start moving back to the market place?
The Business Versus Social Goals Debate - how do we get the balance right without selling out, and how important is social impact measurement and bench marking in helping us achieve our goals?

More info here. Let me know if you're planning on going as I'm thinking of it too.

The Future Is Chrome... Or Is It?

2008-09-06T18:20:00.000+01:00

In a nutshell the answer is No

Until the way we browse fundamentally changes, new entrants like Google's new browser 'Chrome' really have nothing to add for the majority of users. The future is touch screen and voice commands. When these start to become ubiquitous, what the mass market needs from browsers will change. At that point there will be a big gap for new entrants.

If Chrome was setting itself up to exploit that change, we'd be looking at the early rumblings of a browsing revolution. But it isn't.

The browser is not finger touch oriented in anyway, and in fact the functionality has become more mouse based, fiddly and precision oriented. There isn't even the 'alt' functionality needed for disabled access technologies.

So no, for the moment I don't really see Chrome taking over the world. I suspect it will be just another player like Firefox. I'll be keeping an eye on it anyway from the perspective of USP development, so if anything new comes to light that changes my view, I'll be sure to keep you posted!

Meantime if you want to know a bit more about this, read the full article on my other blog - www.multichannelthinking.com.

Google's new browser muscles in on Microsoft

2008-09-06T13:39:00.000+01:00

If you've been keeping up with the voices in the blogosphere, particularly the tech side, there's no way you'd have missed the fact that Google has just released a new browser called Chrome. But since I know you most of you probably haven't, here's a quick update.

What is Chrome?

Basically Google has released an Open Source beta (test) version a new internet explorer (browser). It is small to download, simple to use and apparently very fast (although if you're not a developer, you'd never really notice).

Quick highlights of what's different

The search and address field is the same - which is good for the tech savvy, but probably a bit tricky for everyone else.
The homepage shows you your 'most visited' sites, recently closed tabs and bookmarks.
Unlike IE, you can shut down tabs that have crashed without losing all your open windows.
Security wise, before loading any suspect page Google Chrome will warn you if its a site that is suspected of malware or phishing.
Bookmarking is ridiculously easy.

Why should you care?

Apparently Chrome is not just a browser, but a platform for web pages and applications based on a more powerful JavaScript engine called V8, that can power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers. Basically it creates huge potential for Google to integrate its multitude of apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, Blogger, Notebook, RSS Reader etc, into a browser in a way that’s never been done before.

Also and more importantly, since the browser is a desktop application, when combined with Google's Gears which allows web applications to run offline, this finally means that Google is moving into Microsoft operating system territory. In short we might finally see some real competition to Windows and Macs!

If you're building web apps for your start-up then this is probably something you should keep your eye on. If not, well then I doubt you're missing much by sticking with IE, but that's a story for another post :)

------------

I'm curious to know what others think. Have you tried Chrome? Do you like it? Write in and let me know...

Did You Know? (Shift Happens Update)

2008-09-02T09:00:00.000+01:00

Some months ago I put up a slideshow by Karl Fisch called Shift Happens, which I think was created in about 2006. I recently came across some updates created in 2007, so thought I'd share them with you.

The most interesting thing about these updates is that even though they were created barely a year ago, neither mentions the impact of mobile telephone technology. Mobile innovation is transforming the developing world, bringing affordable communication, banking, social and commercial services to rural places where no physical infrastructure exists. It has exploded in the last year, and its impact is finally being recognised over the past couple of months. I'll put up some links related to this when I can. Effectively we're seeing a shift that's happening so fast that even social discussion can't keep up with it!

Anyway here's a couple of interesting video presentations that follow up on Shift Happens.

Did you know - Part 2

Did you know - Part 4
(Part 3 is very similar and was revised to Part 4 a couple months later. You can find it on Youtube if you like)

They both essentially question whether our education systems are keeping up with these shifts and providing young people with the knowledge they need to survive in a rapidly shifting global economy.

What do you think?

9 Fundraising Survival Tips For Startups

2008-09-01T09:00:00.000+01:00

I recently came across a really good article by Paul Graham on fundraising for startups. He makes some really good points and his core message resonates with me after months of working on USP, and probably resonates with anyone involved with a social startup.

The hardest part of a startup is making something people want: most startups that fail, die because they didn't do that. But the second biggest cause of death is probably the difficulty of raising money. Fundraising is brutal. I'd add to that point by saying that it's even worse if your idea is social, because funders immediately get nervous about the connotations for potential for return on investment. Here's the full article http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html, but I must warn that it's a long one!

The short version...

Have low expectations
Keep working on your startup
Be conservative
Be flexible
Be independent
Don't take rejection personally
Be able to downshift into consulting (if appropriate)
Avoid inexperienced investors
Know where you stand with them in terms of commitment

Socialising Intelligence With The Urban Survival Project

2008-08-27T10:10:00.000+01:00

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social intelligence)

I've been meaning to put up this presentation on Socialising Intelligence for a few weeks now, but held off as I was planning to turn it into a slidecast with audio. Unfortunately I'm so busy at the moment that it's just going to have to be the slides I'm afraid!

Anyway, I created this for a talk at the last Ogunte event on Facilitating Social Intelligence and Women's Role In It, and it seemed to go down pretty well. It is essentially about social intelligence and how it fits with what I'm trying to do with the Urban Survival Project.

The basic gist is that our societal definition of intelligence is Academic, which makes it a function of economics. And since we have social economic differentials, we also have social intelligence differentials. Balancing out these differentials is what I call Socialising Intelligence. In other words it is about facilitating knowledge transfer in order to create a collective social intelligence.

In essence then, USP is about using web technologies to create a community platform to enable knowledge transfer between those who have it and those who don't. Check the slides out. They are short, simple and pictorial.

Enjoy!

From Charity to Social Enterprise: Organisational Redesign

2008-08-23T10:48:00.000+01:00

These days, everywhere you look in the social space, it's all about social enterprise rather than charity. Or to put it another way, it's all about financial independence and sustainability rather than dependence on grants and donations.

The question then is how do you go from being a charity that functions through fundraising, into an enterprise that actually monetises services or products; especially when you factor in the charity status restrictions on commercial activity?

This is actually something I'm looking at with Bang Edutainment and I'll try and keep you all updated on what I learn. In essence though the answer is a combination of Business Model Innovation and Organisational Redesign.

Business model innovation is about identifying new ways of monetising your existing services and engaging your target audience, or creating new ones that others aren't offering. Organisational redesign is about restructuring the legal, financial and probably even human structure of your organisation to increase clarity of purpose and ability to deliver different but related services.

When moving towards financial independence for charities, we're essentially talking about monetising existing IP, products or services; and creating linked organisational entities that keep the benefits of being a charity while also allowing commercial activity that can drive profits back into charitable services.

I'll talk a bit more about these as things progress with Bang. We're getting close to business plan stage for some new ideas, and it will tell us if our ideas are viable. If all goes well, I'm hoping to learn some useful stuff for USP too!

For now though, here's some interesting presentations on business model innovation that are relevant regardless of whether you're working in the charity or commercial sectors.

Finally... thanks to those of you who wrote in about this blog, particularly Safs and Katie, who've kept in touch with encouragement all the way. All helps :)

Observations on the Blogosphere

2008-08-19T11:00:00.000+01:00

You've probably noticed that over the past few months I've not been quite so prolific with posting. I've been wondering about that too. I don't know whether it's because I'm running out of things to say, or running out of time to write especially now that I'm doing so many other things, because I'm simply facing information overload.

The last one is probably the real reason, and it's because once you start blogging, you realise that there is a very tight correlation between blog readers and bloggers. Bloggers comment to improve their own readership and read other blogs for inspiration. The problem of course is drawing the line on how many and what blogs to follow. I keep finding so much interesting stuff that I now subscribe to over 50 blogs, most of which post multiple times a day. Upshot is way too much information, and blogging paralysis for me!

An interesting observation is that the blogosphere is really a small place even if it seems huge. It's a bit like the internet, which seems infinite but is actually pretty shallow with same information recycled from limited original sources. The more I see this, the more I want to create original and useful content, which of course adds pressure because I need to find more time to think, and voila... we're back at blogging paralysis!!

Overall, I think I'm experiencing information, blogging, and social networking overload. Blogging right now seems a bit like jumping into a small pool with so many other people that swimming is not an option! Maybe it's because this blog doesn't get many comments that it's difficult to stay motivated. I can guess that's because unlike tech blogs the readership here is mostly through email subscription and probably readers that don't normally blog or comment, but still... you know what I mean.

Anyway, if you've enjoyed the posts and do actually keep up with them, stop by and leave a comment. It's easy, and will make a big difference :)

Freesouls and Sharism

2008-08-07T10:55:00.000+01:00

Came across a couple of mildly thought provoking presentations this morning and thought I'd share them. The common theme between both is open sharing. The premise is that it's time to start recognizing that knowledge isn't owned and can't be owned and that learning is inherently social. Of course it is sort of related to my view of the world, as what I want to achieve with the Urban Survival Project is less a form of direct learning and more a socialisation of knowledge; effectively meaning the voluntary sharing of knowledge between people who have it and people who don't.

Freesouls

View SlideShare presentation (tags: joi_ito book photography creativecommons)

Joi Ito's idea of Freesouls is about collaborative idealism and participatory culture as a team game. Making knowledge and content open to the world.

Sharism

view presentation (tags: belief philosophy sharism social design)

Isaac Mao's thoughts are related in that 'Sharism' sort of covers the behavioural aspect of the Freesoul idea. It's obviously not written by a native English speaker, but the message is still easy enough to follow.

Present your Startup - Free Presentation Tools

2008-08-06T09:10:00.000+01:00

At some point during the life cycle of your startup you're going to have to present your ideas to an audience, whether it's investors or press or feedback groups. Often this is not so much about conveying the complexity and depth of your fabulous idea, but about telling a compelling story that captures and makes sense to the receiver. One easy way of doing this is through visuals. Traditionally through slides, and now more and more through the use of video.

The obvious presentation tools are Microsoft PowerPoint if you use Windows, or Keynote for Mac users, but here's a free one in case you don't have these already - Open Office Impress. If you aren't familiar with creating slideshow presentations, it's worth starting to practice because an amateur presentation can really make you look bad. One tip for creating slides... keep text content to a minimum. Bullet points, especially multiple ones are really boring, especially as people are beginning to see a lot more exciting stuff in the design focused Web 2.0 world! The best place to upload and share your presentations is SlideShare, which allows you to embed the presentation anywhere after you've uploaded it. It's also a great place to look for inspiration and to find presentations on virtually any topic you can think of.

Talking of more exciting presentations though, a lot of presentations are moving towards becoming Flash based - and looking more like video rather than slides. Tools are popping up that allow you to do this sort of thing without really needing any technical knowledge. Here's a couple of free ones worth checking out - iSpring which converts PowerPoint slides to Flash, and Flypaper which allows you to create flash-based web presentations without any programming experience. Best place to upload these is YouTube, where you can create your own channel, and which like SlideShare opens up a host of embedding and share options.

July 2008 Volunteer News Roundup

2008-08-05T15:30:00.000+01:00

Volunteering related news headlines for July '08

The National Council for Voluntary Youth Services has asked the DCSF to fund an accreditation scheme for volunteer youth workers. Volunteers will need to submit a portfolio demonstrating that they have achieved the required level of training and practical work experience. Each volunteer will then be awarded a certificate, warrant or card that identifies him or her as a recognised volunteer youth worker. I guess they haven't gone quite as far as actually providing qualifications through volunteering, but it's a step in the right direction.
Talking of gaining qualifications however, volunteering charity V is launching a multi-million pound scheme to get 16- to 25-year-olds mostly in the NEET category volunteering full-time for 44 weeks in local authority children's services throughout England. At the end of this they will get a recognised qualification and a grant to help them move into work. This is expected to launch in January. (More on this)
A draft Immigration and Citizenship Bill, recently published, suggests that applications should be processed faster for people who could show they were contributing to the community. In other words foreign residents applying for British citizenship could speed up their applications by volunteering. This could of course be viewed from a cynical angle, but we won't go there for now!
Volunteering England has launched a campaign to encourage small and medium-sized businesses to set up employer-supported volunteering schemes and has dedicated part of its website, to explaining the business case for it.
Finally, 2011 is being proposed as the European Year of Volunteering, and has received overwhelming support from UK MEPs, so lets see where that goes. If it gets sanctioned, it'll be interesting to see if there's an increase in funding for volunteer related projects.

Return of the prodigal son

2008-08-04T15:54:00.000+01:00

Well, hardly prodigal... but yes, finally a return to blogging and generally chasing down the USP dream after a month of travelling and generally being tied up with other things. I went to SE Asia - Singapore, Bali and HongKong - for a few weeks last month, partly for a wedding and partly to catch some sunshine.

I just assumed, based on my previous experience of travelling the region 6 years ago, that it would be easy to find internet access, but was very surprised to find quite the opposite. Both Singapore and HongKong have almost ubiquitous wifi, but without a device you're pretty much stranded, and for once I didn't bother to take my laptop. My plans for blogging and keeping up with the world of work online died an unexpected death I'm afraid!

Anyway, apologies to all of you who keep up with this blog, but must admit it made for a great break, which means I'm back revitalised and ready to rock :D Plans for the next few weeks are to

Finish mocking up user interactions for how iVoluntr could work
Get some surveys out to all of you to understand a bit more about how and why people might help each other online
Get back in touch with the needs of young people and inner city kids through my work with BANG Edutainment - which I formally became a Trustee of last month
Start looking into collaborations with Google over their technologies, and hopefully for funding support

This isn't confirmed yet, but I might also try and do some work around repackaging information for the TRN Institute in Thailand. They've created some awesome IP around starting up social enterprises and changing the world, which I think is really worth getting out to a wider audience - so visit their website and watch this space.

Next few posts will update on whats happening in the volunteering and philanthropy space. In the meantime, thanks for being patient and hope all is well at your respective ends :)

June 2008 Volunteer News Roundup

2008-06-21T11:01:00.000+01:00

The Government Train to Gain Funding scheme has been extended to cover volunteers who can now benefit from the same subsidies as those for paid employees.

Youth Volunteering Charity V has changed the applications process for its match fund scheme to attract new project ideas and will now assess funding applications for projects in six new categories: community cohesion, environment, health, human rights, supporting children and young people, and poverty. The scheme will match funds that projects raise from the private sector with government money. Any project that encourages 16-to-25 year olds to volunteer can apply. Here's their viral on Youtube -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojgwN0MR0wo

The recently launched Morgan Enquiry published some interesting recommendations including that the Department of Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus should fully recognise volunteering as a legitimate job-seeking activity for those claiming benefits and a route to work for unemployed young adults. It further recommended that an accredited corporate opt-in employee volunteering scheme should be developed to generate good and give employers and academic institutions the confidence to release individuals for a day to take part in accredited volunteering.

A new screening system for people who work with children and vulnerable adults will begin in October 2009 and cost £64 per person, the Independent Safeguarding Authority has announced. The CRB will be responsible for gathering information on applicants and transferring it to the ISA. The ISA will then decide whether a person should be barred from working with children or vulnerable adults.

A Europe-wide accreditation scheme for environmental volunteers will be launched in September 2008. The "Environments for Learning" programme is based on the European Qualification Framework and will provide a way of recognising and assessing skills and knowledge that volunteers learn informally through volunteering. The programme is being developed by UK environmental volunteering charity BTCV and six partner organisations from across Europe. It will allow skills learned through volunteering in one country to be recognised in another.

MySpace still rules America

2008-06-16T15:00:00.000+01:00

Facebook went past MySpace in the UK last September, and has now officially equalled MySpace globally in monthly unique visitors. MySpace still dominates in the US though - their unique visitor count still doubles that of Facebook - 76m vs. 32m. This means that Facebook has way more unique hits outside America and is dominating heavily, while MySpace is struggling with the global audience.

Here's 3 probably controversial reasons why I think MySpace is still dominating America

MySpace networks are inclusive (open) while Facebook networks are exclusive (gated)
Facebook blows MySpace away in instant gratification, but MySpace pays off in profile uniqueness
MySpace accepts everyone... the Oldies too, while Facebook is elitist... for the hip generation only

What this means is that if you're based in the US or your primary audience is US based, stop worrying about Facebook so much and take MySpace seriously!

(Excerpt taken from full post "3 Controversial Reasons Why MySpace Dominates in America, but Facebook Rules Everywhere Else" published on my other blog www.multichannelthinking.com)

Ken Robinson on Creativity

2008-06-13T16:00:00.000+01:00

This is a fantastic presentation by Ken Robinson at a TED conference. About 20 minutes long, but really fun and engaging. Watch if you can!

(If it doesn't play, watch it on the TED site here - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66)

The gist of it - Ken contends that creativity is as important as literacy and should be treated with the same status. He defines creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value and highlights that it comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.

Here's the thing. Kids will take a chance. If they don't know the answer they'll have a go anyway. They're not frightened of being wrong. If you're not prepared to be wrong you're not going to come up with anything original. As you grow up you become frightened to be wrong because we stigmatise mistakes, and we're now running national educational systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. Effectively we're educating people out of their creative capacities.

We need to radically change our view of intelligence. It is diverse, dynamic, and distinct; and it's expressed through distinct and different avenues - some creative, some physical, some academic. Consequently he believes only hope for the future is to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.

Google's 9 Principles of Innovation

2008-06-13T13:30:00.000+01:00

If Google's successes can be attributed to these principles, then they have to be worth modelling your own startup or enterprise around

Ideas come from everywhere - it's not about frameworks and enforced ideation
Share everything you can - don't be territorial and give credit for ideas
You're brilliant, we're hiring - when you meet someone exceptional, fit them in even if you don't actually have a role
A license to pursue dreams - make space for your people to explore tangential ideas
Innovation, not instant perfection - start rough, learn and iterate
Data is apolitical - be specific with measurement and data and make decisions based on it
Creativity loves constraints - fixing at least a few parameters helps people start thinking out of the box
It's users, not money - if you can successfully engage users, you can monetise them
Don't kill projects, morph them - figure out how to repackage and rejuvenate struggling projects rather than waste invested ideas, time and money by shutting them down completely

Watch and listen to Google's Marissa Mayer on the 9 Principles:

What is SROI? - A couple of useful papers for download

2008-06-11T21:00:00.000+01:00

I've turned my previous post into a very short paper you can download for reference.

And in case you want something more in-depth here's the REDF paper on exploring value creation in non-profit sector

Social Return on Investment (SROI)

2008-06-11T13:00:00.000+01:00

For many of us who are looking to start up a social enterprise, the framework of Social Return on Investment (SROI) could prove to be crucial in both understanding and presenting our social impacts in economic terms. Anything that helps us raise funding and support has to be worth taking seriously, so here's a short overview of SROI.

According to the SROI-UK Network , SROI is an approach to understanding and managing the impacts of a project, organisation or policy. It is based on important impacts that stakeholders identify and puts financial value on outcomes that do not have market values. SROI therefore is a framework. It’s a story, not just a number.

The story should show how you:

Understand the value created
Manage it
Can prove it

It was developed in the early 1990s, by a non-profit social enterprise called The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund [REDF] who began to analyse its SROI to help illustrate in monetary terms the value generated through an investment in its social programmes.

For social entrepreneurs there are 3 avenues of value creation:

Economic: creating services or products that have greater market value than their inputs e.g. any commercial business
Social: creating services or products that have a provably beneficial impact on society e.g. anti-racism initiatives
Socio-Economic: creating services or products that increase the market value of inputs but also generate cost savings for the public system or environment e.g. employment programs

Why should you care?

The key point to note is that the SROI analysis is essentially a robust argument for your non-profit or social enterprise to be at least partially compensated or credited for the value it creates in the marketplace. This could be either through public funding or CSR investment.

To create your SROI analysis you need to do the following:

Examine your social service activity over a given time frame (usually five to 10 years);
Calculate the amount of "investment" required to support that social activity and analyze the capital structure in place to support it
Identify the various cost savings, reductions in spending and related benefits that accrue to your public system as a result of what you're doing
Calculate the economic value of those cost savings and related benefits
Discount those savings back to the beginning of the investment time frame using a net present value (NPV) and/or discounted cash flow analysis
Finally present the Socio-Economic Value created during the investment time frame, by expressing that value in terms of NPV and SROI rates and ratios.

And yes, it clearly points towards needing a decent accountant!

Still, the benefits of having an SROI framework are clear. It will help you

Understand the real value of what your enterprise/organisation does
Raise finance more easily
Get public sector support more easily
Improve reporting on positive changes caused by your organisation
Develop a better organisational structure, with improved strategies, systems and accountability
Improve your ability to manage risks and identify opportunities required to achieve your mission

References

Download

Download this post on SROI as a pdf

Trends in Logo Design

2008-06-10T11:15:00.000+01:00

Since I've been talking about branding I thought I'd have a look at logo design. Personally I'm a big believer in designing logos that can stand alone from any text and still be clearly identifiable as your organisation. Think Nike, Apple, Microsoft Windows and the original Adidas logos. Anyway, I recently came across a cool post on trends in visual design for logos.

So if you're thinking of starting a new enterprise or are in the process of updating your brand, here are some thoughts below based on a post from logoorange.

3D: the organic rather than blocky sort. Be careful though. Here's the Microsoft Silverlight example. Visually nice - yes. Memorable - no!

Waves: Apparently the swoosh is dead. It's all about waves with fades these days.

"Web 2.0": Think rounded corners and glassy

Transparency: Subtle effects are in

Minimal "Underground" Typography: None of these still exist so no idea what that says about this form of logo!

Rainbow Color Scales: Unfortunately everytime I see anything like this I think 'Polaroid'! Other examples are SpaceTime and ElasticDigital. Their logos look really similar though.

Sci-Fi Fonts: You can end up looking very tech geek or "video-gamey", so be careful.

Leaves: Green is big right now. Leaves help you ride the eco wave and can give your brand that fresh peaceful look.

The "Ugly" 80's: What can you say about this, except that it's a risky strategy unless you're of the belief that even bad publicity is still good!

The New Crest: Medieval symbolism and urban culture graphic elements can be very cool if done well. If not, they just look complicated and impossible to identify the company within.

Innovation and iVolntr

2008-06-04T13:00:00.000+01:00

iVolntr.org falls into the Type III innovation category as defined in NESTA's 'Total Innovation' report. It is about tying together a host of digital editing technologies (like google docs), existing social networks (like facebook), and open standards (like opensocial and the dataportability initiative) to remove the existing perceptual and real barriers to volunteering (particularly for the facebook generation) and thus change the way volunteering is perceived and done.

The project is about crowdsourcing time and skill on a many-to-one-basis to facilitate people helping people, and people helping organisations; by creating, commenting and editing individual and organisational information directly through the webpage in immediate response to need or request. It will be primarily designed to support social organisations and disadvanted groups in developed information economies like ours, where so much is facilitated by or done through desktop computing.

iVolntr then is essentially about innovation in social behaviour and the development of Personal Social Responsibility (PSR). By removing the commitment, physicality and localisation factors present in traditional volunteering models, as well as removing the effort in finding out about opportunities to help (for eg. through a facebook app) we should be able to leverage personal need for social kudos to create a sustainable culture of social enthusiasm and a sustainable supply of help for disadvantaged individuals and the third sector.

The Lifecycle of Innovation

2008-06-03T11:04:00.000+01:00

This is a great illustration by Tom Fishburne of what can happen to your fantastic idea once realities bite!

Are you innovating without knowing it? - A look at NESTA's 4 Types of Hidden Innovation

2008-06-03T10:24:00.000+01:00

In light of general pessimism about the state of innovation in the UK, NESTA have published a research report called 'Total Innovation'. 100 pages of mostly impenetrable writing with sentences the size of paragraphs. The key bit of the report however is the focus on 'hidden innovation' and NESTA defines 4 types which are worth sharing.

In our current world innovation has, as NESTA put it, become "synonymous with scientific and technological invention born of new research-driven knowledge." However innovation can be social, behavioural, organisational etc. Recognising this should help raise awareness that just because you aren't involved in tech research doesn't mean that you aren't innovating.

Unhelpfully these other types of innovation have been titled Type I, Type II, Type III and Type IV, so I'm going to use a bit of creative license and title them by their descriptions

Type I: Practical Research - eg. Engineering solutions developed through 'on-the-job' learning rather than through lab research.
Type II: New Organisational and Business Models - eg. Semi-autonomous business units in the pharmaceutical industry reflecting the entrepreneurial nature of small bio-tech firms.
Type III: Novel combination of existing technologies and processes - eg. Using existing functions and routines to deliver new services
Type IV: Micro-Innovations - eg. Small scale manufacturing problems and challenges dealt with outside R&D programmes

I found this interesting because it helped me understand that by doing something new with existing technologies, we can be recognised as innovating too. iVoluntr.org will fall into the Type III category. I'll explain why in a follow-on post.

Great Online Resources for Entrepreneurs

2008-05-30T18:40:00.000+01:00

Recently came across a great post listing online resources that could be very useful if you're starting something up, or frankly if you're involved in any sort of enterprise. The links are categorised as below:

Finding Funding
Hiring Freelancers
Social Networking
Financial Management and Accounting
Time Management and Project Management
Communications / VoIP
Data Backup
Invoicing
Contact Manager
Online Reputation Management Tools
Accepting Payment
Shopping Carts
CPC Revenue
CPM Revenue

Here's the link - http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/2008/03/10/resources-for-online-entrepreneurs/

Elevator pitch for iVolntr

2008-05-30T08:20:00.001+01:00

Still a bit of a struggle to get the Elevator Pitch right for USP, but I've had a go based on the guidelines from my previous post.

""The core idea is to create a collaborative virtual-volunteering website that is accessed through social networks like Facebook. The primary goal is to bolster the support system for social organisations. It essentially aims to solve the problems of commitment, localisation and physicality that act as barriers to volunteering.

There is no direct competition and there is a large market of people who want to do something socially beneficial but need it to be easier to do.

The business model is well proven around ad-serving, as this will function as a meta social network that ties in users from popular existing networks, with virtual-editing functionality that will make the site sticky for both new and existing users."

Yes, needs work I know but it's a start and it's under 150 words :) Comments and questions welcome!!

How do you prepare an Elevator Pitch?

2008-05-30T08:00:00.000+01:00

The term 'Elevator Pitch' comes from the idea of having to pitch to some bigwig in a chance meeting during the time that it takes to get to their floor. Apparently this works out at about 30 seconds or 150 words to get the key message across. Not sure how someone worked it out, but apparently VCs love the short and sweet approach so I guess it's worth looking at. I recently came across some good guidelines for how you should create and focus your elevator pitch at the searchengineland blog

What is the core idea and what problem does it solve?
Has it been done before (is there competition?) and is there a viable market for your core idea?
Why are you best suited to solve the problem and what is your business model?

I'll illustrate an example in my next post.

Limited by tick boxes

2008-05-28T20:41:00.000+01:00

I mentioned earlier that at the iGenius conference that I was approached by Cliff Prior, the CEO of UnLtd UK and offered an assessment for their Level 1 grant (uptp £5k) for social entrepreneurs. I was both touched and hugely encouraged. However at the time I had no plan for using the money so requested we put it on hold til I got back.

After thinking about it I realised that this type of award could really make a difference to help me start. My immediate costs are

Expert technical input on architecture, dev team structure, timeframe etc to help create a sensible cost model
Visual branding and marketing development costs
Set up a formal company
Run some events to get user feedback
Professional designer input... not least to help convert all my scribbles into something visual that I can use to engage larger scale funders. Too many startups skimp on stuff like this and wonder why they struggle to engage investors
General fundraising expenses for networking events, travel, materials etc - iGenius 2008 alone wiped me out
And moving forward, some office space to work out of because there's just too much going on for my bedroom and collaborating with others in coffee shops only goes so far

Last week I attended the first step in the assessment process.

Unfortunately it seems that what I need is not a valid use of the award because although I ticked all the boxes around social impact, these expenses don't directly contribute to the running of the project. Not to suggest that the staff weren't helpful or accommodating. They tried. Not their fault they have to follow guidelines. There's fraud and probably a whole host of other risks and accountability to manage.

My question is, shouldn't a foundation to support social entrepreneurs also leave scope to support the big ideas to get started? The ones that are looking to change the world rather than their local community? As more and more of us look to leverage the power of the web to create national and global solutions, isn't this scale of enterprise going to become more common? Could this now be time to consider allowing the use of the awards to help the bigger ideas develop far enough to raise more funding?

Dummies Guide to Startups: Bridging the gap between Brand and Strategy

2008-05-25T13:47:00.000+01:00

The reason I'm sharing so much on brand is because today brand is everything. You could be the most unique startup and the first to do something, but if your brand experience isn't right, you leave massive scope for someone else to come along, do the same thing as you and walk away with your market because their branding is more compelling and memorable. Here's a really interesting presentation on bridging the gap between your brand and your strategy and is a nice follow on from my previous post on brand building.

View Upload your own

In summary here's what it says about what a brand is

It's not a logo, entity or product
It's your audience's gut feeling about your organisation, product or service
In other words it's not what you say it is, but what they say it is

The presentation then highlights the 5 disciplines of brand building:

Differentiate: Focus
Collaborate: 1+1=11
Innovate: Zig when others Zag
Validate: Use focus groups plus cheap, dirty, quick tests. If your audience can't verbalise your concept then you've failed to communicate it.
Cultivate: Develop and influence the character and not just look and feel of the brand

Dummies Guide to Startups: 5 Steps of Brand Building

2008-05-25T13:42:00.000+01:00

There are 5 key steps to understanding and building your brand

Situational Report: A situational analysis is designed to take a snapshot of where things stand at the time you're developing your brand. An easy way to outline and create this is through what's called a "4C Analysis" - Company, Customer, Competitor and Channel.
Positioning Statement: A Positioning Statement is a one to two sentence statement that conveys what you do for whom, and why. It is useful as it requires you to identify, and then briefly articulate your distinct value to your customer in relation to your competitors.
Growth Vector Analysis: This describes product alternatives in relation to market options and is one of several means to classify strategic alternatives. Basically a growth vector matrix contains three market options and three product alternatives so that there are nine different combinations or vectors in all.
Growth Driver Analysis: Checks whether assumed growth in your market is a reality or just an illusion. It should also help identify if and how you can influence growth in your market.
Action Plan: This is your short and long term plan for developing your brand, based on outputs from the various analyses you've completed.

The vector and driver analyses are a bit more complicated than the others, so my advice is give them a thought but focus on getting the situational analysis, positioning statements and action plans right. Searching on Google will provide you with lots more detail on all these, but I'll put up some more bullets on each as we go along.

"That's why I made the internet"

2008-05-23T13:18:00.000+01:00

... is now officially my favourite quote ever. Did you know that the World Wide Web was invented by one guy. Not NASA or the CIA or the Pentagon or some other massive organisation as a lot of people believe, but by one guy while working at CERN. And an English guy at that! The guy's name is Tim Berners Lee, and if you didn't know that, it tells you everything about the Englishness of the whole enterprise. Bill Gates and co. made a million off the back of the world wide web and Tim BL basically handed it over as open source and free to the world. Even better, instead of being bitter about these gazillionaires, Tim has continued to develop web standards and push things forward for the benefit of the little man. Now that's what I call social enterprise!

A couple of days ago Greg sorted me out with a spare ticket to the NESTA Innovation Edge conference. They had speakers like Bob Geldof and Gordon Brown, but I really just went along to hear Tim Berners Lee speak. Primarily because one of Tim's latest areas of development is the semantic web. Not quite artificial intelligence but contextual intelligence. Anyway that's for another post.

Tim sadly didn't talk about the semantic web, but was interviewed instead by some 'famous' journalist guy I'd never heard of. At one point he was talking about the web and information sharing and social behaviour and he finished his sentence with ... "and that's why I made the internet". Think about it. This is singularly the greatest invention and cultural shift of our generation, and the man just shrugs like yeah you know I made it for everybody. No pretentions. How cool is that?

Imagine one day having created something that changed the world. How would you deal with it?

What is Social Enterprise?

2008-05-18T11:40:00.000+01:00

Here's a short animation on social enterprise by the Social Enterprise Coalition. Very light on content but still a simple introduction to the sort of things that social enterprise incorporates.

The message is that there's more to business like:

Sustainable futures
Communinty transport
Fairtrade
Re-cycling reusing renewing
Ethical choices
Profits for good
Community builders
Sharing profits

Shift Happens

2008-05-18T11:12:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting slideshow originally created by Karl Fisch, examining changes happening as we move forward. As entrepreneurs and social movement builders I figure it's worth keeping an eye on what's happening to global culture, but this presentation is pretty cool from any perspective.

View Upload your own

Shift happens has been updated since this original presentation - I've put up the latest versions in my later post "Did you Know (Shift Happens Update)"

Update on progress for USP

2008-05-15T18:00:00.000+01:00

Yes I know. Fallen off the face of the earth a little. Mostly been so busy with other things and hanging around waiting for various things to come through to let me get properly started on USP that I've been putting off this update post for a while. But anyway here's a heads-up on what I've been up to while I've been away.

After coming back from the i-Genius summit, I moved on from Conchango and decided to take a break in Mumbai for a few weeks while I figured out what to do next. I'm now working as a management consultant for a consultancy called Charteris in Barbican. My main focus area is multi-channel engagement and customer centricity, which is relevant because it has plenty of cross-over learning in both directions with USP.

In terms of where we're at with the project itself, I've got a funding meeting next week. A meeting with a tech friend of mine from Google in June. Met an ex-colleague who's into Facebook apps so planning to attend a Facebook Developer Garage with him some point soon. Looking into tapping into Universities for student developers too. Been scribbling through some user interaction stuff around how it could work too... Greg, Martin watch this space - will be in touch soon. Am also working on sorting the brand out - so Elissa if you're reading this I haven't forgotten!!

In parallel been building links with other social enterprises and organisations. Planning to get more involved with i-Genius' development. Did some work with UnLtd India while I was out there, and will probably start doing some work with UnLtd here. Recently joined BANG Edutainment as a trustee (they work with social radio and inner city kids) - Dave I'll be filling you in on this soon. Finally also been involved with The Disruptors and disruptive social innovation, so watch out for the blog soon.

So as you can see... lots been happening!

Disruptive Innovation - Some pointers

2008-04-18T11:07:00.000+01:00

I've recently begun to get more involved in the area of disruptive social innovation, to a large extent because that's exactly what the Urban Survival Project is all about. Anyway, innovation being the buzzword of the moment, is now being used in so many contexts that it's going the way of most jargon; i.e. no one's entirely sure exactly what it's supposed to mean. "Disruptive Innovation" as a term only complicates the matter and makes even less sense. So here's a few notes to help demystify Disruptive Innovation, thanks to Rhea who got me talking about it the other night.

To start with, here's an excerpt from a post I'd written a short while ago around disruptive social innovation. "Disruptive innovation is about creating something that fundamentally shifts the way things are done. Using analogies from Systems Thinking, the whole world is a complex web of interactions that localise around tightly linked processes that are all loosely linked to other localised processes. Disrupting the norm in one small area then, can have a follow on effect to the way the whole world works."

The guy who's written the most around Disruptive Innovation is Clayton Christensen. Here's a snapshot of his model.

You can also preview some of his books on Google Books. I think the latest one is called Seeing What's Next

A more detailed overview can be found on the 12manage website: http://www.12manage.com/methods_christensen_disruptive_innovation.html
One of the more interesting books on innovation is the Medici Effect, which you can download for free off the web.
I like the Systems Thinking approach, but here's an article around some diagnostic tools for innovation you might want to look at: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4300.html
A good blog around innovation is in the BusinessWeek Online -- NussbaumOnDesign

Other concepts worth looking at in relation to disruptive innovation are Design Thinking and some of the principles behind User Centred Design. I'll cover these a bit more in a future post.

Happy reading :)

What's wrong with Facebook?

2008-04-11T07:15:00.000+01:00

Well, not just Facebook. Social networks in general. For most people, existing social networks have hit a wall. They were fun while they were novel, but novelty only lasts so long. Once you've got your friends and you've done the pirates vs ninjas thing so many times, the only spaces that survive are the ones that let you continue to build your networks or do something useful like share your photos.

In terms of the use curve then… we’re on the down-slope. After the first few months of overuse and excitement loading every ridiculous app available, most of us now only use Social Networks for a quick buzz… like email used to be. To me Facebook is like the next Hotmail. Remember how it used to be so much fun sending and receiving social emails. How you used to sign in just in the hope there was a message? The problem is that email became useful and then email became work.

And I think we're seeing the same thing with Facebook. Everyone is trying to shoehorn use of out existing Social Networks, but the difference is that they are struggling because most of them explicitly weren’t designed to do that.

Existing networks however, have created norms, laid the foundations and paved the way for the next generation of networks… useful networks, hyperlocal networks, gated networks… and we’re seeing these already with sites like Celsias and UnltdWorld. However these are really designed to allow people to organise online to do stuff offline, and as such are still a way off being either true social networks or truly useful social networks.

Personally I think that the harder that a true social graph recreator like Facebook works to make itself useful, the less love it's going to get from it's core audience, because after past experience we've become more protective of our social environment and more suspicious of corporate attempts to appropriate it.

I guess what I'm leading to is that I think we're ready for a truly useful social network. One that explicitly sets out to be useful from the start, and functions as the useful extension of existing social networks rather than coming in as another new competitor. And yes, you guessed it... this is the underlying driver behind what the Urban Survival Project is trying to achieve, albeit with a core focus on people helping people.

Upcoming Volunteering Conventions

2008-04-11T06:43:00.000+01:00

I've recently been invited to a couple of convention type things around volunteering, which look quite interesting so I thought I'd share them here in case any of you were interested. Unfortunately in both cases the locations and dates don't really work for me or I probably would've gone along.

National Volunteering Convention: This is about social networks, speed dating, street teams, viral marketing, social entrepreneurship… and what these have to do with volunteering. It's being held on the 23-25 April 2008 in Newcastle by the Red Foundation. For more information or to book your place here's the link www.volunteering.org.uk/convention
Idealist.org Global Volunteering Fair: Learn more about opportunities for international volunteering in Boston on Saturday, April 12th, which is err tomorrow! The workshops look interesting through. More info at www.idealist.org/globalvolunteering

The 60 second pitch - another VC favourite!

2008-04-10T09:15:00.000+01:00

At the summit I came across what seems to be another venture capitalist mantra... the "60 second pitch"! VCs seem to love these pithy reductions. The first one I kept being told about was to narrow my ideas down to a single slice of functionality. Just one slice. If you can't do this apparently VCs get antsy. The second one is reduce everything down to a one minute overview. If your idea is more complex, forget about it.

All sounds to me like major ADD. I'm sure it's a function of too many people with rambling undefined theses with no real ideas hidden underneath it all, but sometimes to simplify to this degree can be to lose the idea altogether; or worse - pitch something conceptually different simply because you had to reduce the number of words.

In the case of the Urban Survival Project, I'm not talking about simple mind-catching, one-stop solutions. It's about laying foundations and building something big. Creating the pieces of a big jigsaw that fit together beautifully; that will be enduring and make the change I want to effect. I'm not really interested in compromising this for lowest cost, single-path, financially stable solutions that are successful through repeatability.

Anyway I guess those are the rules, so while I've already determined that the single slice thing is not realistic for USP, I'm currently working on creating some kind of 60 second pitch. Watch this space, because I'll be hoping for feedback :)

UnLtd

2008-04-06T08:45:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned in my post on Reflections on the i-Genius World Summit, after I finished my pitch to the investors panel, Cliff Prior, the CEO of UnLtd came up and offered me an assessment for one of their grants. I thought this was hugely generous and was touched by the offer of support. I'm now off to India on Tuesday for a couple of weeks while on 'gardening leave' and am hoping to be able to help out with the fledgling UnLtd India while I'm out there.

So anyway, here's a quick heads up on UnLtd. Basically they provide funding and support for social startups. There different levels of grants starting with the Level 1. Check out their Level 1 Eligibility Questionnaire if you're working on anything around social change.

UnLtd have also created UnLtdWorld which is a social network for social entrepreneurs. It is a place where you can "Connect with other socially minded people, search and share resources and opportunities, find and list services and products, find answers to key questions, create and join groups and lots more". It'll be interesting to see if it takes off, but check it out anyway.

Defining Social Enterprise

2008-03-30T16:38:00.000+01:00

One of the main questions floating around the summit was one I discussed a short while back, i.e. 'What is a social entrepreneur?' In part this was because one of the three pitches didn't really seem to fit the unspoken definition. You might say the definition doesn't matter, but it does because social enterprises, and startups in particular, need both new policy and funding models to prevent their social goals being overridden by business imperatives.

Pushing profits from an enterprise into non-profit areas, or simply doing charitable work alongside running an enterprise didn't really seem to go down well as social entrepreneurship; which I personally think is a fair point. Philanthropy already exists as a way of life and having a social conscience or running ethical businesses is great, but still not the same thing.

What makes 'Social Enterprise' different to what's gone before is the new trend towards the use of corporate principles to drive enterprise robustness in what was traditionally a non-profit and charity dependent space. Like many others I feel this is a positive move as long as it doesn't compromise the primary goal of making the world a better place.

The hierarchy of importance here is clearly on the social rather than financial connotations of the term that comes from entrepreneurs being traditionally associated with the singular business of making money. The term 'enterprising' in its essence however is about finding workable solutions in challenging situations, and maybe this is the definition of the entrepreneur we ought to be focusing on.

My Definitions of Social Enterprise:

Social entrepreneurs are people who create and implement innovative and independently sustainable solutions for addressing social issues.

Social enterprises then can be defined as "Enterprises effecting positive social change, independently and sustainably."

---------------

Do you believe you are a social entrepreneur and does this definition makes sense to you? Comment and let us know!

The Wrong Trainers

2008-03-30T12:01:00.000+01:00

As part of the i-Genius summit we spent an evening watching a series of short films made by some of the guys at the conference. My favourite was this one done by Bold Creative, who work on creative media projects with young people to help tell their stories. It is run by Martin Orton and Greg Villalobos, who we'll hopefully be able to collaborate with in the future. Check out "The Wrong Trainers: Dillon's Story" above. Awesome work guys!

Reflections on the i-Genius World Summit

2008-03-26T07:14:00.000Z

It's been a week since the i-Genius World Summit for Social Entrepreneurs ran its course, and amazingly enough I've already been in touch with half the people I met there. I think that pretty much sums up how great it was to be at an event with people you actually want to get contact info from!

The summit itself was organised superbly, especially considering it was put together by just two people. Jo, Julie... take a bow! The Pearl Island Resort was beyond what you'd expect from a 5 Star place. The rooms blew our minds. Mine was basically two huge connected rooms with two balconies, a walk in closet, a massive open shower, and a study with a huge bath in it! The Resort spans a huge acreage and is an exercise in detailed design using the original tin mine as inspiration. Three swimming pools, including an adult one with a bar in it. Tennis courts. Bars. Snooker room. Long stretch of beach with a beautiful flat calm sea. And food you would not believe; from the breakfasts with everything you could dream of, to the dinners with lobster and crab and king prawns and meat, and, and, and...!

Amazingly the conference lived up to standard set by the location too. The format alternated between talks and workshops. Attendees included some really big names but I'm not going to focus on them, because actually they were not the ones that made the event at all. The inspiring ones were the unknowns that made the journey and got involved and shared themselves and their experience. From the three who set it all up - Tommy Hutchinson, the founder of i-Genius who led from the front and deserves much kudos for realising his vision, and Jo Matthews and Julie Whitaker who put it all together; to all the others that you're going to hear more about over the next couple of weeks. Off the top of my head - Adam, Ahmed, Barry, Ben H, Cliff, Dave M, Dave K, Dev, Grace, Mike, Greg, Martin, Hiikmah, Lotis, Jo, Luke, Mark, Sara, Olivier, Morten, The KaosPilots, Meriem, Ioannis, Olly, Sheetal, Parag, Ronald, Mounir, Tim... too many to list here!

The third day ended with an investors den session where 3 of us (Anna, Lucian and me) were given the opportunity to pitch to a panel of investors - Matt Williams from Making Waves, Isabel Maxwell of Robert Maxwell fame, and Sheetal Mehta who set up some VC stuff at Microsoft and now runs Innovative Social Ventures Ltd. 7 minute pitch followed by 20 minutes of questions from the panel in front of the entire summit audience! Have to admit this was all a bit stressful for me because it was the first time I was pitching my vision and it really wasn't perfectly defined with no revenue or cost models or any of the concrete stuff that VCs usually want to know. I wasn't even sure it was even happening right until I got there and hadn't had time to do much before hand. With all the fun and games during the day it meant that I ended up writing the presentation between midnight and half 3 in the morning during the summit period, along with missing most of the workshop sessions to get it all together.

Amazingly enough the pitch went really well. One of the areas I struggled with in the QA session was describing examples of how the site could be used. I completely drew a blank like sometimes happens, but afterwards so many people came up with ways of how they could see our vision being put to good use. Thanks guys. Will be in touch to explore more!

Also judging from some of the questions and suggestions offered, two of the investors didn't quite to get what I was talking about - I think due to the difficulties of relating futuristic digital visions to previous offline experience with the volunteering sector, but pretty much the whole audience did, which was absolutely fantastic. Everyone fed back ideas and thumbs up and encouragement. Cliff Prior who runs the UnLtd Foundation came up and offered me an assessment for a Level 1 grant to help us get started, which left me really touched because I hadn't even asked for money. I really wasn't ready for all the love! I walked away encouraged and inspired and more determined to make this work so watch this space because I want you to be involved too!

In between the sessions, there was laughter and pool sessions and drinking and great food. People split off and combined back again, making the whole thing feel much more like a holiday in the sun, than a conference of any sort. The final day ended with an overview of the future of i-Genius and a chance for people to share their thoughts on the event. You couldn't help but feel moved by the passion and feeling and collaboration amongst so many bright, interesting people; all steeped in the humanity of trying to find sustainable ways of making a positive difference for others less well off, locally and globally. All I can say to end is that if you can make the time, attend the next one!!

Sà-wàt-dee from Phuket!!

2008-03-11T03:18:00.000Z

After a night in Bangkok I'm now writing this from the Mangosteen resort in Phuket... or 'Mangoteen' as the locals pronounce it! The pictures on the web are a stunning exercise in deceptive scale, meaning that the swimming pool isn't quite the lagoon it seems, but apart from that it is about as nice as expected. Very peaceful, great food and not enough villas for it to feel crowded, even in high season. I am of course the only single guy probably ever to have visited, apart from honeymooners and baby boomers, but they've got a cheap deal and it's well away from the tourist stuff. Perfect for winding down. Phuket itself is a lot bigger than expected and the journey from the airport at the north tip to Rawaii right down south took about an hour by taxi. You can do this for 450baht if you're prepared to wait an hour for a meter cab, but I eventually gave up and for 200baht more got a ride down in a private cab.

Pic 1. The Mangosteen Resort - Marketing Shot

Pic 2 - The Reality :)

Plan for the first half of this week is to chill out and do nothing but eat, swim, catch sun and sort things out for i-genius. So far I've done the first three... now on to something constructive!

USP & iVolntr: Problem Statement

2008-03-05T17:06:00.000Z

After much research and rework to define and simplify what I'm trying to achieve with the Urban Survival Project, the answer seems to come down to a two step process. To achieve our goal of improving opportunities for inner city kids, I think there needs to be a social and technical infrastructure in place.

First, create a flexible available pool of literate urban volunteers via a volunteering platform (iVolntr.org). Second, enable them to connect with and help young people and any one else who needs it, by making it easy to help people immediately and online. In light of that, here's a first draft of some questions and answers I've put together to help outline what I'm thinking. I'd love some feedback :)

What is the aim of the Urban Survival Project?

Revolutionise urban volunteering!

How will we achieve this?

By approaching it from a social-networking and cyber-volunteering perspective - i.e. iVolntr.org.

What is the opportunity?

There is an increasing sense of social responsibility amongst young professionals, particularly in the corporate space, combined with a need for kudos on a personal level and offset by limited available time. There is thus a keenness for volunteering and particularly helping disadvantaged young people that is not being realized because there are too many barriers to volunteering. This is especially so for a commitment-phobic web-savvy professional generation that takes ease of use, interactive engagement, fun and immediacy for granted.

What do we need to do?

We need to make volunteering easier.

We need to make volunteering immediate and temporary / non-committal.

We need to make some aspects of volunteering possible online and through the use of digital media, online document editors and wiki software. In other words, we need to enable true cyber-volunteering.

Why do we need another volunteering site?

There isn’t one out there specifically dedicated to engaging volunteers and catering for their needs. The volunteering sites out there focus primarily on organizations looking for time or donations, or alternatively provide for people and groups developing ideas or setting up social projects.

Why set this up as a social network?

As I see it, the largest untapped volunteering resource is the commitment-phobic, web- savvy, young professional group that has become accustomed to interpersonal interaction norms set by Facebook. Social networks are proven to be a highly successful way to connect and engage people in the 15 to 35 demographic. There is also a significant amount of social kudos for individuals and groups to be gained by showcasing their good deeds and developing their social ideas in a space where their friends and colleagues have visibility. The network would also contain organizations and projects as individual entities that members can interact with as they do with each other, as well as providing volunteering opportunities as Facebook style updates to members; thus making it easier to volunteer both in terms of usability and also in terms of findability. The combination of the two will create the ease and immediacy that most of us are looking for.

Why do we need another social network?

There isn’t one out there that is designed to achieve anything useful. There are plenty of Web 2.0 sites trying to do this, but they don't recreate our social graph and aren't really social networks. Attempts to achieve this through existing social networks have also not proved successful. Neither Facebook nor MySpace for example, are designed for useful collaboration between individuals, and are primarily fun sites rather than useful platforms. Creating a useful social network creates the opportunity to reuse and scale for a number of other collaborative needs.

Why do we need another website for young people?

There aren’t very many sites specifically for young people, and there isn’t one that covers the breadth of issues they face, at a literacy level that makes sense particularly to young people in the NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) category.

Why would non-profits and other volunteering websites support this?

This network would drive traffic to their sites by feeding their volunteering opportunities into the pool of users based on localization information and user preference, and thus increase their possibilities of engaging with and leveraging an audience that they currently struggle to pull in. Being able to create their own organization profiles that could be synchronized with their data feeds will also help create a referral channel at no cost. We could enable donations directly through member profiles like Facebook causes. Finally, and crucially, this project would help them build dedicated and long reaching networks of people that support their cause.

Finally, we're good to go!

2008-03-03T09:48:00.000Z

Only a week to go before I head out for Thailand. Frantic rush to get a new engagement off the ground at work while also finishing off research that validates what we're trying to do. In terms of priority, been putting off everything else that gets in the way; blogging included.

Anyway exciting update. Have finished the bulk of the research I wanted to do, and the outcome looks good for what we're trying to achieve. While there are loads of volunteering sites out there, most of them fall into what we could call 'Web 1.0' category i.e. static, corporate and text based, where the user has to search for what they want to do, and then apply.

Amidst these, there's a small few that have moved into 'Web 2.0' category in terms of design and interaction, with some nice innovative ideas for connecting people with ideas and causes and non-profits. Some of them have member profiles too, but none of them allow any social graph recreation and they are all still about trying to improve the way organisations find help, funding or volunteers.

The Urban Survival Project and iVoluntr.org are about revolutionising the way volunteering works by coming at it from a true social networking perspective, and then differentiating again by making social networks useful.

Anyway, watch this space for some nice visuals that explain what I mean as soon as I've got time to create them in power point :)

Back from a blogging hiatus

2008-02-27T07:54:00.000Z

First off I must apologise for disappearing over the past week or so. What with starting a new role being spread very thin across a bunch of responsibilities, and watching my cousin lose a struggle with meningitis, I've been very distracted. Keep meaning to write something but external events have got in the way.

All under control now, so I'm back and here we go again :) Only a week and a half to go before Thailand. I've still got to figure out whether I need shots. My passport needs updating and I haven't yet planned what I'm doing in the two weeks around the summit. Brilliant organisation eh?? Help!

Anyway to all of you, I hope all's well wherever you are and life is treating you gently.

To my cousin Arif, thanks for being there when I needed you. It was an honour knowing you and you won't ever be forgotten. Rest in peace.

Arif Tayabali 1946 - 2008

The Big Green Challenge

2008-02-24T09:08:00.000Z

Bit of a late heads up, but in case you're interested, the Big Green Challenge is a £1 million prize fund designed to encourage and reward people working together to develop and implement new approaches that will lead towards a 60% reduction of CO2 emissions in their community – which can be local, regional or more widely dispersed.

Anyway, a quick note to let you know that the deadline for the Big Green Challenge from NESTA has been extended to 11.59pm on Monday 3 March. That gives everyone an extra three days of thinking time!

You can find out everything you need to know about the Big Green Challenge and start your application at http://www.biggreenchallenge.org.uk/

More info from Joanna Tidball at http://www.joannatidball.com/

New Category - Social Collaboration Sites!

2008-02-22T09:49:00.002Z

The Urban Survival Project or iVoluntr.org as I see it won't just be a social network, but a space for social collaboration too. Cyber volunteering in sense. An ability to do something useful online with or for other people.

In light of that I've been looking for websites that have been specifically created to allow people to set up or do socially useful things. Again the idea being to see if they really do what we want to do, and how we're going to learn from them or differentiate.

Anyway, here's my list so far. Thanks to Jamie Thomas from the Red Foundation for highlighting some of the sites below

It's very hard to search for sites like these because there's no easy way to categorise or create search terms for them. So, the million dollar question... Do you know of any other useful social websites to help build this list?

Factors in comparing volunteering websites

2008-02-15T08:35:00.001Z

In case you're wondering why it's taking so long for me to get this volunteering research sorted, here's a quick look at the comparison factors I'm looking at. I've essentially imagined a hypothetical generic social networking site for volunteers and then used the feature set it might contain to create a comparison grid. At the end of it we should be able to see how close existing services come to what we're thinking of. If I can find even one organisation or site that is a high match I'll accept that maybe there isn't really any gap to fill.

Apart from the generic user experience, complexity and content review I'm looking at 4 specific areas for comparison. These are social networking, cyber-volunteering (ability to do useful things online), impact and technology.

Social Networking:

Social graph recreation
Invite friends using email contacts or export from social networks
Facebook application / synchronisation
Synchronisation with Other Social Networks
Synchronisation with twitter, tumblr etc

Aggregate content from other external profiles - plaxo pulse
Personal profiles
Skills profiles
Auto-Create profile from social networks
Organisation profiles / pages
Post messages on profile

Status updates
Network feeds
Network friend updates feed / stream
Opportunity updates feed / stream
Customise/filter volunteering opportunities
Track & Manage volunteering opportunities

Interpersonal communication - email within site, IM within site, message boards
Post photos, notes, video, presentations, papers, research
User blogs
Share with friends
Wiki based information sharing

Usefulness:

Cyber Volunteering capability
Question & Answer capability
Collaboration capability
Edit documents/content directly through site
User credit / reward system
Create and manage multi-user project pages
Raise funds for causes

Impact:

Memorability
User-centric design
Organisational Blog
Tone of copy

Technology

Faceted and saved search
Notifications by email and RSS
Rich Media - Streaming, Videocast, Audiocast
Customise/filter volunteering opportunities
Open APIs
Developer applications
Compatibility with open standards
Mobile compatibility

Can you think of anything else a social networking site for volunteers should offer users? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Urban Survival Project on Web TV!

2008-02-15T07:24:00.000Z

Breaking news! Nope not about Valentine's day, although hope yours went well wherever you are; and yes mine was way nicer than expected :)

Anyway, Smarta have just released a short videocast on their website about the Ogunte Women's Social Leadership Awards, which I went along to last week. What I also should've mentioned in my previous post on it is that I got interviewed on camera for the first time ever while I was there, and thanks to Meriem who did all the questions prep, organising interviewees, and editing etc, I managed to squeeze in a mention about the Urban Survival Project. Ok, have to admit I probably sound embarrassing and very rushed, but well it's all a bit new! Check it out below; about 4 minutes in...

Factors in comparing volunteering websites

2008-02-15T00:35:00.000Z

Social Networking:

Social graph recreation
Invite friends using email contacts or export from social networks
Facebook application / synchronisation
Synchronisation with Other Social Networks
Synchronisation with twitter, tumblr etc

Aggregate content from other external profiles - plaxo pulse
Personal profiles
Skills profiles
Auto-Create profile from social networks
Organisation profiles / pages
Post messages on profile

Status updates
Network feeds
Network friend updates feed / stream
Opportunity updates feed / stream
Customise/filter volunteering opportunities
Track & Manage volunteering opportunities

Interpersonal communication - email within site, IM within site, message boards
Post photos, notes, video, presentations, papers, research
User blogs
Share with friends
Wiki based information sharing

Usefulness:

Cyber Volunteering capability
Question & Answer capability
Collaboration capability
Edit documents/content directly through site
User credit / reward system
Create and manage multi-user project pages
Raise funds for causes

Impact:

Memorability
User-centric design
Organisational Blog
Tone of copy

Technology

Faceted and saved search
Notifications by email and RSS
Rich Media - Streaming, Videocast, Audiocast
Customise/filter volunteering opportunities
Open APIs
Developer applications
Compatibility with open standards
Mobile compatibility

Can you think of anything else a social networking site for volunteers should offer users? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

5 brilliant Google applications you really should be using

2008-02-11T23:46:00.000Z

I don't know about you, but I'm a big Google fan. In case you hadn't noticed that Google isn't just a search engine any more, here's a heads-up on some of their other applications you really should know about for 5 simple reasons:

They are free
They are extremely useful
They are all very easy to use
They are accessible from anywhere over the internet
You just need one log-in to access them all

So here are my 5 top Google recommendations

Googlemail - Goodbye hotmail. Get a gmail account and all the other google applications are immediately available to you.
iGoogle - See everything you do on the web on the same page, including all your google applications, hotmail and facebook. Just click on 'add stuff' and search for the widget.
Google Notebook - Does what it says on the tin. Really easy to use and autosaves anything you type on the fly. Great for managing your thoughts, notes, browsing clips, blog posts etc.
Google Reader - This is the best RSS reader out there. Find any content you want to subscribe to and it allows you to categorise it, tag it, share it and reuse it.
Blogger - If you're thinking of blogging, then Blogger is definitely worth considering simply because of the variety of things you can do with it without any technical knowledge.

If you blog, other applications worth knowing about are Google Adwords, Google Adsense, Google Analytics, and Feedburner.

What's your favourite Google application? Is there another Google App you think should be in my top 5?

What is a Social Entrepreneur?

2008-02-11T10:24:00.000Z

I think even social entrepreneurs aren't entirely sure whether they're community saviours or business entrepreneurs but here are the standard definitions

Ashoka: Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems.
Skoll Foundation: The social entrepreneur aims for value in the form of transformational change that will benefit disadvantaged communities and ultimately society at large.
Wikipedia: A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change.

Personally I think these are all just exercises in the use of big and fancy words.

I see the social entrepreneur in a more simplistic light. I see it as anyone struggling with the conflict between making a social difference (connotation ethical) and making money from it (connotation unethical). If the money thing isn't a factor then you're essentially just social, and if the social aspect doesn't drive you then you're probably just an entrepeneur.

It's a weird dichotomy that I have to admit to facing myself. I'm not really interested in anything unless it has a positive human impact and the whole business of making and managing money gives me the willies, but at the same time I really don't think I could go back to being paid an average wage again. I wonder if I'll ever resolve this properly or if I'm destined to keep walking this slightly uncomfortable tightrope?

Are you a social entrepreneur? Tell us what you think!

Download the 'Medici Effect' for Free!

2008-02-11T09:36:00.000Z

The 'Medici Effect' is a book about innovation. The basic premise is that innovation occurs at the intersection of different disciplines, but the book is interesting, useful and has a broad appeal - well if the fact that it has been translated into 17 languages means anything!

Anyway interestingly the author has decided to go 'DRM free' on the book, or to drop the analogy, he's made it available for free download on his website as an experiment to engage audiences and see how it affects sales. What I particularly like is that it doesn't come with any catch. You don't have to fill in any forms or hand over your email address for future marketing. You just have to spot the slightly indistinct free download banner and there you have it. A book you really should buy anyway, now free.

3 Social Enterprises to watch out for

2008-02-08T01:03:00.000Z

Funnily enough in most conversations at events like last night's Ogunte Women's Leadership Awards, I notice there's stuff I know that could help the people I'm talking to. Conversely I notice that there's stuff I don't know that I suspect they could help me with, but I'm never quite sure how to approach that trade-off. Mostly I just end up offering to help unconditionally. Maybe I'll be lucky and learn something along the way!

Here are my three favourite enterprises from the event in no particular order - both in terms of person and idea, and consequently the ones I'd most like to help if they have use for me and if I can find the time.

Impetus Trust

The Impetus Trust is about 'Venture Philanthropy' and combines funding and expertise to improve the impact that charities are able to make.

BANG Edutainment

BANG is a social enterprise that specialises in training and youth development within the context of music and media, and community radio.

MyBnk

MyBnk is a social enterprise whose aim is to develop young people's financial and enterprise skills by giving them a hands-on experience of organising, running and using a real bank with real money. In terms of innovation, I'd say this is one is furthest out there.

Thoroughly recommend checking them all out. On a final note, just a quick plug for Smarta and Newspepper who covered the event from a news perspective.

Networking at the Ogunte Women's Social Leadership Awards

2008-02-07T23:54:00.000Z

Oooo doesn't the title make me sound important?! Sadly my 'networking' really consisted of the usual random chats with whoever was nearest, although they were all illuminating in their own way. Meriem pointed the Ogunte Women's Social Leadership Awards event a while back and it seemed interesting so I signed up, went along, and turned out to be virtually the only non-female there - well certainly the only one not connected to a finalist in some way!

Anyway, I'm still not entirely sure what Ogunte does, but it was a nice event and great to see people getting recognition for the difference they make to other people's lives. Ogunte apparently is a social innovation and leadership development organisation focused on women. Unfortunately since 'innovation' is turning into a buzzword that is used in so many woolly contexts, you're no longer quite sure whether to take it seriously or not. Nevertheless Ogunte is about coaching and leadership, which can often be hugely valuable in effecting positive change. The winners consequently won support and mentoring.

3 things I learnt:

Successful leaders are those who have a passionate love affair with the endeavour they're leading
That 'networking' really isn't so bad when the people in question are fundamentally decent sorts - and social entrepreneurs almost by definition, are just that
You really can't get away from exchanging business cards, so best keep a few on you!

Dummies Guide to Startups: 5 Key Components of Branding

2008-02-07T08:28:00.000Z

There are basically 5 key areas you need to know about and count for when creating your brand

Brand building and re-evaluation: The title is self-explanatory and the process essentially consists of a Situational Report, Positioning Statement, Growth Analysis and an Action Plan
Brand tracking: This is about going through a process to understand out what key customers think of your brand
Designing Value: What you need to know to ensure that your brand increases the value of your enterprise
Messaging: What do you want to say, with what, and to whom
E-Marketing: Marketing to your customers/subscribers/members online

We'll take these different aspects apart in more detail as we progress, starting with brand building next week. Meantime if you urgently need more information on this just drop me a line.

Insights into Facebook - FaberNovel Study

2008-02-07T08:26:00.000Z

Meriem recently forwarded the following slideshow on to me. It is a deep insight study by faberNovel Consulting into the phenomenon that is Facebook. Lots of colour and pretty engaging. If you're interesting in social networking or are working with Facebook at all, this is definitely worth a scan. It was released in September, which probably already makes it mildly out of date given the speed of change online, but nevertheless. Worth a look.

View Upload your own

On the same note, check out the Slideshare website for more interesting presentations on all sorts of things. You can also download the actual pdf file from the site using this SlideShare Link

Big Thumbs Up for Disruptive Social Innovators

2008-02-06T10:42:00.000Z

Ever heard the saying "A butterfly flaps it's wings in Brazil and there's a tsunami off the coast of Japan."?

Last night's event at The Hub in Islington was great. Disruptive innovation is about creating something that fundamentally shifts the way things are done. Using analogies from Systems Thinking, the whole world is a complex web of interactions that localise around tightly linked processes that are all loosely linked to other tightly linked to other localised processes. Disrupting the norm in one small area then, can have a follow on effect to the way the whole world works. This interesting aspect of Chaos Theory is also known as the Butterfly Effect.

It made me think about the social norms that I am looking to disrupt. By making it easy to volunteer and coming at it from a social networking perspective, essentially I'm looking to disrupt the social apathy of the Facebook generation. No big task then!!

Anyway here's 2 interesting things I learnt for Social Entrepreneurs

That it helps to map the entire localised system that your particular idea fits into. This will help you understand the causality of the social changes you are looking to effect
That banks are more forgiving than other funders when it comes to risky ideas, as long as you can be clear around how you can make it work

The great thing about this event was that the founders shared part of their toolkit. I found this very useful. Once you've heard someone talk about their enterprise a couple of times, you've really heard most of it, because it's all really the same thing after a while. You pick up a couple of interesting things, but given our busy lives, maybe not enough to justify the time spent. So this sharing of directly useful ways of doing things really made the evening worthwhile. That and I met some cool and interesting people that I hope to catch up with again.

This event will run every first Tuesday of the month. Definitely worth checking out if you're looking at creating a social enterprise.

Disruptive Social Innovators

2008-02-05T08:10:00.000Z

I mentioned a little while ago that I attended a social meet set up by the School of Everything, and while I was there I met Heleana who invited me to an event being launched tonight. It's called Discruptive Social Innovators, is at The Hub in Islington and starts at 6pm and ends at 8pm. The idea seems to be to bring together disruptive innovators, investors, and thinkers committed to revolutionary social innovation. Hey, like Trump says... Think Big!!

If it takes your fancy, join the Facebook group for more info at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=7105373794. Costs are just £5... for drinks apparently. Can't argue with that :)