SEEM (Supporting Social Business) will be in London for the UK’s biggest social investment conference at the end of November 2014 and as partners to this event we’ve secured a special discount rate for our members and readers of ‘MiningTheSEEM’
With less than four weeks to go to the Good Deal Conference taking place on the 24th and 25th of November, we’re looking forward to seeing what’s new in the world of Social Finance. Our partners Matter&Co are once again organising the UK’s biggest gathering of social entrepreneurs, civil society leaders, corporates and social investors.
Keynote speakers include Jacqueline Novogratz, Vince Cable, Safia Minney and Liam Black. For more information on programme and venue details please visit www.good-dealsuk.com.
As a partner to the event we are delighted to offer all of our members a 25% discount ticket to the conference using the promo code SEEM14.
We’re reliably informed that over half the tickets have already been sold, so if you can’t wait give a member of the Good Deals team a call 020 8533 8892.
The Local Enterprise Partnerships in the East Midlands and South East Midlands are conducting a survey of businesses in our area to find out whether businesses are able to get access to finance to support their growth.
This could of course include social finance for all socially impacting businesses.
They would like to know about business’ experiences if they have sought funding recently or if they plan to seek funding for future investment projects. They would also like to know if they have any barriers to growth.
By completing the survey below, businesses will help the Local Enterprise Partnerships in the East Midlands and South East Midlands to decide how to use their funds to help small and medium-sized enterprises.
Nottingham based Food Freedom, a new social business created by Nicky Gray and supported by Roger Moors of SEEM managed to secure national coverage this week on BBC Radio 4.
Developed as a consultancy and training company to advise and inform food businesses about allergies, Nicky spoke about the impending legislation that all restaurants, indeed all food outlets will be subject to come mid December this year. ‘You and Yours’, one of the stations prime time programmes featured Nicky and a number of restauranteurs talking about the need to comply with the new laws or face prosecution.
Nicky who has a wealth of knowledge in this arena decided to establish her business last year to both safeguard people who suffer with food allergies and intolerances but also to assist food outlets, many of whom are unaware of the new law and their obligations. Food Freedom was one of a number of businesses supported by SEEM under the Cabinet Office Social Incubator North programme. Roger said…
‘I’m delighted that Nicky has managed to get this level of publicity and awareness on national radio. The impact of her work is enormous and I’m really pleased that the support and finance we provided has enabled her to grow and develop her business so successfully in such a short period of time’.
We were pleased to cross the City and to be invited to the latest CleanTech Centre lunch event, on Thursday 21st October, 2014. A great opportunity to network and hear key speakers in an informal, professional setting.
Our Roger Moors was delivering the keynote presentation to the assembled guests and he was welcomed to the event by Bob Pynegar of Inntropy Limited, who owns the Centre.
Inntropy was set up in 2011 by Bob Pynegar and Nick Gostick. They saw that a building in West Nottingham had the potential to be an incubator for entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs specialising in clean technologies. This building is now known as The Nottingham Clean Tech Centre (NCTC).
Bob wrapped his introduction to delegates with an illustration of how the CleanTech Centre offers its resident businesses a professional, supportive atmosphere to work in, with the advantage of having spaces available to meet client s and suppliers, as well as being able to take advantage of the Inntropy ‘entrepreneurship offer’ – mentoring, guidance , support and training.
Completing his delivery to the audience with a stress upon the growing importance of the Social Business sector, whether as a source of development funding, the melding of company philosophies with consumer expectations or the growth of the ‘triple bottom line’ business. ‘Social outcome will be even more important for the SME sector in the future...’ said Bob.
Roger Moors of SEEM then took centre stage. Roger began by offering the assembled business audience a range of definitions about the context of charities in business, social enterprises, and now with the emergence of the social finance sector, the ever growing importance of companies with distinct and clear social aims, yet who can still deliver external dividends as part of their enterprise processes.
Roger used a few simple diagrams to make his point. The ‘blended social business’, with solid social aims, clear business strategies and distinct profits would look something like this, he argued…
Achieving the blended balance…
Roger emphasised the point that there were 90,000 Social Enterprises in the UK, with only some 10% actually delivering a sustainable business model that was not reliant on loans or charitable grants.
An opportunity for the social business, with strong profits, to deliver social outcome in a sustainable way.
This was not seen as a failure of the sector, but an opportunity for mainstream businesses to make bolder declarations of their social concern and delivery and use this effect to capitalise expansion, new products an services, the whole while supporting their communities of interest.
Roger then launched to the audience the new £1 million Nottingham Social Impact fund, which is designed to fit the investment profile outlined in the narrative above.
With loans available from£5,000 to £150,000, Roger saw the initial tranches of support in the £50,000 sector or below, with an ideal period of three years for repayment. The money will be put out at 6.5% interest.
Roger, in conclusion, stressed the importance of thePublic Sector Social Value Actof January 2013. Committing all Local Authorities to take social impact into account when making strategic procurement decisions with their public money.
Roger receive applause from the audience and the thanks of Bob Pinegar for his clarity and conciseness.
I f you are interested as a start-up in the office provision and business support that the CleanTech Centre can offer, then please use the contact details below.
The EU made two major announcements this week, about programmes across Europe. Designed to sustain SME’s, who lack the collateral to enjoy secured lending. The announcements represent a new cohort of funds to broaden the business base of the small business sector.
The European Commission and the European Investment Fund (EIF) will deliver a new 100 million Euro fund. The Fund will be to bring new ideas to market. The Fast Track to Innovation (FTI) Fund will be available in 2015 and 2016.
Consortia of three to five members will be free to bid for the funds at any time. ‘EU officials expect grants to be between €1m and €2m’.
The executive also signed an agreement with the European Investment Fund. The Commission said ‘…this would open up €25 billion of potential finance for SMEs over the next seven years’.
The EIF provides risk finance to SME’s across Europe. It will give €1.3billion for SME financing, under the EU Competitiveness of Enterprises Programme.
The EIF will give that money to financial intermediaries such as banks or funds, who will in turn make it available to SMEs.
The EIF will appoint the intermediaries. There will be a call for expressions of interest and a due diligence process.
The Commission estimates that up to 330,000 SMEs will receive loans backed by the guarantees. Total lending will hit €21 billion. An average guaranteed loan will be €65,000 per firm.
The Pop-up Shop has been getting a lot of press recently.
Did it ever go away? Is a revision to enterprise philosophy under way? Asset management, both in the public and private sector is in flux. With revisionist thinking on collaboration and about public space utility and development?
We think there is this paradigm shift, which can energise the social finance market. It will temper developments in the public space. This affects political mission, private capital movements and community outcome.
We offer as evidence the three reports/ideas formulated by a diversity of organisations below. As crisp in their thinking as they are diverse. They are telling onlookers to change, at an opportune moment for our sector.
The Pop-Up Shop:
Hogarth imagines the pop-up shop?
Reading mainstream articles about this newly energised movement, we enjoyed revisiting the web site of www.appearhere.co.uk . We see it as a metaphor for a new retailing in the UK.
We are a world away from the ’empty space’ temporary retail proposition of old.
Gone are bare spaces, filled with less than high quality merchandise on a seasonal pressure sale basis. In comes a range of artisan producers, innovatory publishers and craft manufacturers. All intent on capitalising on short term, premium retail spaces. It should stir the imagination?
The Appear Here concept achieves a number of aims for the burgeoning retailer. Firstly, you can use the site to scope spaces across the UK, and will be able to view more in the future. You can also see, upfront, the cost of occupying the space over your chosen period.
If you are a community enterprise just at the planning stage this is important. Not being retail property specialists, but with a passion for your community manufactury, then knowing what the costs are likely to be, with support of the Appear Here team, could be a deal clincher for your project.
We haven’t fully explored the booking conditions from the site yet, and cannot see other start-up costs like majority deposits that may be needed, but overall the presentation makes a telling offer for the 21st Century. Check out Appear Here today.
We also liked and applaud The Plunkett Fondation’s attempts to vivify the community shop. They have recently published a new report Community Shops 2014 – A Better Form of Business.
Better shops, better communities…
The Foundation’s main focus is on rural development. As with the initiative above, retailing and the opportunities it offers, are good in inner-city areas too.
These include the principles of stock management, employment, volunteering, managing cash-flow and more.
The mixture of skills and commitment adds human capital, not only to the shop, but also the community if done right.
What can be gleaned for the Plunkett report is how a local shop can be a driver for community cohesion, a broad, beneficial identity and, because it is community owned, a wider sense of community ownership of place is also generated. Who cannot be proud of the area the shop they own exists within?
Socially Productive Places:
Yesterday The Royal Society for the Arts (RSA), in collaboration with British Land, published a new report about an emergent model to add value to public spaces by utilising a new admixture of co-operation and skills shared amongst local authority planners, developers, community groups and politicians.
New ideas in regeneration…
We were excited by the report, which contains recommendations for how private developers and public sector players can innovate and collaborate in new ways to get the maximum value from public spaces, whilst at the same time adding value to built assets.
At the heart of the report is a lack of fear about profitability. But with a sense of urgency and innovation about how the public domain renovates and rebuilds from now on.
The report tells us what should not done. As well as illustrating the new skills needed by key players in the development sector. It is a cogent and telling argument.
It’s a timely report and you can read a short review, and find links to the conference that inspired the research, on conversationsEAST, the East of England Fellowship journal supporting the work of the RSA.
Mass Collaboration:
The Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), is a centre-left think tank. It recently published a paper called Mass Collaboration.
Within the context of this brief article, the IPPR piece binds together some of the ideas expressed above. Taking a meta-narrative view of policy and practice.
To see how to achieve change in the public arena. Moving to mass engagement within the socio-political structures that frame our society.
Working together in a new way…
The paper, authored by Matthew Pike, a serial social entrepreneur. He has connections to Unltd, Big Society Capital and the Social Investment Business.
Matthew is the founder of www.resultsmark.org, a free reporting system for public services. Always worth checking out!
The Pike thesis for change, that will will channel mass collaboration, is based upon five key principles. We give them below.
“Invest in shared institutions that build social capital and engender supportive working relationships across sectors and hierarchies, such as teams of supporters around individuals, community anchor organisations, children’s centres, extended schools and more. Above all, invest in new ‘backbone organisations’ that can mobilise and organise whole-system change across localities.
Understand what help people need in order to help themselves and discover the existing strengths within people and communities, through an immersive programme of listening and learning.
Harness the new power of ‘big social data’ to turn public funding into a real-time process of action learning, understanding as much as possible about activities, outcomes and costs in an area to help design new systems that give people the help they need in a much smarter way.
Provide funding, investment and support to test, grow and scale up what works better in a local context and cut what isn’t needed or is less effective.
Work progressively to use new insight and evidence to help redesign the wider systems, rules and regulations that hamper local achievement”.
The five could apply to the social finance sector, and the players operating in it. Innovation, change, consultation, system and process review, engagement with communities of interest. All are all defining characteristics of the Social Finance sector.
The thematic glue to them, for us in the sector, is money. It’s accrual, its management and its dispensation. The Pikeian motif can layer upon the RSA paper, as well as across the innovatory approach of The Plunkett Foundation. In essence, we should talk to each other and ‘do things different’.
A heady time to be in the vanguard of a new movement?
Ethical business with a social dimension…
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To the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham this morning, 17th July 2014, for a massive double espresso shot of Social Finance. Two hours of concise advice, proven experience and excitement for a sector under change.
Hosted by our own Roger Moors of SEEM, the assembled audience convened for coffee and muffins at 7.45am, more about the venue at the bottom of this article, all looking forward to a series of key speakers on expanding, developing and capitalising on our growing sector, courtesy of Big Society Capital.
Councillor Nick McDonald – Nottingham City Council:
Cllr. McDonald was delighted to announce to the gathered social finance bankers and intermediaries that the City now had a newNottingham Social Impact Fund. This new source of funding for the enterprising small business comprises a pot of £1 million pounds, which, argued Cllr. McDonald, coupled to a revised City Procurement Policy, would heavily lean the city towards a paradigm shift in its industrial base, as well as building on existing entrepreneurial energies in the city. A new fund is always welcome for the business sector, particularly at very good rates.
Geetha Rabindrakumar – Social Sector Lead, Big Society Capital:
New research, new ideas…
Geetha began by offering the audience a classic definition of social investment, and underscored research that indicates, whilst societal problems will magnify and public sector funding will continue to diminish, it is the social sector, with its thirst for new forms of finance that will drive the sector forward in the next few years.
Underscoring the role of Big Society Capital as a finance wholesaler, Geetha stressed the importance of intermediaries in process, and that BSC will be looking to exhaust its coffers on innovative projects, which give investors their money back, provide a return on that investment and achieve social impact and delivery.
A clear presentation of roles and responsibilities in the sector, now and in the future.
Sam delivered a pacy and detailed analysis of the work of The Key Fund for his audience. Outlining the Fund’s history, but also encouraging intermediaries with the news of the quality of relationships the Fund enjoys, it’s flexibility and pace in moving from application to decision. A refreshing approach in a finance oriented sector, we believe.
The Fund also illustrated how innovative and enterprising communities and individuals can be. Sam offered the audience examples of Fund development clients as diverse as a Therapeutic Comedy Training Academy, a Virtual Human Body for drug testing, community wind farms and and solar photo-voltaic energy installations on community buildings.
The Key Fund deserves it’s key player status as a driver of fiscal energy for projects across the North of England. Discover The Key Fund on–line here.
Peter Ware – Partner at Browne Jacobson LLP:
Peter gave the assembled audience a very informative over-view of Public Sector Mutual’s development. Organisations that move into the social business sector, ofen with existing customer bases and public sector ethics and philosophy.
Reminding us that the sector could see demand for social finance rise to £500 million by 2015, Peter, nonetheless, did not shy away from some of the issues to be wrangled with in creating Mutuals in a local authority setting.
Matt explained the heavyweight nature of The Big Lottery, and how it was looking to develop agile, relevant and timely funding solutions in the future, particularly to benefit the social finance sector.
Working across three strategic layers the Fund is looking at how demand, intermediaries and the supply side of funding can all be tempered and flexed to respond to the needs of risk capital with a social mission at its centre.
Richard gave us a ‘rally cry’ speech, moving across his own initiation into social business, after being a banker for twenty years and finding himself re-tailoring a hotel group in an area of social need.
Raising £3 million pounds, only a year ago, using the social business’s innovative model of housing development, coupled to partnerships in the social enterprise sector to provide training and skills support for ex-offenders.
So successful has Richard’s ministration been that profits are reported, funding need has been reined back, temporarily, and the business is set fair to exceed it’s targets of 15 property renovations undertaken per annum and with 150 clients supported through their training process into employment by the end of this five year bond period.
Midlands Together, using a revision of the ‘Together’ model developed in Bristol, describes its work as property development with a heart. Real asset development, care for people and delivery of profits. We were inspired.
We had our breakfast convocation at the Galleries of Justice in the Lace Market quarter of Nottingham. In the heart of the city’s creative area, this museum, educational service and charity offers a fascinating series of spaces for events.
We met in the courtroom. You can see from the narrative above, all our star witnesses for the defense of Social Finance were sparkling. The verdict? Guilty of enthusiasm and expectation for the future.
There is a new movement afoot in the world of business, namely social finance, and a new concurrency in the ethical, diverse and empathetic way that organisations with an appropriate mission are related to, funded and supported. Both from the world view of the consumer, but also the wholesale and retail social finance sector.
There is also a stirring of new thought and sensibility in the world of economics. How it is taught, how it is understood in terms of social impact and how diversity of viewpoint, model and perception should be just as important as rigid neo-classical dogma.
A challenge to the accepted order….
In the North West of England this new thought is well expressed by the University of Manchester Post-Crash Economics Society (PCES). Their paper Economics, Education and Unlearning is at once a polemic against the orthodoxy of their present academic tutorial staff and system, but is also a proxy for how a new generation of economics graduates will come to see this diversity and system choice in framing new concepts for the future.
Much of the PCES paper is a critique of the detailed processes of tutorials and curriculum delivery at the University. However, there is also much to be gained from a reading by those interested in economic thought in the wider context.
The students argue that the sole focus on the neo-classical mode of economic thought leaves all alternative theories and approaches in the void. The students argue in their paper that to be equipped as economists in a world of variety, choice and new model start-ups, then they should be able to abandon the…
elevated economic paradigm, often called neoclassical economics, as the sole object of study. Other schools of thought such as institutional, evolutionary, Austrian, post-Keynesian, Marxist, feminist and ecological economics are almost completely absent…
In the real world it is these shades or degrees of economic thought which so often temper the real aspirations of economic players, at the local, regional, national and now often, international level.
Interestingly, the forward to the paper is delivered by Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England. In it he describes how the Adam Smith concept of the ‘invisible hand’ in Smith’s 1776 book The Wealth of Nations gave us the prime mover of neo-classical economics.That the ‘…pursuit of self interest, at the level of the household or firm, resulted in aggregate outcomes which could be optimal for society as a whole’. The thesis that greed is good, that competition triumphs all.
Haldane’s argument is that for the 21st Century, for a social finance environment, built on an ethical and socially responsible framework, it is Smith’s earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759 that should now become our principal text, ‘…it places centre stage concepts such as reciprocity and fairness, values rather than value’.
Whatever your originating position on economics, from neo-con to Marxist- feminist and all hues in between, we hope you can be persuaded that the students of Manchester, and other centres of learning, have marshalled a compelling set of arguments to amend and redirect the teaching of economics in the U.K. It bodes well, we would argue, to have a new generation of economic thinkers unafraid to mould theory and practice into a many headed fiscal hydra, in order to eat into the economic disenfranchisement and unfair distribution of so much of the world’s population.
We were uplifted.
Ethical business with a social dimension…
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Amy Simmons and Emily Ward, two final year undergraduates at Nottingham Business School have just delivered an interesting research paper on …why are so few graduates working in SMEs within the UK?
Having worked in small business in their University placement the researchers had noticed how graduates appeared to be missing from the SME human resource landscape. The SME economic landscape is important. As their research states…
SMEs are the driving force towards the recovery of the economy as they account for 99% of the UK businesses. They also provide 67% of private sector jobs and contribute to 50% of the UK’s GDP.
Their research indicates that SME’s do not understand and have a lack of knowledge about graduates. What are their qualifications worth? What impact can a graduate have on my business? Graduate skills, even from major corporates clearly focus, their research shows, on ‘traditional’ skill sets. Team working and communication, team players required and a strong can do’ attitude.
A key reference in the Simmons and Ward research is the difficulty of actually connecting SME’s with graduates. Private sector ‘soft development’ of business often takes place outside of normal working hours in the UK. Key careers fairs and ‘meet and greet’ graduate events are traditionally mainstream day events.
Overall we warmed to their thesis, and find echoes in our worry about Social Business awareness, which we have written about in the past. How to enable graduates to recognise the Social Business sector as positive career progression path? The Simmons and Ward research seems to indicate that the issue is of an even more fundamental nature.
How to make graduates aware of the SME sector opportunities for dynamic personal and professional growth? Leaning towards social or community enterprise is probably the second, more subtle step to take in our raising awareness campaign?
The Social Investment Business have indicated they may be getting ready to launch funds that serve social businesses outside the charity and traditional social enterprise sector.
Jonathan Jenkins of the The Social Investment Business, the UK’s largest social business lender, indicated at a recent speech, at a Somerset House Big Society Network event, stated that his organisation was looking at securing funding for businesses that have with-profit profiles, that could benefit from finance streams that are different from SIB’s core government funds.
This is an interesting development in the sector, with a major player in social finance now looking to support a wider category of socially minded businesses that value their social bottom line, as well as generate shareholder value.
In a sophisticated social business support landscape, this is a timely indication that the sector is moving towards a wider recognition of enterprises with ‘community sensibility’, but who can still perform and deliver within a more traditional business matrix.
To endorse this view Big Society Capital, at the same Somerset House event, opined that perhaps eight new funds of substance, based on these wider application criteria, might appear in the marketplace in 2014.
Linda Slack – 
0115 822 1865
