Endgame

I was on holiday last week in Wales – Solva on the Pembrokeshire coast. A pretty fishing village where  Welsh TV were filming Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood”. I went for a superb 14 mile walk along the coast on a beautiful day when the Atlantic sea looked like the Med. (but not the same temperature!) Visited St David’s Cathedral and Bishop’s Palace..the whole area is rich in references to Celtic Christianity. Very fine.

And straight back in on Monday morning at 9.15 am  to a meeting of our sub group of Trustees and then a full Trustee meeting on Tuesday evening with a long  agenda. The Board appointed and welcomed two brilliant new Trustees and we are fortunate in having a very strong, experienced and capable Board. The Board approved last year’s Report and Accounts, and also  a new methodology for assessing the Outcomes of what we do…a notoriously difficult but necessary task. Intended outcomes  have to be accompanied by performance measures or else the term “outcome” (ie. what difference is made) is just being used for motherhood and apple pie effect. The Board agreed to my proposals though urged caution in not spending too much time on measuring performance rather than delivering…remembering we are a small team of 3.7 FTE

We had a presentation from Surrey CC about their commissioning of services for young people - £32 mill. worth, and the Board also approved  the first increase in membership fees for 4 years, and other changes so that we can take on businesses as Associate (non-voting)  members so that they can access our CommUniLAB project.

Since it was my last Trustees meeting I was surprised by the appearance of chocolate cake (favourite) and fizz. And kind words.

The rest of the week saw the finalising and updating of the submission papers for Pqasso (qa system), and work by colleagues in arranging our Youth Social Action conference on Saturday 15 November. I was at a Surrey Connects Enterprise Working Group this morning when amongst other points we were updated on the exciting plans for  a University Technical College in Guildford near Kings Manor School. Back to the Future -  I could not help feel that if we as a country stopped messing around with education we’d serve our young people better…did you say what’s wrong with technical colleges and polytechnics?  

  

Friends for dinner this evening; sermon to write on Saturday (about Wisdom and discernment). My parting shot is about holiday reading : I highly recommend Charles Leadbetter’s new book “The Frugal Innovator” which is about why we need to reduce and re-balance global consumption, and use good enough technology and encourage low key (frugal) innovation not just high tec. Also read “David and Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell; in support of the small guy/organisation- similar theme to Leadbetter.   I’m currently reading Business Start Up Handbook on recommendation from my eldest (MBA) son, and my “Third career” plans are well on the way. Now at the stage of putting surgical spirit on my feet every day (to dry them out and toughen up against  blisters) and doing “serious” walks every week-end now. Feels like the endgame is upon me. Enjoy your holidays!

Mike 

Social Finance - Jury Out?

I go on holiday shortly so, as ever, one has to work twice as hard to get away, particularly when there is a forthcoming Trustees meting with a long agenda to get out. 

However, I was asked to brief some colleagues from a charity in Surrey that is considering expansion of its work by means of social finance, which made me revisit my various papers on this.

I wrote the first paper on Social Impact Bonds in Nov 2010, and with a member organisation pitched a really brilliant SIB proposition to Surrey CC, which was declined.

There are now some 22 SIBs underway in local authorities, and the momentum seems to be gathering….slowly. There is a Cabinet Office team working on social finance generally, and SIBs in particular. There are number of funding sources.  There are a stack of organisations working in this field : Big Society Capital, Social Finance, CAF Venturesome, Triados bank  and so on. Moreover the development of social finance fits exactly with my contention that the three sectors (public/private/charity ) are blending together.

Yet progress is still quite slow and the Peterborough Prison SIB has not been extended, which is telling. The advantage of SIBs is that the risk is off-loaded by the commissioner to the 3^rd party funder – could be bond market or just a market loan, and innovation is supported, so there are real advantages, but on balance the jury is out as they seem to be overly complex.  

My holiday reading includes “David and Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell of “Outliers” and nudging fame; “The Frugal Innovator” by Charles Leadbetter; a book on business start ups and Karl Barth’s “Dogmatics in Outline” – no, not the 14 volumes that costs £600 but the simple version! One of these is an outlier…..for otherwise there is a theme about start – ups…I wonder why ? Career no.3. calls! I will report on the reading soon…there are some novels too….compulsory! 

Mike

Time present & Time Past

If you can’t beat them join them, so having run another business planning session at 40Degreez in Farnham I have come home rather than battling the Guildford traffic on a hot day…much nicer! Here we go:-

"Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past."

The T.S. Eliot quote (from Burnt Norton) reflects the fact that I have been with one of our Member organisations this morning – 40 Degreez in Farnham, assisting them in long term thinking about their next five year strategy. I remember that before I started work with Surrey Council for Voluntary Services as we were then called, and during my handover period from my predecessor, David Cox, I went to our AGM at 40 Degreez. This would have been in about Sept. 2007. I didn’t have a clue about what was happening during the AGM but I guess I have learnt since! Anyway, it was good to be helping a charity working directly with young people and facing familiar issues relating to volunteers, and funding, but also being brave enough to address the “what business are we in?”  question.  It was also good to be congratulated on my work (when Head of Community Development for Surrey CC in the late 1990s) in starting the original work on the Sandy Hill estate in Farnham and hearing that very positive changes have happened there over the years, with the work still continuing in that high need estate. So in my beginning was my end. 

Otherwise, this has been a week for producing reports for my last Trustees meeting, and in particular proposing how we demonstrate our impact as a support services (membership) organisation. This is a notoriously difficult area, for outcomes are of little value unless accompanied by performance  measures. The experts on this are New Philanthropy Capital, The Young Foundation, and the Charities Evaluation Service, the promoters of Pqasso. NPC’s work in particular is very impressive. To be practical we have just agreed the terms of the funding Agreement with SCC for a grant to us …and the outcomes we will achieve. No escape..so go with the flow….  

Two other important matters to report this week; first that Surrey CC Services for Young People has published its draft commissioning document for services for young people…some £32million services. I think this is a really impressive piece of work by the Council and represents opportunities for the sector.  

Secondly, a big "thank you" to Allianz’s Routes to Success team for their pro bono work with us in uprating our marketing database and advising on outcomes/impact. The team reported back to their bosses on the finished work which has been a great help to us, and their “going the extra mile” help to me in wrestling through the Impact work is much appreciated. What was particularly heartening was to hear how the team had enjoyed working with us (mostly Kate Peters and Su Freeman) and learnt about the voluntary youth sector. This is exactly what must happen in future – business citizens developing  through a collaboration between the sectors, the boundaries of which are becoming  more blurred in a positive way.  

Preparing a Powerpoint this weekend to give to our Deanery Synod on Wednesday (ie some 22 churches) about the disconnect between the values of the church hierarchy, people in the pews, and the wider, secular world (eg on women bishops, homosexuality, end of life issues). That apart I have to buy my holiday reading, via Amazon of course, so I’ll tell you what it I’ve bought next week before we go off for R&R in Pembrokeshire. Enjoy the sun!

          Mike

Mobilising communities to find solutions for themselves (aka CommUniLAB)

On Wednesday Surrey Connects held an annual conference with three outstanding speakers, and it was inspirational  to hear them.  

Mathew Taylor is CEO of the Royal Society of Arts and he gave a discourse in political philosophy the like of which I have not heard since my days at the LSE. His theme was about how we can all be empowered to be creative because the technology of the internet and digital/information economy enables this. He cited the way in which young people are embracing becoming entrepreneurs/sole traders; how folk could reach out to global markets and so on. The barriers to this world are own culture (what Erich Fromm called “The Fear of Freedom”), traditional institutions holding on to power, and related to this a lack of fairness and creativity especially in relation to having capital which he saw as an important enabling resource. He commended the work of Charles Leadbetter and his phrase about the (political ) future resting with “Creative communities with a cause”, and of roles in “mobilising communities to find solutions for themselves”.

As someone who wrote an MPhil research degree (1996-2000) about organisations as networks, not hierarchies, this was music to my ears.

Neil McInroy is CEO of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies. He spoke of the inter-dependence between the social (charity)economy – public economy  - private economy, and the need for people in business to see themselves in a wider(community ) context – what he called “business citizens”.

In short these two speakers put forward  a superb rationale for our CommUniLAB project, which enables these linkages and networks to be made in relation to community causes.

The third speaker was Sue Riddlestone, CEO of Bioregional talking in practical terms about “One planet earth” – we consume three times what planet earth can sustain.

On Tuesday, I gave a talk at a breakfast meeting at Foxhills about “Managing across the digital generations”, making the point that I have also stated in “Young Surrey : Strategic Review” that as people work longer, so larger organisations will have employees from across 4 generations - Baby boomers like me, then Generations X, Y and Z- the latter being today’s teenagers of current university students. They all have different values, life experiences,  skills and expectations, so how do you manage across the generations? Secondly how can Generation Z also called the citizen Generation be enabled to enter the world of working?

One of my concerns is that if today’s young people don’t vote at the forthcoming elections they will continue to be disempowered; this speaks to Mathew Taylor’s point. Consider for example the Arab Spring – enabled by Twitter, Blackberry etc as a community movement, but now traditional forces/institutions have re- asserted power.

We are making progress on organising a conference in November, probably at Royal Holloway College on what the Government calls Youth Social Action, and this will include inputs on what citizenship means.

On Wednesday, I had lunch with my fellow directors of Surrey Youth Enterprise, and with one of our Trustees about the future of the enterprise  which was very encouraging.

For the rest I have been working on preparing our papers for Pqasso external assessment, and am grateful to colleagues from Allianz (walking the walk as business citizens already) for their help in this.

Under attack from my wife again for lacking emotional intelligence (humph!!) brought about by too much theology (impossible) and World Cup football(possible) , and so have been blitzing novels by Anita Shreeve, and watching Wallender – brilliant study of the impact of Alzheimers. I’ll be playing squash and going to the gym this week-end, and don’t forget folks Nanny (state) says “drink water!” – a revelation!”

          Mike 

CommUniLAB Launched!

We are delighted to have launched our CommUniLAB website which can be found at: www.communilab.org  CommuniLAB is a virtual network that enables people in communities, universities and colleges, the public sector and business to voice problems that they would like to see addressed. For once we take off our “work “ hat we discover that as parents or as partners we face similar concerns and issues.  This  might be about the prevalence of bullying - a matter that came up at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS) Strategy Board I was at yesterday - or the provision of childcare,  or how to secure volunteering or work experience opportunities for one’s teenagers, or as a business how to offer such opportunities, or how to contribute to the lessening of disadvantage in a particular.

All Surrey Youth Focus are automatically members of CommUniLAB; if you are interested and want to join this exciting new network contact Linda Cairns, project manager linda.cairns@surreyyouthfocus.org.uk.   Our thanks to Barclays Bank as our principal sponsors and project champions.

One of the points I make in “Young Surrey : Strategic Review” is that the ever –reducing Government funding makes it imperative that the resources across the charity - local government  – business sectors are pooled, or “mined”,  to address shared issues. I am off this afternoon to witness a perfect example of this – Elmbridge BC/ Surrey CC/Walton Charities combining over their “Streets Apart” project.

The Management and Finance sub-committee of Trustees signed off on the Annual Report and Accounts for last year which now goes on to the main Board. Also reviewed the Risk Register and approved the processes for project planning and evaluation. This includes addressing the Inputs - Outputs – Outcomes trilogy, and is necessary as part of the preparation for our Pqasso (qa) review – very grateful to Allianz (insurance ) for all their help to us. The same methodology is being applied to our Agreement with Surrey CC for our core grant.

Even busier next week with two early morning talks – one of which is me talking to Surrey Chamber of Commerce about “Managing across generations” – Foxhills 7.30 am – nearly 40 people have booked in apparently!

World Cup expectations met! I have booked my flight to Biarritz on 13 Sept and hence on to St Jean des Pied to start my walk on the following Monday early – as dawn rises.

          Mike

Red Kites, Blue butterflies and Yellow buttercups

I have been walking part of the South Downs Way these last 4 days…56 miles of training walk with my “Spanish” rucksack ie checking on my kit and weight for my long walk in Spain later.

So I was pleased to be walking in the heat with a full rucksack and have decided to jettison one bit of kit as a result. Lots of stories to tell of course, but mainly about how incredibly kind and engaging  people are when out in the countryside and away from it all. I walked from Bury hill to Beachy Head/Eastbourne centre to catch a train home, and learnt a lot. The countryside was incredibly beautiful especially between Ditchling and Alfriston.

I returned to work today to lots of emails and catch up..ugh…hot in office.

But the sporting scene this week-end  is good : Holland v Spain in the World Cup tonight, and England v. the All Blacks 2^nd Test tomorrow. And we’re going to the 40th wedding anniversary celebrations of some friends on Saturday – should be an enjoyable week-end.

Mike

Cabinet Office supports development of eight youth mutuals

A very  important headline announcement has appeared in the charity press to the effect that Surrey CC Youth Support Service is working with the Cabinet Office to prepare for outsourcing as a mutual. This was exactly the possibility that is referred to in “Young Surrey : Strategic Review 2014-15” in which I wrote about the blending of the sectors, and referred to LB Kensington and Chelsea’s setting up of their youth service as EPIC, which is also a mutual.

The press article can be found here: article (my thanks to Chris at Eikon for spotting this)

It is too early to say what the impact will be, but IF this happens it will be significant, and is a parallel move to Surrey CC transferring all its adult social care into a LATC (local authority trading company).

I have a Surrey Charity Chief executives Group meeting this afternoon, and so we will have an interesting discussion. The bottom line is that what I call the “blended sector” is here to stay, so we might as well work on how to make it work.

I have been working on our Annual Report which is now substantially completed and on very interesting work about the health needs of young people. We have been commissioned by Healthwatch (the consumer champions) to research into the experiences, issues and priorities of young people about heir health and well being. We are doing so by survey monkey and focus groups. The report is due out at the end of August.

I’m on leave most of next week walking 55 miles on the South Downs Way (from Bury to Beachy Head) as a training exercise for an altogether longer walk later. I’ll report next Friday on the fauna and flora and my recommendations about pubs!

          Mike