Chris Allwoodtag:socialenterpriseambassadors.org,2007-12-05:/allwood//62008-08-13T17:22:50ZChris Allwood's Social Enterprise Ambassador blogMovable Type Publishing Platform 4.01Should Social Enterprises be Paid to be Social?tag:socialenterpriseambassadors.org,2008:/allwood//6.632008-08-13T17:09:24Z2008-08-13T17:22:50ZChris Allwood
Obviously it's attractive to have another income stream, but would it
divert our attention from building a successful business? Also
who would evaluate the social benefit?
One idea I’m toying with is for local authorities not to commission any
community or regeneration work, but tender for specific social
change. That way anyone, charity, social enterprise or business
could bid to provide that change. They would be paid on the basis
of the amount of change they could create. You’ve still got the
evaluation problem, but it’s always seemed strange to me that any
funder of social change wants the charity or social enterprise to do
the evaluation, rather than do it themselves or get an independent
third party in on it.
I’d be interested to know your thoughts and ideas.
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Chris Allwood: Want to change the world?tag:socialenterpriseambassadors.org,2008:/allwood//6.562008-07-03T12:50:05Z2008-07-03T15:58:56ZChris Allwood
Chain Reaction
yesterday - an event to bring people who wouldn't otherwise meet,
together to change the world. The idea is that people passionate
about social change, from business, government and charity get together
to find new ways of being effective. It'll be on the 17th /18th November on the Southbank in London.
Our basic process is connect, collaborate and commit. If you'd like to be part of it, please log on and register.
The focus is going is to be very much on the practical action to make
these new ideas real. It won't be the usual plenary then workshop
style. We're going to have a few speakers
and activities to get the creative juices going. Then the focus is
going to be on working on the best ideas that come out. They'll
be specialists in strategy, brands, marketing, research, digital media,
etc. Participants can choose what they want to get involved with,
and then the groups around ideas can use all the resources available to
get them going.
At the moment I'm trying to put together some of the technology we
need. Basically we want people to be able to SMS their ideas in
to a website (and screen behind the speaker) and then a way of voting
on which people think best. If you have any contacts who could
help us enable this, that'd be really useful. ]]>
Chris Allwood: What do we want?tag:socialenterpriseambassadors.org,2008:/allwood//6.442008-05-07T16:32:09Z2008-07-03T16:02:37ZChris Allwood
Business in the Community last week.
Well it was nice to be asked, but it got me thinking. What do
social entrepreneurs want from our Corporate big brothers?
Pro-bono (latin for freebie) support has certainly been crucial to the
the start-up of Auction My Stuff,
but even more importantly I reckon, is when we've been given the
opportunity to bid for work, and show just how proffesional a social
enterprise can be.
At the moment I'm looking around to see whether we should start a new
social enterprise. There are lots of tempting distractions from
the fundamental question 'can I sell something to make the world a bit
better?'. Not least the Department of Health's £100m Social Enterprise Fund.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, in fact I think that social
enterprises really need some simple sources of start-up finance.
Just that it's so easy to let the grants skew you off course into
creating something that isn't really sustainable.
So to go back to the question 'what do we want?' - well I think it's
the chance to bid for work that we can create innovative and
proffessional social enterprises around. I am more than aware
that this isn't as simple as it sounds. Social enterprises tend
to be small, young and poorly resorced - not exaclty you ideal
supplier. However if big businesses and government is serious
about supporting social enterprise, they need to identify some
contracts that they feel can be better served by social enterprises and
invite them to tender.
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Chris Allwood: The Queen on eBaytag:socialenterpriseambassadors.org,2008:/allwood//6.352008-03-25T16:44:38Z2008-07-03T16:03:05ZJules shows HRH HTML An exciting day at Auction My Stuff, as our young people discovered that I owned a suit!...Chris Allwood
Jules shows HRH HTML
An exciting day at Auction My Stuff, as our young people discovered that I owned a suit!
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Chris Allwood: Who can it be?tag:socialenterpriseambassadors.org,2008:/allwood//6.232008-03-03T14:32:51Z2008-07-03T16:03:34ZChris Allwood
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