It’s Voice 11. Here’s the last post in the series giving you a brief overview of the Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship sector conferences in March, I’ll cover how you can get involved and get some of the useful information if you’re not able to attend them all (which is highly likely as they all seem to be at the same time!).

3. Voice 11

Voice 11 is an annual conference run by The Social Enterprise Coalition (SEC), the UK’s national body for Social Enterprise. SEC is the voice for the social enterprise sector and works to showcase the benefits of social enterprise and represent the work of it’s members to influence national policy and share good practice. SEC has run Voice since 2005 when it was set up to bring the sector together and support social enterprises in their work, Voice is the UK’s largest Social Enterprise conference.  Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the second post in the series giving you a brief overview of the Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship sector conferences.

2. Oxford Jam

Oxford Jam was set up in 2010 to run alongside the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. The aim is to bring together social entrepreneurs to develop the social economy. Oxford Jam works on the basis of an open access policy meaning it’s really inclusive and anyone at any stage of social entrepreneurship/ enterprise can attend to share knowledge, experience, develop networks and create innovation solutions to social problems- also a key element is to enjoy yourself by the looks of things! Read the rest of this entry »

Over the next few weeks the Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship sector will be hosting three conferences. in a series of three posts I’ll give you a brief overview of what will be covered at The Skoll World Forum, Oxford Jam and Voice 11, how you can get involved and get some of the useful information if you’re not able to attend them all (which is highly likely as they all seem to be at the same time!).

1. The Skoll World Forum On Social Entrepreneurship

The Skoll World Forum is a programme run by the Skoll Foundation in partnership with the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University. It has been running since 2004 when it was set up to bring together a diverse group of people from across the world to stimulate new approaches to solving some of the worlds most important social issues. Read the rest of this entry »

Are we using incentives in the right way? Dan Pink suggests that often bonuses and rewards create poorer performance. He explains that incentivising staff to carry out certain tasks often creates a negative effect.

In this video, Dan Pink (once Al Gore’s speech writer) talks about how to use incentives in a way that helps people to perform to their potential, and helps companies to get the most from employees.

Watch the video below:

Or click on this Ted Talks link to watch Dan Pink on Motivation & Incentives

This week’s moral maze covered a debate about the role of Charities in modern society and how they fit into the big society vision, particulary looking at procurement of LA services to thirds sector organisations. Read the rest of this entry »

In July 2010 the Social Enterprise Coalition (SEC) published a report on Stimulating New Markets: commissioning Social Enterprises. The research sets out how commissioning can be used to create new social enterprise markets and what the barriers are to this happening. It is a guide to commissioners to help them to understand the market needs and how they can develop better commissioning methods to allow the market to grow. Here is a summary of the main points.

With a growing emphasis from government on decentralisation and looking for more cost effective and efficient ways to deliver services, social enterprises are being hailed as a key solution. On current government figures there are an estimated 62,000 social enterprises operating in the UK which contribute more than £24 billion to the UK economy. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently a friend and I decided to find The Grumpy Mule coffee shop in Yorkshire. We were looking forward to tasting different types of coffee in a slick looking coffee shop where we could buy coffee machines, bags of ground coffee, coffee beans and sit down to enjoy a nice cup of coffee, cake or toast for our breakfast before we went on our way.  We set off snaking through the beautiful peak district national park heading to Holmfirth to find this Yorkshire coffee haven.

We arrived in Holmfirth and followed the directions to Bentley Road, “this must be wrong” we both remarked as the directions took us to an industrial estate, “surely this can’t be the place where the coffee shop will be”. Helen began laughing as she wound down the window to ask a passerby for a place that sells coffee. “yep you’re in the right place, turn around it’s the last unit up that road”. Well now we both felt a bit stupid but continued anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Welsh social enterprises are set to benefit from a £7.1million injection of cash from the European Union’s Convergence Programmes and the Welsh Assembly Government.

Leighton Andrews, Deputy Minister for Regeneration, has announced that social enterprises in West Wales and the Valleys will have access to “The Social Enterprise Support Project“. Over the next five years the project aims to:

• provide mentoring, training, support and advice for pre-start social enterprises.
• develop sustainability and growth within social enterprises in Wales by
  • offering support and advice to 150 existing social enterprises.
  • creating more than 50 new social enterprises.
  • creating 300 new jobs.
• raise awareness of the positive impact that social enterprises have on social and economic regeneration.
• identify gaps in service provision in some of the most deprived Welsh communities and researching new opportunities.

The project will be delivered by the Wales Co-operative Centre in conjunction with sell2wales and a range of organisations. to read more about the project visit the Welsh Assembly Governments Website.

Footsey- The Social Economy Trade Fair is due to take place on Thursday 16th October at York Race Course. I attended this event last year as a stool holder for UnLtd. I wasn’t sure what to expect having done numerous trade events in the past with some being better than others, but I really enjoyed the day. I found it really interesting, it was great to nose around and look at all the new social enterprises that had sprung up over the past year and to get a chance to chat to established enterprises that I had never got round to speaking to in the past. I was also surprised by the ammount of delegates, I don’t think that I stopped talking all day. I would expect this year to be just the same only with more new and exciting social entreprises to hunt out and a good programme of discussions including:

• Changes In The Health Sector
• Impact Assessment
  
• Sales And Marketing for Social Enterprise
• The Legal Structure Surgery
• Finance in a Challenging Environment (Panel)
• Growth and Survival
  
• Social Enterprise as part of the National Curriculum
• Social Enterprise: Winning with 2012

You can get a look at some of this years key exhibitors on the Footsey website.

Registration: The registration fee for social enterprises is £48.50+VAT which is over half the price of a normal delegate fee.
You can register for the event online.

The Clinton Global Intiative (CGI) have just held the 2008 Annual Meeting in New York. The meeting brought together 80 current and former heads of state, hundreds of top CEOs and non-profit leaders, major philanthropists, and 10 of the last 16 Nobel Peace Laureates “to examine some of today’s most pressing global challenges and transform that awareness into tangible action”. This year the 3 day meeting focused on education, engery and climate change, global health and poverty.

You can hear/ watch all of the interesting debates on the CGI website. Some of the topics that were covered are:

Education

• Providing real choices: what works for at-risk adolescent girls and boys?
• Beyond microfinance: strengthening business and entrepreneurship education for women in emerging economies
• Expanding the school-health connection

Read the rest of this entry »