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Mar

8

Canada Could Benefit From Being a Global Microcosm

March 8, 2010

One final reflection before I leave today and return to the UK from Canada, where we opened our first ClearlySo international operation this week. I was immensely struck by the extent to which Canada had the opportunity to pull together many key international themes and flavours as it developed its social finance and business activities. In a piece posted on Social Edge last year, I noted sarcastically that it seemed all social enterprise innovation appeared to be Anglo-Saxon in nature; certainly this seemed so from the speakers at most conferences. My point was that there was much we all had to learn from each other and that the preponderance of any particular school of thought undermined the movement. Yet we continue to operate in linguistic and cultural silos, for the most part. In Canada, a country with only 35 million people, the vastness of the geographical entity (stretching ambitiously towards Asia on one side and Europe on the other) gives it connections few can match. Also, the strong Asian influence on the west coast, specifically around Vancouver, British Columbia, adds a dimension to the most populous Anglo-Saxon province of Ontario and Francophone Quebec, which feels a European-style economy right on the border with Ontario. Such diversity, is not only existent on a transcontinental basis, but even within the largest cities, there exists a strong multi-cultural flavour. From a social enterprise perspective, this variety offers a wonderful opportunity for experimentation–and learning from dramatically different models.
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Mar

7

Social Enterprise & Investment in Canada: “Owning the Podium”

March 7, 2010

My good fortune was to have landed at Toronto’s Pearson airport, just as the Canadian hockey team scored the winning goal against the USA in the last moment of the Vancouver Olympics. Could you imagine how my week would have gone, launching ClearlySo in Canada, if, as someone born in the USA, it had gone the other way? Arriving on such an auspicious week, choreographed better than any Hollywood flick, I had the chance to see Canada in a rare and appropriately boastful mood. This spirit, and the nervous reaction to it, was captured well in an article in the 4 March article in the Globe and Mail, called “The Unaccustomed Swagger”. It reminded me of the strong Canadian in-built streak of modesty and how, in the field of social enterprise and investment, they have been as much a leader as a follower.
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Mar

4

ClearlySo Canada Opens for Business!

March 4, 2010

With great pride, I attended the launch of ClearlySo Canada earlier this evening. Working with the Canadian founder, Julie McDowell, and her crack team, we launched the site on schedule in record time. Rather than pontificate personally, allow me to let Julie tell her own story. Canada represents only the first of an ambitious international rollout plan. Watch this space! Regards, Rod Schwartz.

On behalf of my colleagues at ClearlySo in both Canada and the U.K., I’d like to extend a warm welcome to the 34 Founding Canadian members who have listed their companies on our site and joined the ClearlySo global family. Today we are proud to launch www.clearlyso.ca and look forward to building a Canadian network of businesses and investors devoted to using commercial enterprise and creative entrepreneurial talent to solve challenging problems and improve our communities, our country and our planet. I’d like to extend this invitation to explore our site, meet our team in Canada and the U.K. and we encourage and welcome comments, ideas, testimonials and referrals.
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Feb

22

HCT Establishes a Benchmark for Social Finance

February 22, 2010

On Friday legal agreements were signed between HCT Group (the social enterprise formerly know as Hackney Community Transport) and several investors on two new instruments, a Fixed Rate Loan and an innovative “Social Loan”, where the interest rate is tied to the growth in sales at HCT from an agreed level. This gives investors some of the features of equity (although the return is capped at 20%), without HCT sacrificing any of the control associated with an equity issue. ClearlySo’s sister company Catalyst Fund Management & Research Ltd. advised on the transaction, and Bridges Ventures led the round and were joined as co-investors by the Social Investment Business. It is expected that this £5 million financing, to take place in two rounds, will find other social investors as well as mainstream wealth managers like Rathbone Greenbank involved as investors. For a sector looking to grow, such a transaction, by such a high-quality/high-growth firm as HCT, establishes a benchmark which is likely to help draw further investment into the social business and enterprise sector.
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Feb

11

What Can We Teach the Chinese/Japanese About Social Entrepreneurship?

February 11, 2010

Recently I was asked by Volans Ventures to speak to a delegation of visiting Chinese officials and investors last week about the subject of social enterprise and investment (my colleague at ClearlySo, Julia Meek, addressed the group earlier in the week). Schedules meant I wound up as their last speaker on a Friday evening; with a mission to sum up. In a few weeks time I have been asked by Rob John, from Oxford University and an expert in venture philanthropy, to speak to another group of visitors, this time from Japan, on a related subject. It took me a long time to imagine what we here in the UK had to say to these observers and why they bother to see us here in the UK at all!
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Jan

24

Global Interest in Recent CIC Changes: Better Does Not Yet Mean Good

January 24, 2010

I recently wrote an article for Third Sector magazine on Community Interest Companies (CICs) for Third Sector Magazine. Since then I have received numerous calls from parties here in the UK and abroad asking about this corporate form and my thoughts about them–and if they have changed in light of the Governmental reforms. There are now three things I think about CICs: First, they are better than before. Second, they are still not very attractive. Third, the Government is doing a great job of marketing the idea and has tapped into an international interest in coming up with something for social businesses and enterprises (SBEs).
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Jan

7

Social Enterprise Tetchiness: Not a Helpful Trait

January 7, 2010

Yesterday I read a blog posted recently by Patrick Butler of the Guardian about the Novas Scarman Group, a Social Enterprise which had seen its CEO resign, amid what Butler describes as “one of the most inglorious chapters in the recent history of social enterprise”. I took instant umbrage. Whatever the issue at Novas Scarman, why did Butler have to bring its organisational form up at all? Of what relevance was it? When a conventional firm is, like the Novas Scarman Group (NSG), accused of “alleged cronyism, nepotism, bullying and mismanagement”, according to a report in the Telegraph last July, does it become an indictment of capitalist organisations? Was it not like mentioning the ethnicity of an alleged murderer? As I prepared to react, I realised Butler had actually done the sector a favour, and that we deserved being singled out in this way–why? Allow me to make a few observations but first make clear that the remainder of my comments in no way apply to NSG but to the sector in general.
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Jan

6

Announcing ClearlySo in Romania: Why do we do these Mini-Blogs?

January 6, 2010

Recently we posted a new mini-blog on the ClearlySo site; ClearlySo in Romania. We were privileged to have an exceptional intern–Romanian-American Sandra Barbosu, and she worked on the five posts which have just gone up earlier in 2009. Romania is a very poor country that is nevertheless a recent member of the EU with excellent soil, breathtaking views and a rich and interesting history. I had the good fortune to do a tour of the country myself in 2006, just before it became an EU member, and felt two things profoundly. First, it had enormous potential, but second, there was a great deal needed to be done as a result of the decades lost during the Ceausescu era. I will leave you to read Sandra’s pieces and consider the lessons she has learned. I thought to write to explain why on earth we do these things?
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Jan

1

Are Social Enterprises Different When it Comes to Industrial Relations?

January 1, 2010

Towards the end of last year I wrote about industrial action by the labour union Unite against the HCT Group, a company I advise (let me get that disclosure right out of the way). I challenged the contention, made by officials at Unite that HCT was getting “fat on basement level wages for its workforce”. David Floyd, commented on my blog post and, to his credit, admitted that he did not think the getting fat quote was Unite’s finest hour, but raised a very substantial question in his comment (which I reprint in full below) that he was, “dubious that the claim that the fact that a company exists for public benefit in itself changes the relationship between workers and management”. Or, “are social enterprises somehow different, when it comes to industrial relations (my quote)”, the title of this blog post. This is something worth discussing at length, I thought, and a good meaty question with which to begin the year on the ClearlySo Social Business Blog. I do not know in what capacity David Floyd wrote his comment, but I am grateful nonetheless. And my reply refers to social enterprises in general, not the HCT Group.
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Dec

31

Arise Nigel Kershaw, Officer of the British Empire (OBE)

December 31, 2009

I had not intended to post again this year, but scanning the Honours List this year, stripped marvellously of most of its bankers (all but one, apparently) was a name I recognised, that of Nigel Kershaw, who is listed as Chairman of the Big Issue, but is better known recently for his work in building Big Issue Invest, a specialised lender to social enterprises and the trading arms of charities. I am delighted for Nigel, as I am sure this recognition means a great deal to him, but I also think this is a wonderful way for the decade to end for the social enterprise sector. In the past ten years we have gone from being a puzzling eccentricity, requiring 30 minutes at the start of every conversation with an “outsider”, to being a core part of our economy and our economic future. Nigel, together with the late Anita Roddick, who earned an award some years before her untimely death are exquisite representatives of our sector.
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