Can philanthropic support systems really help improve global abundance?

Last week I attended a London meeting co-hosted by Effective Altruism and Founders Pledge. The FP founder explained they provide "effective investment funding" for social enterprise projects, in the loosest sense of that term. To understand context, what this wider market place looks like, we might like to zoom out of the picture a little at this point. We will consider the overall path that, in toto, socially oriented enterprises follow to develop and grow, getting them to the point of funding. Broadly, the steps on that path can be described as 1) Attracting Support 2) Developing Catalysts 3) Developing Pragmatism and 4) Effective Investment.

Market place case studies will be used as part of the discussion,

Stage 1 - Attracting Support

If we consider first existing support levels, we can find a significant ground swell of concerned citizens banding together at grass roots to discuss issues of the day, for example on Facebook. Well known to our discussion communities, a vocal prime mover in attracting support, for example, is also a leading contributor to such events as the public protest against existing environmental and indigenous damage from the Dakota Access Pipeline.

That Facebook group has over 85,000 members. That's really big numbers in the digital age of the audience of 1. In fact support for such movements is likely to grow, given people are still learning how to use Facebook and other tools constructively to organise and execute peaceful protest. Another example is the recent Pink Pussy protest outside the White House. In the UK, a petition to bar Donald Trump from coming to the UK has reached 750,000 votes.

Before long, we may well see organisations producing global abundance manifestos. This may well prove another spur to growing levels of public concern and involvement. So step 1 for social change is attracting support. Do enough people see something as an issue that needs tackling, do they feel strongly enough to take action, and will they sustain that over a period of time?

Stage 2 - Organising, Condensing, Gaining Focus - Recruiting Catalysts There are two ways of supporting changes we feel we need, namely time and money. Very often we have shortages of one or the other, with sadly some unfortunate enough to experience shortages of both.

And what people most often need is to have things organised for them, so they can give their support in a way that fits their personal circumstances. Those who are time scarce will likely give what they can afford. Those who are money scarce may put such spare time as they have into working at grass roots to make a difference in small and maybe imperceptible ways. This organising, condensing actions into achievable and affordable plans, takes people with much rarer skill sets. People we usually call catalysts or organisers. People who can set dates and times for rallies or events, issue rallying calls, set enough framework in place for individual participation, join in resourcing what is needed for success.

How does that work in practice?

One online Facebook group has a focus on systems thinking, and finding constructive, alternative, achievable ideas to deliver social and environmental change for the better. Even in that group, there is a big disparity between passive-receptive audiences, maybe 94% of the group, and then those who are more active and pushing at existing boundaries, trying to achieve individual change, say 5%, and finally those catalysts who are actually looking towards group level change, perhaps 1%. Even though the group collective encourages more activism, the 94% are often too busy. This makes it hard, often too hard, for them to commit to tackling issues unless the urgency is crystal clear. Only then are the 94% willing to commit their own hard won free time to actually taking part. So given the right catalyst, the 94% can be activated, as the examples above show. But how could we extend this? How do we get social and environmental improvement to work on a broader scale, and not just reactively dealing with impending crisis? Stage 3 - Broadening the Funnel Prior to Investment - Developing Pragmatism

Step 1 above explained there is significant social consensus for improving our lives and our environments, and Step 2 explained there is a much smaller group who can act as activists and catalysts for change. Why Is A Broader Path Towards Investment Needed? Founders Pledge have a focus on pragmatic social enterprise founders, most typically those who have crossed over from the corporate world, where FP can already see one or more of the relevant skill sets that gives a better chance of sustainable execution and delivery.

However, as Founders Pledge founder, David Goldberg, readily admits, we have a wider need to funnel more charitable work towards funding, and get more of that work to be planned and executed in sustainable ways. The funnel prior to FP essentially needs to develop skills in early stage or less experienced social enterprise so that they are ready to be considered for investment. But the UK has funding constraints severely depleting the ability of social enterprise to develop in that funnel.

How Well Does The Social Enterprise Funnel Work? A key case study exists in North West London. UK Council budgets for third sector projects are being slashed, and charity services are being cut to the bone. Ironically, there are grant funding trusts out there who would fund more social enterprise set up, typically not extending to operation, if only applicants had better skill sets. Sadly, mechanisms to help local citizens climb the ladder of capability are not functioning effectively enough. Case Study 1

In North West London, a charity exists specifically to support Social Enterprise. A flaw in how this works means funding applicants are given over-simplistic barriers to climb, instead of support tools to help them grow skills and make progress. Failure rates are therefore high, and many applicants are disheartened from taking this path.

Can Supporting Technology Or Skills Help? When the question of supporting technology was raised, back with Founders Pledge, David agrees that there is a key need to improve efficiency and reduce costs prior to funding, and that technology has a fantastic track record in delivering just those benefits. But for now, sadly, he could see no major way to support investment in Stage 3 technologies. Pre-funding funding and skills is still an area where concerned citizens in the UK must focus effort to make some progress. The UK needs the funnel into Social Enterprise Growth working better to grow organisations that Founders Pledge can support. The issue, as I think David recognises, continues to be one of skills and tools. And at the time of writing, charities are now firmly on the back foot, and immersed in defensive measures and financial scrutiny, rather than developing front line tools and services as we would want. Worryingly, David also believes that Social Enterprise in the UK proves even more difficult than running a charity.

Given all this, how could concerned citizens make some positive change?

Independent Niche Solutions Independently, we could ask socially oriented tech companies to research and anticipate these problems, and offer affordable tech solutions that work on volume, say at least on a regional or better national basis. Independent provision in the cloud would ease transition to better tech for charity CEOs, often themselves behind the curve on both emerging tech and people skill sets. Charity CEOs are often deep into multi-tasking just to keep heads above water. So step change and easy to use tools saving time and money could really help. Approaching Tech companies through GitHub, for example, could be a way to begin a much needed dialogue.

We are very unlikely to know a Steve Jobs who can design the equivalent of an iPhone. But we are more capable, through collective effort, to find possible solutions to identified niche issues. A specific example can be focusing on a hackathon for a cloud based funder reporting dashboard for charities showing how funding is spent across balanced scorecard measurements. A one off hackathon like this, and some minimal support with Beta Testing, can ease charity CEO burdens, is a manageable time investment, and is minimal impedance to organisational day jobs.

What About NHS Social Care Funding?

Sadly, the NW London NHS is also in dire straights. The issue this time is trying to service debt generated from previous government agreements on financing. Again, this is leading to an excessive focus on finance in the NHS, with corresponding detractions from front line service provision. One recent citizen meeting in Harrow spent a great majority of the meeting talking solely about funding, not clinical development. The Harrow Clinical Commissioning Group - CCG - in particular are struggling because the agreement made about service provision in Harrow was inequitable. We should note also Harrow is #1 for diabetes sufferers in the UK. Although surrounding borough CCGs recognised the inequity and for some years made support payments to Harrow, another cost crackdown now threatens this arrangement. This crackdown may force the other CCGs to withdraw their support, and thereafter Harrow CCG could need to enter special measures processes. This all means that a potentially legitimate group who could and should fund enterprise and charities for Harrow social care has been pretty much crippled. It is absolutely right to say that the NHS are managing a really awful situation pretty well. It could be much worse ! However, it is still a retreating rearguard action, and one thing that could help is better tools for the job in hand.

Could Hackathons Help With Social Enterprise Crisis?

All this means that NW London social enterprise, like many across the country, desperately needs some innovative thinking, being driven remorselessly by cost cutting in health, care and the third sector. Niche Hackathons, eg for Harrow on diabetes, are overdue, and should be welcomed providing the NHS can spare some minimal resource to participate, principally by evaluating possible reductions in known operating costs given niche third party solutions.

Hackathons have the huge advantage that they can be time bounded, very limited in terms of cost impacts, but offer potential for future development where more effective and cost effective ways of working are found. Indeed, even BBC TV has latched on to the potential for change in this area, showing how innovative thinking and design can provide affordable solutions to very niche problems, in a show called "The Big Life Fix". Concluding this section, the funnel into social investors like Founders Pledge is critically diverted by being stripped of government funding, is very under equipped in tech terms, and is poor at developing social enterprise at grass roots. The health of this funnel looks rather doubtful right now.

So how might Founders Pledge and others like them help?

Stage 4 - Effective Social & Environmental Investment

A particular positive feature about Founders Pledge is that they research and provide detailed market intelligence, to ensure investment money is spent more wisely. They also handle money pledged from Founder Exits, so able to grow the investment fund they have available, forming a rather neat virtuous circle.

Why is Virtuous Circle Investment Good for Founders?

Providing market focus is essential in any business, getting stuck inside corporate walls and corporate politics is almost always a terminal illness.

Once a pledge is taken, Founders Pledge then have an ongoing vested interest in each pledging founder, for one thing giving them accurate market data, the aim being to make sure that many more successful exits take place. This is good news for founders. That involvement with founders in turn helps give FP great on the ground knowledge about what is happening in market places, which can be fed back to wider audiences wishing to invest in social enterprise.

Those wider audiences can often be very wealthy, and as such FP well understand the need for discretion and rapid personal service for this type of client. But such connections could also, if relevant, be very useful longer term for founders.

How Are Current Funnel Issues Supported?

The first factor mentioned above in the current social enterprise landscape is the lack of recognised means for individual social enterprises to grow at grass roots. By joining FP, founders can have access to better resources to help them grow their business, and better understand the market place they want to serve. This is something where many founders often need a much clearer focus, needing perhaps to be little less idealistic and starry eyed.

The second key issue we mentioned for social enterprise was a weakness in support tech terms, both for emerging third sector organisations and the established charity sector. As FP focus on growing entries to the tech sector, there is an opportunity for tech founders to focus on specific niche health or education issues as discussed above and provide stronger infrastructure support.

The final issue mentioned was shrinking funding. Where the state withdraws to reduce cost overheads, there are again affordable tech opportunities to improve alternate grant funding bid and other skill sets for early stage founders. Tackling these three pre-funding issues with ever more affordable tech tools will mean a broader path leading to funding from organisations like Founders Pledge.

We haven't even looked at education in this article, and there are similar cost and size issues where the sector keenly needs to acquire more niche support technology.

Stages 1-4 - The Emerging Focus on People & Skills

The technologies we use daily have now matured enough for us to see in large part how we might put them to use. But actually doing so is still at quite an early stage, and we are still working at connecting people and technologies meaningfully. Mark Zuckerberg perhaps saw this in his early year rallying call for us to think centrally about connection. Such technology and market situations call for folk with particular catalytic skill sets, able to quickly use and rapidly adapt tools that already exist - even if only recently so - and to bring people on board to help. We need such catalysts to work effectively in market places, with genuine positive purpose, delivering real and necessary change.

In some cases, such change is urgent right now.

An active community member references such folk as understanding "networks of small networks", and we must also understand individual distinct and diverse motivations.

Conclusion

Social technology and innovative application is having a slow, gradual effect on delivery mechanisms for social and environmental improvement. But there is a growing feeling, though, that some crisis points are looming. We are starting to need to dig into existing and sometimes archaic infrastructures, with a crying need for more people who can translate awareness into constructive, dynamic action. Groupings like Effective Altruism can go some way towards providing support for such initiatives. But this action needs support, and in some cases urgently. We need to and must improve our ability to raise support, develop catalysts, underpin pragmatism, and indeed invest effectively moving forwards with social enterprise projects. So I plan further discussion with both Effective Altruism and Founders Pledge about what we can do and how.