social enterprise

Why involver?

involver is an organisation that works with schools to help promote a culture of inclusive democracy, in which the students take an active role in shaping their school policy. By encouraging them to represent themselves and their peers to make changes and tackle problems that they themselves identify, students develop the knowledge, skills and experience they need to make their school a better learning environment. The effects don’t end in school though; by engaging in democratic processes at school students will be in a position to become informed and active citizens outside of education

While the majority of schools have some kind of student council and citizenship education is (and shall thankfully remain) a statutory part the national curriculum, these outlets for student voice are often tokenistic. They offer no real power to the students, no real knowledge of how to approach authority with their ideas and concerns. As a result, a child can go through their entire school life without ever feeling remotely in control of the process of their education. Can this system encourage an attitude of active citizenship in students? I humbly suggest that it can not.

The mission of involver is to change this approach and empower children while they are at school. This is a mission I firmly support, which made it easy to really engage with their work. This helped make the placement not only an exercise in gaining practical skills and improving my employability, but a genuinely eye-opening experience in education policy and wider democracy.

Be more than free labour

I graduated last year and I often hear from fellow graduates who share horror stories of internships that take everything and give nothing, essentially using desperate graduates as free labour. I couldn’t say that they should be more selective in where they intern, it’s simply not the situation graduates today find themselves. But I would suggest applying at small charities or not-for-profit organisations. They may not be as recognisable as larger private companies, and it may be more difficult to find somewhere offering paid internships, but it is more likely that your time and effort will be valued and in return you will be able to gain far more experience and a broader range of skills from the placement.

At involver I had freedom to contribute in any way I felt would be useful experience for me or beneficial to the organisation, and as such I’ve gained skills in areas I would not have even considered before starting the internship. I feel incredibly lucky to have been given a place here, and if you’re a graduate in the same position as I was three months ago, I hope you can find somewhere that will offer you the same opportunities as I found.

Finally, I would like to say thanks to Asher and Greg at involver. It was great working with you, and I wish you every success with involver and the Smart School Councils Community.

3 lessons learned as a startup social enterprise

On a train again, heading back to London after a few days in the Edinburgh Festival, I thought I’d write a few reflections on starting up our social enterprise.

Not to suggest that we’ve had world-beating success or anything, but to look back on our experience of developing an organisation around a set of ideas, that’s given us both a job!

So here we go….

Get started, but change things up

'On the origin of logos'

The great benefit you have as a new organisation is that you can change big things very quickly.

You need to get up and running and making money in the area that you want to work, but don’t feel bad about making big changes when you’re starting up: change things up!

There’s no six month review on a new three year strategy, there’s no board of trustees to pass things through, there’s just good ideas and not-so-good ideas.

It’s your job to find the good ideas and use them to direct what you do, and how you describe it.

That’s not to suggest that you shouldn’t plan ahead, but being able to change things to make sure you get them right.

Ross, a former-colleague who’s now in the Digital Diplomacy Group at FCO described us as being ‘agile’ – I think this is a good way to describe it. And being agile in changing times like these is definitely a good thing!

We’re constantly tweaking our business plan, and it’s always out of date pretty quickly. It’s quite funny looking back at the earliest versions and how far our thinking has developed – hopefully in the right direction!

And as things develop …

You’ll have to learn stuff, but don’t try to learn everything

You’ll have to learn stuff.

This might seem obvious, but some of this stuff that you’ll have to learn is probably stuff you might not be that interested in learning. Sad but true.

Having worked in big organisations like the civil service, where you know your job description down to the letter (so that you can palm off as much work as possible!), it’s clear that this is the opposite.

In a small organisation like ours (two people), being versatile is important. And not always in a fun way: playing chief executive is fun, but we both need to be admin assistants too!

Knowing the limits of your versatility is the tough bit: the trick is to be able to differentiate between knowing when it’s worth taking the time to learn something, and when you’re best off paying an expert to do it.

Why spend two weeks learning to use an accountancy package when you can pay an accountant to do them in a day? Resources may be scarce, but it’s important to remember what you’re good at, and why you’re there in the first place.

I guess if you can do something:

To a good standard
Quickly
Without paying
Which will benefit you again in the future

Then do it! If it’s a one off that will take ages, then don’t!

Sometimes you’ve got friends you can call on to help you with this stuff, but …

Be wary of overplaying connections

Just because you’re excited about your new organisation, and you’ve got a really good contacts, it doesn’t mean you should push them all really hard to help you.

At best, you could force them to reluctantly give you a hand on something they don’t want to do, at worst, you could lose them as a contact all together.

Better to gently remind people of what you’re up to, and open up any opportunities to them. Reminding people is usually pretty easy too, because of the sheer number of ways that you can contact people – twitter, facebook, linkedin, phone, email, letter etc…

Of course, give your cards out widely, chat about what you’re doing with everyone, and there might be a time when you’re begging your Auntie’s son for some legal advice, but in general, I think it’s best to be patient with your efforts.

This could be anyone – a web designer, a lawyer, or an SEO expert – and I think the rule holds for them all.

Interestingly, I see this A LOT in London, maybe because there are just more blaggers here. A friend and I were talking about the same thing within the music industry- people mistake having a contact, with actually doing the work themselves – dangerous!