Rise Of The Facilitators: Big Society Capital

Last night, at a ResPublica event, I heard Nick O'Donohoe, CEO of Big Society Capital, outline a pragmatic vision for a social investment market in the UK. Critically, BSC's role is not to hand out £600m in cash to well-intentioned social entrepreneurs. Instead, it's focused on creating the capability for deprived communities to identify, manage and finance projects that will have a mainly social impact, but with the expectation of some financial return. 

Let's say you want to introduce 'makerspaces' for local people with expertise in operating machinery to invent stuff and make individual items to order. It seems reasonable to believe this could help regenerate some industrial towns. Consider the adventures of Chris Anderson, who recently announced his departure as editor of Wired to run a drone manufacturing business he built as a hobby, as described in his latest book. 

How would you make it happen? How would you establish the feasibility of such a project, identify the right equipment, locate an appropriate building, obtain any necessary planning permission and so on? 

This takes time and expertise, not to mention seed money. Numerous intermediaries must be available to help entrepreneurs co-ordinate and finance their project locally. It can't be done by Big Society Capital from its offices in Fleet Street. It can't be done by civil servants from Westminster, or even by the local council. This has to be a distributed effort all around the country, leveraging online resources where that makes sense. Such intermediaries - or facilitators - will include social banks, active social investors, professional and other support businesses, as well as platforms that enable funds to flow directly from people with cash to social entrepreneurs. The role of Big Society Capital is to invest in the development of a strong network of these social investment intermediaries.

But maybe we shouldn't be too definitive about what is 'social'. I think this approach will be truly successful when facilitators and entrepreneurs aren't necessarily conscious of the fact that the positive social impact of their activities is far greater than the scale of their financial results. To this end, we should factor into all our corporate and project objectives an obligation to take responsibility for somehow improving the community to which the corporation or project relates. In this way, all businesses would have an overlapping social purpose as well as a financial one. 

Similarly, financial services need to support this broader responsibility. Of course it's critical that investors know exactly whether they are donating money, receiving interest payments or getting a share in a company. But if I'm putting £20 directly into any project, my customer experience shouldn't be different depending on whether I'm offered a ticket to a concert, interest at 3% per annum or 2 shares in the project operating company - in fact the same project should be able to offer me all three, seamlessly. That's the sentiment behind efforts to proportionately regulate peer-to-peer finance. All types of enterprise should be able to offer all kinds of instruments over a proportionately regulated digital platform, within an ISA.

Now that would generate some serious big society capital.

All Your Problems Solved - For Life

A new TV game show promises to solve all your problems for life - on the single toss of a coin.

A spokesperson for independent production company CoinToss Productions confirmed the show's ultimate promise, but refused to give further details. "We're still in stealth mode," she said, "and we don't know how this got out. But all will be explained in the launch."

Industry analysts were enthusiastic about the show's potential. One pundit, who preferred not to be named, suggested "this really captures the zeitgeist." Asked what he meant, he said, "it's a German word, and I'm not entirely sure what it means. But what's certain is this country is on its knees and the majority of people are employed by the government or receiving some kind of benefit. The entrepreneurial spirit, the get-up-and-go that created whole countries like America and Australia and... and... Fiji has been replaced by an entitlement culture the pinnacle of which is knocking a hole in a shop window to grab a telly, followed by a cheap lager and a bag of crisps down the local as a warm-up for the public sector strikes. I mean, a show like this will appeal to most people in the UK, of course, because it's just about basic human greed at the end of the day, isn't it? But it'll appeal particularly to those who expect it all on a plate and can't be bothered to take control of their own lives."

Sources say the show, which has the working title "Coin Toss", should be out in time for Christmas.



Image from Blackberrysites.

Big Society: The Trend Continues

I must say I'm enjoying all this "Big Society" malarkey. The debate about what in the hell it means, the irony of Liverpool City Council complaining it doesn't have to fund its involvement (which is the point, after all), the claims that volunteering is in decline, the claims that volunteering is doing just fine.

Wavy Dave must be pleased that it's all travelling in the right direction.

Because the big idea in the "Big Society", if there is one, is really for the Tories to make political capital out of a number of trends that have been building and converging throughout the past decade. They know that faith in our institutions has been in decline, that various facilitators are enabling us to personalise retailing, entertainment, travel, finance, politics and now public services. They know that everyone (except investment bank executives) is focused on sustainability and how to achieve more with less. They know these trends are not going to ebb away any time soon.

But who cares if the Tories try to claim the credit? That's politics. I'm all for having more Big Society debates. The more we focus on the problems of how to deliver public services more cost-effectively and efficiently, the better.