Peer-ing into the future of support for social entrepreneurs
People often become social entrepreneurs by accident, and many of the challenges they face are common. What better way to learn than by hearing from those just a year or two ahead of you. Dom Potter, head of networks at UnLtd describes a new flagship programme taking peer learning to the social sector.
Individuals and informal groups with passion and commitment frequently become social entrepreneurs by accident. They don’t set off with the intention of doing anything other than making where they live a bit better in some way. They plough their effort and energy into addressing a problem they or their neighbours face day to day.
And how many times have you heard someone say that they always knew they wanted to be a social entrepreneur, even when they were five years old? Zero, I’m guessing.
This makes it particularly difficult to spot a social entrepreneur in a local community before they kind of already are a social entrepreneur, especially for those of us not already in the local area regularly. But why does it matter that we might not be able to spot social entrepreneurs as they emerge in a local area?
Well, because we want to help them. All too often such socially entrepreneurial efforts are created from scratch by individuals with little or no experience of how to deepen and sustain the energy and social impact of their activity.
There is a great deal of reinventing the wheel. But this needn’t be the case. There are a significant number of people within local communities or in neighbouring areas who have the knowledge, skills and experience to offer peer-to-peer support for emerging socially entrepreneurial initiatives.
There are some amazing people working to support social entrepreneurs in the UK. People with the kind of wisdom, wit and commitment which goes a long way to helping social entrepreneurs make a success of what they do. Often these supporters have been entrepreneurs themselves or worked in large companies so can bring a much needed rigour and perspective to an organisation looking to scale their operations or their impact.
UnLtd have partnered with Santander to run a national campaign with the aim of significantly expanding the availability of peer-to-peer support to entrepreneurs who want to act for positive social change in their local areas. We want to support a national movement of people who can pass on their own skills and experience gained from establishing a social venture.
The campaign will run over 24 months from April 2013 to March 2015. Entrepreneurs are be able to apply either as individuals, an informal group, or may be existing initiatives. The first Awards have already been given out and the recipients will be appearing on Pioneers Post in the coming months as we follow their journey.
The campaign will provide several hundred Awards of £500 to entrepreneurs who want to share their knowledge, skills and experience through organising peer-peer support activities such as pop-up support events, training sessions, forming a partnership with a local FE college to run a course or through bringing together a group of people to form a local ‘Spark’ team that can organise a series of support activities.
We want entrepreneurs to propose new models and approaches that work best for their own communities, to learn from what works best and share the learning with their peers. For the most promising ideas, further funding will be available.
UnLtd and Santander are also supporting the emergence of local Hubs around this campaign, which will involve offering a convening platform to existing networks of social entrepreneurs and supporters to come together in a local area. Each Hub will be supported to set up their own local campaigns to reach out into their communities and encourage ideas for social action and social entrepreneurship.
Crucially, these local Hubs will be connected together across the UK to benefit from peer-to-peer support themselves as they set up vibrant, sustainable and decentralised Hubs with minimal viable infrastructure in place. Further innovation pilots will be carried out through the Hubs, including running local hackathons, challenge prizes and events programmes.
UnLtd’s work with social entrepreneurs demonstrates that each person we back goes on to help an average of another 5 entrepreneurial people. Armed with such knowledge, we think inspired social entrepreneurs are uniquely placed to reach out to, motivate and inspire their peers into action.
Social entrepreneurs become role models having gained valuable skills and experience through learning by doing. They inspire others to take an active role in creating social change. Social entrepreneurs have the confidence and respect of their peers and are well placed to organise support activities for other people who want to act, and do not know how to, or where to go for support.
Crucially, they can reach enterprising people with talent that professional agencies cannot. They have the trust of their peers, can navigate their communities and are able to engage those on the margins of society and those who will not engage with authority.
And at UnLtd and Santander we’re here to help them pass on their knowledge and experience to the next wave of social entrepreneurs emerging from our communities: people fixing their neighbourhoods and our society on the fly.
Find out more at UnLtd.