Spark and Sparklers = Social Enterprise Dynamite!

Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday this week, the Eastside team and partners managed a fantastic investment event for 15 social enterprises and 5 aspiring entrepreneurs in the field of homelessness.

Spark, for those who don’t yet know, is a pioneering investment programme that engages cross-sector leaders to allocate cash of £640,000 and in-kind prizes worth a further £1 million to organisations building social enterprises that tackle homelessness.

But Spark is about much more than the prize money. It is about the people, the passion, the connections, and real business partnerships that are created by bringing together leaders from across different sectors to talk to each other and engage.

Highpoint in Leicester provided the perfect backdrop for this engagement and as a flagship social enterprise for The TREES group, not only understands the impact social business can have but in their service, gave every single participant a truly high-end conference and venue experience (thank you Alison and Rachel!).

Our investment panel – consisting of John Montague, TREES group, Val Hibbert from the Department of Communities and Local Government, Kate Welch of Acumen, Nigel Kershaw of Big Issue Invest, Steve Mather from Places for People, Douglas Johnson-Poengsen of BT, and Philip Wright of PricewaterhouseCoopers - spoke highly of the passion and belief behind the 15 Spark winners’ business ideas.

For the first time, we also selected a number of aspiring entrepreneurs – individuals that have themselves experienced homelessness – to join the Spark programme. These ‘Sparklers’ brought a whole load of colour, vibrancy and inspiration to everyone that was attending. It’s great to find out they also found huge value in taking part, as Michael Goodison of Comedius wrote today: “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I don't know how to explain how I am still feeling right now. I know its a cliché, but it still seems surreal. I am still feeling the rush of adrenalin.”

With Spark prize allocation announced on July 8^th, we look forward to being able to report further on the journies of all the participants from across the programme, and encourage you to sign up to the newsletter. There are no doubt many exciting partnerships and places that these social enterprises will go in the future, so watch this space!

Written by Rachel Edmunds, Marketing & Communications Manager

Leaders for a new economy

I liked Kai Peter’s article in the FT that business leaders of tomorrow need a new bag of tricks to succeed in the current times of complexity as the transition to a mixed economy with multiple stakeholders takes place.

I was also interested to read Kai’s observation that traditional business education is not meeting this educational challenge.

It’s heartening to read as it gives credence to the new types of leadership initiatives we’re trying to develop at the Eastside Foundation.

We’re not a business school but we do believe that a great way for business professionals to develop new leadership skills is to work with peers from other sectors on strategic initiatives.

So in the last year we have pitted together teams of professionals from private sector firms (PricewaterhouseCoopers and BT) with social enterprises.

Take one example: A team of 5 business managers from BT were challenged to assist the management of Bikeworks – an East London based social enterprise employing homeless people – to put in place a corporate sales strategy.

The BT team worked on this intensively over 3 days to tight deadlines. Each team member pursued personal learning goals and each also learnt about social enterprise, homelessness, partnerships and relationship-building. The levels of engagement and feedback were very positive.

On a deeper level, the experience provided participants with insights into new types of business models and enabled each BT member to have hands-on experience of working in a mixed economy scenario.

Since then, BT has gone on to set up joint-ventures with other social enterprises.

If you would like to find our more about this initiative or get involved in some way then please get in touch with Tim Hartley.