19 Tuesday Aug 2014
Here at 338 City Road, my colleague Amir and I have been busy working on a starter pack for people interested in careers in social change/learning more about philanthropy/transitioning careers into the Third Sector.
We have come up with this pack (click to download), which is very much incomplete, has as much opinion as fact and is hopefully useful to anyone interested in the space… TSIC Careers Resources
01 Sunday Jun 2014
If I had the cash I would put £100k into researching, planning and advocating for a new idea that I think could have a major impact on unemployment, job satisfaction, economic efficiency and social mobility.
Given that there are many people/organisations who have £100k and care about these issues – government, corporations, foundations and individuals – I hope one of them reads this, and does it.
The idea would be to have a staff member at a secondary school/college who’s a hybrid of a Connexions officer/careers advisor, a Job Centre Plus advisor, an alumni/parent/community outreach officer and an Education Business Partnership officer.
Their job would be to source opportunities for work experience, insight days, internships and even jobs, to organise CV/interview clinics and have drop-in careers counselling services. Their target market would be former students of the school/college who could benefit from career development support.
The reason I think it’s a good idea is because:
a) People have a strong connection to their former educational establishment. Some will assume that people who didn’t do well academically at school don’t have this connection, but there’s no data to back that up. Schools/colleges will, I believe, be a better institution to engage with than Job Centres for most of the people who can benefit from this service;
b) Many schools & employers find it difficult to work together because work placement opportunities eat into curriculum time and there are child protection issues – targeting people aged, say, 18 – 30, would negate both these problems. More opportunities could be created were this programme in place;
c) There’s a swathe of people who don’t feel it appropriate to go to a Job Centre because they already have a job. They may well hate their job, get no professional development and not use their skills and talents, but they aren’t unemployed and therefore get no support. These are people who could contribute more taxes, who could add value to the economy and could be happier. For them, there is no face to face support service. Giving career development support – sprucing up your CV, getting ideas for where to apply next, access to relatable networks and opportunities – would make for a better matched labour force to job market and a happier and fairer society.
The idea doesn’t take a lot more explanation but I’m pretty sure it’s one worth exploring. In order to figure out if it’s a really good idea, someone needs to test whether people in jobs would take up the service if available, whether enough of the target population feel a positive connection to their old schools/colleges, and whether parents/alumni/local businesses would indeed be open to making opportunities available to local young people after they leave school.
I’ve put some thoughts down on how this could happen in case you are interested in reading further. They are at: https://brookfieldgroup.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/how-100k-could-reduce-unemployment-increase-social-mobility-part-two/
Jake Hayman is the Founder/CEO of The Social Investment Consultancy and Future First.
PS. I’m going to make changes/improvements to this as I get feedback.
01 Sunday Jun 2014
It was announced this month that a significant portion of the investment lined up for the Peterborough social impact bond, to finance the mentoring and support of short-term release offenders, will no longer be used. About half the cash will remain in the bond and pay out on performance as planned, while the other half will never be called on.
The government has introduced a national mentoring and support programme for short-term prisoners, which is close enough to the nature of the intervention the bond is financing, to make it unfair to expect the bond to out-perform other services. Investors in the bond had their repayment tied to a comparative reduction in re-offending rates amongst ‘their’ released offenders – something that is now compromised by the government roll out.
For many, this will signify a let down for this flagship social impact bond and lead to a degree of caution from future investors. The ‘innovative’ form of finance did not complete as planned.
For me, this shows the sector fulfilling its role. The purpose of the Third Sector is not to operate mass-scale programming instead of government, but to translate services to local communities and, as in Peterborough, to innovate in order to inform government practice.
Now, in this particular case, some (many?) will argue that the government has a) screwed with the Peterborough model just when they are getting it right b) not given the trial enough chance to prove and improve itself and therefore (and most importantly) c) rolled out an intervention without enough thought or data about how to best do it. Putting these concerns aside, as a model, I think investors should be incredibly proud of the use of innovative finance to test something that has gone on to inform national policy.
‘Going to scale’ has come to be associated with the number of beneficiaries, staff or programmes an organisation has. In reality, it is about how far the ideas and models the organisation has developed are able to reach those it has the potential to benefit. At some point in the sector’s search for ‘sustainable’ models to grow organisations, this point seems to have been completely lost.
What’s interesting about Peterborough is that it wasn’t a simple case of grant-finance funds innovation, and innovation informs policy. No, in this case there were investors who wanted their money back. As such, many could say that the Bond was a failure because it did not absorb all the finance as planned. All that work lining up money, convincing investors, the due diligence costs… and we didn’t even use the full allotment of finance available.
Fortunately in this instance the investors were Foundations in the habit of making grants (grant = no money back/guaranteed 100% loss), so the chance to make some return (even if less than anticipated) and have a national policy influence is pretty amazing (providing they have the influence they wanted).
What’s interesting to consider, is whether more commercial investors would have deemed this to be a great failure – not getting fully invested after all the due diligence costs – and even tried to protect against this happening. The flow of mainstream investment into social finance should be encouraged, but we cannot ignore that a purely commercial investor would naturally guard information to ensure the success of their investment, rather than openly sharing best practice. That behaviour could have hindered the scaling of a model and programme that, done right, could have a transformative impact on reoffending rates nationally – less people in jail, less victims of crime, less cost to the tax payer.
While other impact bonds may be more straightforward, the over-arching aspiration of any investment in innovation should be to see ideas create high quality impact at scale. All investors in impact bonds should recognise this, lest we run the risk we protect our ideas and make more money next time.
*I wrote about this because I think it’s an interesting case study – any feedback/additions/different angles are welcome. Thanks to those who saw a first draft and guided me away from some inaccuracies/stupidities & one made up word.
Jake Hayman is the CEO of philanthropy research and advisory firm The Social Investment Consultancy – www.tsiconsultancy.com.
