Hi Charles, In what now seems a rather prescient piece, the idea of changing the way we think of business was first delivered, from a manifesto for a more inclusive form - social capitalism. At the time something the US wasn't ready for.

As long ago as 1999 the opportunity to deliver it came with the collapse of the Russian economy, failure of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) to apply trickle down development and a subsequent microeconomic development approach that paved the way for founding the Russian Microfinance Center in 2002.

That's my point, that years before the Acumen fund had been conceived, the concept of what I've grown to know as social enterprise was founded on the anticipation of economic meltdown. Unsurprising perhaps, that the academic community choose to disregard it.

The argument, made in 1996 is here:

http://www.p-ced.com/about/background/

and here:

http://www.p-ced.com/about/history/

So yes, I agree with all of the above about help and generosity. We've since persuaded the governmment of Ukraine that it makes sense to invest in their children. Achieved by social purpose from business.

Jeff

Yeah this current financial crisis is an opportunity for the world to rethink the way it does business. My interest in this lies in the metaphysical, in the rapid deterioration of the situation and the implications for humanity. This boom, bubble and bust was no chance event as it's happened before and it will happen again if left to its own devices. Due to humanity's material focus we are in the quickening of an awakening, before a transition of ages in 2012. It's no accident that a coordinated global response is now needed, in an undeniable interconnected world. I like Paul Light's idea of a "democratic revolution" in that ultimately governments are accountable to tax paying people,even while bailing out banks so the real power now is potentially with the people. The real economic issue, other than free and easy credit being aggressively marketed in activities over the last few decades, - is the acceptance of corporate greed and the uneven distribution of wealth creation, ie hedge fund managers, derivatives and credit default swaps. Gordon Brown is right, it is time for new rules. Human excesses need to be rebalanced, the system needs to be transparent and accountable. This is not the end of the story as the plot will certainly thicken as everyone sharing the collective experience will be affected. It is time to rebuild the notion of what wealth creation really is for, not private fortunes but for the public good.

Hi, Jeff:

I was fascinated the read the P-CED History, and see the way that a point of view about the importance (and "non-disposability") of human beings as an idea morphed into the specifics of a proposal for the Clinton White House, and the notion of companies which devote half their profits to the surrounding community. 1996, eh?

I've actually wondered what the timeline was. Grameen traces its history back to 1976, and Wikipedia suggests the phrase "social entrepreneur" occurs in a 1972 book, J. Banks' The Sociology of Social Movements, but things have really picked up in the last five or so years, as far as I can tell.

You mention that you've been working with government, too, in the Ukraine. I'd be happy to hear more about that.

And thanks for "breaking the ice" on this conversation. I think there's a lot to be discussed here, and I am definitely hoping more people will chime in...

It's a big topic.

Interestingly Charles, the idea of business, government and NGOs collaborating to address world problems re-emerged this year at Davos, though what you read had been out in cyberspace for a decade. The Tomsk Initiative was proof of concept, but even more remarkable is that the author was homeless before it started, using all he had left to fund the trip to Russia and the research paper.

The next project funded by a consultancy fee for the former, directed at an Islamic group, the repatriated Tatars of Crimea. A run-in with government who wanted to bypass his copyright and add private projects, had him enforce copyright. He returned to the US and was again homeless in 2003, fasting and blogging for economic rights in the US. I offered him an exit. His Senator, John Edwards opened the Center for Poverty Work and Opportunity.

After we set up P-CED in the UK, came the opportunity to be interviewed by a leader of the Tatar diaspora. He describes the swords into ploughshares objective and the concept of more inclusive capitalism.

http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/economicdev.html

As you confirm, there was little written about social enterprise at the time. I Googled and found one newsgroup, I joined and introduced myself, to discover both social and enterprise absent.

So, at the beginning of 2004 we launched in the UK, spending 3 months putting together a proposal for community broadband. It was a year before community interest companies were introduced and in retrospect, the model wasn't yet understood by those in the cooperative and charitable sectors we approached for seed funding. He had ideas for a Ukraine wide project, we took an exploratory trip to Prague as a potential base of operations and on return he was barred as a potential economic migrant. Destiny forced him back to Ukraine just as the Orange Revolution was gathering pace.

To make one point perfectly clear, we haven't worked with government in the sense of being engaged by contract. It struck me the other day, finding another document from the last decade, which rather encapsulated what Terry had been doing with government, US and other.

http://yoz.com/wired/1.01/features/paine.html

So for Ukraine, it was a question of pointing out what could be done rather than waiting to be invited. This was a research paper, 3 years in the making and delivered through channels to government there and the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Along with it went two other papers, one for an educational project, the other re-submission of the "Tatar" paper, since tensions in Crimea were rising as Russia found greater reason for bringing it back within their sphere of influence. It is still at risk, as one may deduce from Georgia.

The aim was to point out what they could do for themselves,

"The needs for drastically improved communication infrastructure in Ukraine are manifold. We see a democratic political movement in its infancy that will have difficulty in advancing without the same basic and affordable communication infrastructure available in each and every democratic nation in the world. Ukraine does not have this.

We see a nation staggering under the crushing burden of widespread poverty, the extent of which no one is sure but which most people assessing the situation realistically is at least twenty five percent of the population. We understand that communication – particularly high-speed Internet communication at a cost that is affordable to half the population and all businesses – is essential for economic growth and development so that poverty can be reduced.

We see a staggering array of social problems arising directly from poverty, including but not limited to tens of thousands of children in orphanages or other state care; crime; disrespect for civil government because government cannot be felt or seen as civil for anyone left to suffer in poverty; young people prostituting themselves on the street; drug abuse to alleviate the aches and pains of the suffering that arises from poverty and misery; HIV/AIDS spreading like a plague amidst prostitution, unprotected sex, and drug abuse; more children being born into this mix and ending up in state care at further cost to the state; criminals coming from poverty backgrounds, ending up as bandits, returning to communities after prison, with few options except further criminal activity. These are all part and parcel of the vicious negative cycle of poverty, and this threatens to destroy Ukraine, if Ukraine is defined in terms of people rather than mere geographic boundaries. Overall, population is steadily declining; families have not sufficient confidence in tomorrow to reproduce more than 1.2 children on average per couple."

http://www.p-ced.com/projects/ukraine/national/

That was October 2 years ago, struggling at the time against a furious smear campaign hosted on Google, someone didn't want this to happen.

What's happened since is that Ukraine has adopted 3 recommendation so far as law, relating to the creation of 400+ rehab centres, doubling the adoption allowance and commencing a pilot of a "home for all orphans" announced just over a week ago.

Everyone blogs nowadays, even our government. Yesterday, I found our own Foreign Secretary at it. He'd been writing about the key position of Ukraine between Europe and Russia, other members of his staff write of the relationship between development and arms reduction and the importance of involving Russia in any approach to world poverty.

http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/

We know these things, being just that little bit in front of government thinking in this sphere. So I asked our Foreign Secretary whose brother coincidentally is the minister for social enterprise, why they needed to spend public funds on what we were doing for free.

Jeff

Jeff:

So I asked our Foreign Secretary whose brother coincidentally is the minister for social enterprise, why they needed to spend public funds on what we were doing for free.

I find it admirable that the UK has a "Minister for the Third Sector" - although I believe the position has changed hands in the last few days- and was particularly heartened to read Kevin Brennan's opening salvo:

In the light of recent global economic events, the Government is more determined than ever to support the third sector through the upcoming months and years.

We recognise that charities, voluntary groups and social enterprises will face tough challenges, particularly in raising donations, while demand for their services is likely to go up.

"A link to Kevin Brennan's statement of 10/10/2008": http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/third_sector/news/news_stories/081010_statement.aspx

Let's hope this is a n occasion where the actions match the rhetoric.

Hello again, Jo -

You write:

this current financial crisis is an opportunity for the world to rethink the way it does business

I don't know about 2012 myself, but I certainly think we have a situation where some rethinking is both possible and in order, and from my point of view, steering a course that combines reasonable and necessary self-interest with a richer support of community and environment is the way to go. But how to do that without further polarizing an already polarized world? It seems to me that we need a shift in attitude

not a movement even, let alone an ideology, but a gradual, smooth, increasing recognition of the importance of the survival and life quality of others in the context of safeguarding our own.

In business terms, that's very much what social entrepreneurship is already interested in and working on, it seems to me

making practical, social improvements in a way that is financially, socially and spiritually rewarding.

And the first stage in such a process, it seems to me, is having a conversation about it. That was part of what allowed South Africa to transition out of apartheid - the public conversation encouraged by the Mont Fleur scenarios

I'm hoping this conversation will light one corner of that fire, and am delighted that you've joined in.

How do we spread the word?

I apologize for the formatting problems above, I am still trying to get used to our Plone software's somewhat unusual formatting requirements.

Charles I just wanted to say first that Jeff and Daniel should be applauded for what they're doing. Winston Churchill once said "continuous effort, not strength or intelligence is the key to unlocking our potential". Steering the course without polarizing people can be seen in examples from the past. The unification of South Africa from the brink of civil war is a good one. I think the plotted pathways to the future in the Mont Fleur papers, as an analogy for this current crisis is hovering in between lame duck, ostrich and stuck in the past scenarios. Another analogy to how to beat this crisis is the example of the unification of Europe after WWll. Just before the war Carl Jung wrote of his despair for the future of the planet, but he had hope too. He put forward that by overcoming our primitive emotions, we are able to embrace our shadow sides. Instead of projecting emotions like fear and greed onto others where they become psychological distortions, if we recognize them in ourselves we are more able to reach that shift in attitude and perspective that is required. Of course it takes work.

Hi, Jo:

I just wanted to thank you for this post.

Like you, I believe that a psychological shift is a key ingredient in "remaking the world" so that we can build a sustainable and humane civilization. That change, it seems to me, has to come individually, and only then can it gather the kind of recognition that will sustain genuine change.

I have brought this quote over from our previous discussion, A link to Where is the Money?

Jerome Peloquin offered us an excerpt from his first commentart in The MicroCapital Newletter:

*This writer experienced first hand, the effects of the then pending crisis. In June, our newly formed MicroVenture Support, a social mission initiative, was poised to launch when Morgan Stanley withdrew its Microfinance unit. This caused a domino effect. That resulted in the evaporation of our committed funding.

In the late winter and early spring of this year, meetings at the MF Club of London were awash with new MF units being formed by all virtually all the international investment houses MFDAQ, a new social mission stock exchange, planned to inject $300 Billion in SR funds to support the MF sector. Our enterprise was to be the new exchanges first offering. (see announcement in microcapital newsletter). In May, MFDAQ was the darling of the market’s rush to microfinance. By mid June as the global maelstrom gained momentum, the decks were swept clean and the new funds evaporated. To date the exchange has yet to bring forth its first successful offering.*

What has the impact of the crisis already been on your social entrepreneurial organization and planning? What future issues do you foresee?

Charles, One of the things which seems hardest to get across as a social enterprise of the for=profit kind is that one needs revenue flow to deliver social outcome. We as a business aren't getting through for example to the Third Economic Sector itself, who clearly have software development work and see the value of investing in it.

Media is another obstacle, often uninformed and unwilling to add commentary. A recent example being the announcement of a microfinance fund for Russia, where our first project had pioneered the moral collateral model that was replicated and became the foundation for the Russian microfinance centre.

Today I think I found the root of the problem, a government sponsored research document that explores findings of a social enterprise survey, to draw conclusions about diversity and the non-profit for profit split. Needless to say, nothing I've contributed here, or any other high profile social enterprise forum over the last few years, is included. By omission, we are further distanced from the sector.

http://tinyurl.com/6cw5p5

The greatest irony of this is that is comes from ESRC, one of the UK's Joint Research Councils, for some years a customer of our software development revenue operation.

Hi Charles, good to see you again.

While for many people this meltdown has become personal, many other people have been having their own meltdowns for a long time, and except for huge rushes of generosity following events like 9/11, the Tsunami, Katrina, and major earthquakes, most people have been struggling to overcome their meltdowns in relative obscurity.

However, since this meltdown gets the attention of people who have considerable wealth, maybe it will create a window of opportunity to create something that lasts beyond the initial surge of concern for all of the social benefit organizations who face closure or reduction of services due to reduced revenue.

There was an event yesterday that might have caught your attention. It was BlogAction Day 2008 http://www.blogactionday.org/

Thousands of bloggers posted articles about poverty, which were aggregated on this single site. To use an anology, that was the Tsunami of the moment, and thousands of people paid attention. I wonder how many donors were blogging, or reading these blogs?

My queston is: How will all of these bloggers stay connected, and keep talking about this issue, for the next 365 days, and the next decade? Or how will their attention result in actions that millions of people take every day, to give time, talent, dollars, that results in a distribution of constantly-improving programs and services into all of the high poverty areas of the world?

The opportunity the meltdown presents is to draw more of the donors into this discussion on Social Edge, or in other forums. I suspect that there are many in philanthropy, and who are Social Investors, who are already having their own discussions, where they are thinking about ways to ramp up funding for the non profits, NGOs and SEs that they support, so they overcome these tough times.

How many donors and SE investors are reading what we write on Social Edge? If you recal the www.omidyar.net forum, how many donors were following that discussion, and reaching out to people who presented great ideas with offers of investment?

As you know I've been piloting the uses of maps, databases, and web libraries to connect the various organizations in Chicago who want to help kids from poverty and around low performing schools. How they want to help, and what they want to accomplish, is not unformly agreed upon, which means that much of the good intentions are just random acts of kindness. They don't last long enough to change the long-term behaviours and career outcomes for most kids, and they don't reach into all of the places where kids need extra help. You can find links to my maps and resources at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com

During this time when we have the attention of donors, if we do, we can encourage them to support this type of data/mapping/blogging strategy, not just in Chicago, but in all parts of the world. Then donors can not only choose who they want to help now when we're in a crisis, but who they will continue to help for the next decade, so that the meltdown people are experiencing because of poverty, or natural disasters, will be more likely to be overcome.

Hi Dan,

It got as far yesterday as our own Social Enterprise Coalition sending out a survey about how social enterprises had been affected over the past months.

Yes, drawing the participants into forums where those actively engaged will be found should be the aim and in this respect I regret not learning about blog action day until yesterday. I had a small exchange on the Guardian newspaper Comment is Free section with a reader who thought those blogging would better serve the cause by doing rather than writing.

Bob Dylan's phrase "Ten thousand whispering but nobody listening" from Hard Rain came to mind on one hand but on the other there were examples of those who did change world views, like Tom Paine I mention above, by writing pamplets that would found a nation. No one more than Dickens, could have made us aware of poverty versus industry, the allegorical siblings of Ignorance and Want and his address to "admit it for your factious purposes".

Wordsworth and Coleridge took the open form of publishing in their Lyrical Ballads to make poetry more accessible to the common man, delivered us understanding of "those little unremembered acts" and offers early insight into the concept of self-empowerment over charity.

"Man is dear to man: the poorest poor long for some moments in a weary life When they can know and feel that they have been themselves the Fathers and the dealers out of some small blessings, have been kind to such, as needed kindness, for this single cause, that we have all of us a human heart."

From a distant culture, a Hindu lawyer corresponds with a Russian author about the "Law of Love" and passive resistance, Tolstoy touches Ghandi, Gandhi in turn touches Martin Luther King.

Your work and the World Wide Connectory David Bale illustrate the power of mapping to identify need and resources, this is information and poor people remain poor because of lack of information as CK Prahalad now tells us.

Maps are probably the key to morph ten thousand whisperers into hubs for local action?

Hi Jeff,

The maps are tools. So are the blogs. What's key is that people create events, like Blog Action Day, where people use their words, art, music, etc. to point people to the maps, and lists of actions, so that the event stimulates movement in the commerce of helping social change organizations create change. Such events and actions need to happen all around the world on a consistent basis.

It's not too late to take part in this event. I spent time yesterday reading blog articles and introducing myself, via comments, to the writers who wrote articles related to my own interest areas. I did a google search for ( "Blog Action Day" maps ) and found a number of bloggers who wrote about using maps. This helped me narrow down the field of people I was connecting to.

If I keep mining this list of 11,000 blogs, I suspect I can expand my network, and find a few new friends. For instance, after posting on one blog, the blogger wrote to me and told me of growing up in Chicago, being involved in education, and having a brother working for the city in workforce development. She introduced us and we're meeting today!

The authors you referred to in your post are some of the most well known, and most talented, writers of our history. They wrote in a time when only a few people could rise to public visibility. Today, anyone can write a blog, and those who have talent, and an important message, have a chance to build a following, and point that following to places (maps) where they can contribute time, dollars, and talent to achieving social benefit goals of a variety of different organizations.

Jeff:

a Hindu lawyer corresponds with a Russian author about the "Law of Love" and passive resistance, Tolstoy touches Ghandi, Gandhi in turn touches Martin Luther King.

Part of what's going on here is a spark being passed, I think. I have talked About this before in terms of my mentor, Fr Trevor Huddleston, who doffed his hat to a lady in South Africa. He was white, British, a priest, and she was black, a woman, a mother - and his gesture left an indelible mark on her son, who was sitting by her, and could not understand why a white man - in that apartheid and baaskap laden South Africa of the times

would show his mother such respect. His name was Desmond Tutu.

And isn't Wordsworth talking of this, too, in that poem you quote, "The Old Comberland Beggar"?

Some there are, By their good works exalted, lofty minds And meditative, authors of delight And happiness, which to the end of time Will live, and spread, and kindle: even such minds In childhood, from this solitary Being, Or from like wanderer, haply have received (A thing more precious far than all that books Or the solicitudes of love can do!) That first mild touch of sympathy and thought, In which they found their kindred with a world Where want and sorrow were.

The secret of that spark is no secret - that one should throw oneself with disciplined love into all life's moments.

And then there are the specifics: the maps, the blogging, the petitions, the governments ands offices, the foundations, the donations, the works of generosity and mercy, the ways of assessing social impact, the scaling up, the slow and I trust inevitable shaping of a more just and sustainable society.

It's good to see you again, too, Daniel.

I think you make an important point when you write:

While for many people this meltdown has become personal, many other people have been having their own meltdowns for a long time, and except for huge rushes of generosity following events like 9/11, the Tsunami, Katrina, and major earthquakes, most people have been struggling to overcome their meltdowns in relative obscurity.

And I certainly hope we have "a window of opportunity" here.

The opportunity the meltdown presents is to draw more of the donors into this discussion on Social Edge, or in other forums. I suspect that there are many in philanthropy, and who are Social Investors, who are already having their own discussions, where they are thinking about ways to ramp up funding for the non profits, NGOs and SEs that they support, so they overcome these tough times.

Again, I hope so.

It would be very encouraging if any donors who are reading here would make themselves known by posting. In these difficult times, it is all the more important for the various affected parties to hear each others' concerns and possibilities.

He is indeed Charles, talking of the whole spectrum of human generosity.

If I may dwell for a moment on Tolstoy, there's something I found written about which comes from the unpublished works of Malcolm Muggeridge, a writer of the following century, which resonate for me:

"Everything Tolstoy wrote is precious, but I found this final statement of the truth about life as he had come to understand it particularly beautiful and moving. That is what I have wanted to say to you, my brothers. Before I died. So he concludes, giving one a vivid sense of the old man, pen in hand and bent over the paper, his forehead wrinkled into a look of puzzlement very characteristic of him, as though he were perpetually wondering how others could fail to see what was to him so clear - that the law of love explained all mysteries and invalidated all other laws"

He goes on to describe how Tolstoy believed in a peasant myth, that buried somewhere lay a green stick bearing an inscription, a message that would end human misery and suffering. Muggeridge ends by suggesting that perhaps Tolstoy might himself be that green stick, in his very existence, as one considered a spiritual father.

When you thin about it today, in a world where there is still much hatred and violence, it might be easy to conclude that perhaps he was mistaken, but then humanity is always reaching out in love and compassion, we seem to be programmed for it, otherwise we might have exterminated each other long ago, if there was any more powerful force.

Tolstoy then switches the other way stating

"One could multiply to infinity the means of propagating human speech and thought, but it would remain no less the case that these travellers, so comfortably and rapidly transported, are neither willing nor able to commit anything but evil, and the thoughts and words they pour forth would only incite men to further harm."

Could that green stick still exist, might it be a metaphor for that by which we exchange thoughts, here today?

Clearly there is much which might be considered harmful in today's connected world, but might it also be another manifestation of the green stick, which under Tolstoy's views of law and observation if human endeavour for good, only triumph over that which offers us harm?

Getting back to the topic at hand, I think it's the shadow banking system that's really to blame for the current situation. Just like ourselves having a shadow, so does the financial system. Jeff, Wordsworth and Coleridge are my favorite poets.

Jo, I guess you've seen the widely circulated video by this name, produced by Paul Grignon? Unfortunately either it didn't reach enough people, or we all assumed that everything would be OK really.

The video ends with some conclusions about the need to change the system. Barter systems are one way we might avoid bringing the world to a standstill and there are some interesting models for alternate funding approaches to be found on the Peer2Peer Foundation's website. One of our regular contributors Chris Cook has gone a long way in developing his model for asset based funding that he calls Open Capital. I'm sure he'll be joining us soon.

We now read that the world has been sold 22 times over, in terms of debt versus production capacity, and wonder how it could have happened.

As a people-centered manifesto for more inclusive capitalism, our founder and I see it like this.

Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings. Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion.

Tolstoy, Ghandi, MLK and others have shown us that changing the world begins with changing people's minds. Tolstoy's "law of love" was saying that there is no separation in the highest law of life. This divine principle is the spark that gets passed on. Yes Jeff, I think Tolstoy saw himself somewhere inside the green stick. I really appreciated you telling the green stick story earlier in the year. I think the step forward for human consciousness is in the realization that this spark is the basis of life. Nothing can be without it so my advice in these economic hard times is, manifest love.

There are time when I feel frustrated by the way our various online resources work and don't work together. I have the feeling that this event, for instance, is part of a wider conversation that Patrick O'Heffernan's blog last week also touched on:

http://www.socialedge.org/blogs/dr-o/archive/2008/10/14/ipos-for-npos#comments

And it's a conversation that, as Daniel suggests, is no doubt going on in other places, too.

It would be neat if all the parts of that broader conversation could flow together, in much the same way that an RSS feed can bring together the latest posts from a dozen blogs or news sources.

And one way to work towards that is for us to post links, here, to other places where the same issues are being discussed.

Any suggestions?

Here's the corrected URL for Patrick's blog:

http://www.socialedge.org/blogs/dr-o/archive/2008/10/14/ipos-for-npos

If only there were a way to make a blog visible to all the many networks one gets drawn into to find onself replicating the same dialogue in each of them. The technology we have now offers some means of gathering feeds, rather than disseminating them. For example, IGoogle and Pageflakes could be used to harvest a collection of feeds on a given subject as one page, a Pagecast as they call it on Pageflakes.

Maybe I'll construct one tomorrow on the Economic Meltdown come to think of it.

Some of the CMS platform have reasonable scope. I know that for example, I can use DotnetNuke to do something similar for RSS feeds and other resources.

Social Edge has none I discovered, so first it's a question of creating one with an RSS editor product.

This creates an XML file which can then be listed on news aggrators, like Yahoo news and many others

Then we can consolidate the Social Edge feed on a page alongside similar content and related articles from other sources. iGoogle and Pageflakes are example, the latter being somewhat easier to set up, though no doubt Google will evolve. Here for example is a small consolidation from a group of social enterprise network sites. I made it public, and can invite other to co-edit.

http://www.pageflakes.com/jeff.mowatt/25126458

Jeff

First, I wanted to thank Jeff for introducing me to Tolstoy's "green stick". And then I'd like to invite everyone's comments on these two questions:

what can social enterprise do, practically, to facilitate government's response to the current financial crisis?

and what can government do, practically, to leverage social enterprise in its response to the crisis?

If nobody else is going to step forward. In the P-CED founding paper, it was proposed that social enterprise be self-propagating, the simplest interpretation being a trust fund to seed further profit for purpose business.

In our most recent effort in Ukraine, in a section dedicated to social enterprise we called upon US government to help support democratic transition with funding. 18 months later at Davos this year, the East Europe Foundation was launched to fund public-private cooperation in community enterprise, somewhat overshadowed by the announcement of Creative Capitalism, proposing similar business-led principles.

http://www.p-ced.com/projects/ukraine/national/

http://www.eef.org.ua/en/147.htm

The paper was faxed to the Senate Foreign Relation Committee where it would need to be endorsed, so there's no surprise in this taking shape as an element of Democrat policy.

http://www.socialenterprisemag.co.uk/sem/news/detail/index.asp?id=622

In Britain the government took the decision to embrace social enterprise in 2002, and ever since seems to have sown confusion about what it is. Community interest business arrived in 2005 with the CIC form and most publications attribute social enterprise origins here to the coop movement.

Incidentally, I responded to the article above, describing what I have said above, pointing out that from social enterprise came the concept of economic Smart Bombs. The journalist expressed interest, but someone above must have decided not to publish.

Charles you're asking some pretty big questions, the way I see it the financial crisis and continual financial turmoil has opened up a crossroad and the question is which road should capitalism take. Before governments and state shareholdings change back into private ownership, it's a good time for governments to rethink the rules of finance and give equity of opportunity to the invisible - the poor. This of course is where social enterprise comes in, especially community based programs. Before finance is shifted back into the hands of financial markets governments should set up funds and capital flows to social enterprises in the areas of health, education and energy to help social enterprise reach the very people who had the least to do with it but who are going to suffer the most. I know the finance system is afraid of socialism, but this really isn't socialism, it's common sense.

Perhaps then, a new generation of social entrepreneurs will emerge.

I would certainly love to see the present crisis taken as an opportunity for a shift to more socially concerned forms of living, Jo. And I agree that I am rasing big questions - I wonder whether we need to break them into much smaller chunks to get a really valuable conversation going.

There's a parallel conversation opening up with a blog post at:

http://www.publicinnovators.com/node/54

including a link to this event on the Edge

and I'm hoping that John Gardner will join us, here, there, or on his own blog -- which had a highly relevant post encouraging social entrepreneurship recently:

http://www.gardner.wsu.edu/?p=18

It would be great if this conversation and its tributaries and feeders could spread across the social enterprise network of blogs and RSS feeds...