Businesses and Entrepreneurs driving social change
Tech4Good South West joined forces with Quartet Community Foundation for a fascinating panel discussion last week on why and how businesses and entrepreneurs are well placed to drive social change. There is nothing new about this, in fact some would say that the Quakers started this movement.
I think what is different now is the lines between profit and purpose are starting to align in many sectors and being demanded by ‘customers’ but there is still a lot of work to be done and part of our [Tech4Good South West) mission is to amplify the impact of technology for good across the South West and enable all communities to access the skills to take advantage of technology.
On the panel we had:
Krissie Barrick, Head of Business Influencing at Scope: Scope’s mission is to create an equal future with disabled people
Chis Blues, Director at Social Tech Trust: The UK's leading dedicated investor of socially motivated tech.
Jaya Chakrabarti MBE, TISCreport: tiscreport.org is a global Transparency In Supply Chains (TISC) platform built to help socially responsible organisations
Chris May, Founder of Mayden: Mayden specialises in technology that supports healthcare services to deliver data driven, outcome focussed and patient centred care.
John Steinlet, Quartet Community Foundation: Quartet is the local community foundation for the Bath & North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire
Before I give a brief overview of the key discussion points, I just wanted to highlight how this panel, to a certain degree, is a microcosm of the wider ecosystem that could and should be replicated across the South West to help meet some of the challenges communities face. You have the perfect ingredients: deep knowledge of the challenges disabled people face, alongside technological and business skills, social investment and philanthropy.
This isn’t to suggest that disability is something to be ‘solved.’ Rather, with the right conditions, communities can explore how technology can assist, and social investors, philanthropists and businesses can fund innovation or share skills, delivering products or services based on a deep understanding of community needs. For instance, imagine a product development team experiencing firsthand the barriers that disabled people encounter in their workplaces or services, then being able to adapt their products accordingly, with insights from disabled individuals, so disability is no longer a barrier, as highlighted by Krissie Barrick of Scope, when she said “changing the fabric of society so that barriers for disabled people no longer exist”.
This model could be replicated across sectors to address various challenges, as Jaya Chakrabarti MBE put so well, it is about doing “a whole lot of connected things”.
Below is an illustration of how the Tech4Good South West ecosystem can foster the right environment for these connected skills and knowledge to align.
The messy reality:
Ok, my harmonious ecosystem that I laid out above of ‘the challenges’,’the expertise’, ’the innovation’, ‘the funding’, ‘the products and services’, ‘the profit’ and ultimately a societal improvement, is not quite that simple and it’s messy and not as coordinated as it could or should be.
The discussion kicked off with a series of questions about how businesses and entrepreneurs can contribute to social change. I think the two stand out comments were around collaboration and moving beyond old business models.
The complex and often systemic work of supporting social change can only be achieved in partnership with others. These partnerships need to break down the old view of ‘for-profit’ vs ‘not-for-profit. As a society we need to build businesses that cross the divide. Going back to my oversimplified ecosystem, you can see how a set of strategic and purpose driven partnerships could align to create impact and profit.
As Chris Blues said:”Embrace the messiness, intersectionality is key to social tech”. So, partnerships are one way to help manage and embrace the messiness, without partnership in the ‘profit and purpose’ space, you will struggle to succeed.
The conversation then moved onto, how do businesses and social entrepreneurs stay true to their impact goals while ensuring they’re successful as businesses. Chris May of Mayden highlighted the more traditional and effective approach “cliched as it sounds, it was always about giving back by channelling a percentage of our profits to charity the moment that we had a healthy profit and loss account”.
There was agreement that the sweet spot is designing social impact into your business’s products and services from the get go. This is clearly easier said than done. All too often, the communities that face the toughest environments are often as a result of market failure and this is where philanthropy, pro-bono skills, the state and social investment need to play a role.
Going beyond painting community centres?
One area above and beyond hard philanthropic cash where businesses can make a huge contribution is through sharing skills to support the voluntary, community and social enterprises (VCSE). John Stienlet highlighted this approach. John manages the ProHelp programme at Quartet, a service to connect businesses to local VCSE organisation to give free advice and specialist support.
John had some good advice for businesses who want to share their skills either through ProHelp or arrange it themselves, the key things John highlighted that businesses need to consider are: do your homework about the organisations in your local community, understand your strengths and how you can usefully contribute, go and speak and listen to organisations and their needs, ensure you have an exit plan and work in partnership and acknowledge that the benefits flow both ways.
Taking action:
As the session came to an end, the panel were asked to reflect on the conversation and to give one action we could take to move this brief conversation into action.
To align profit and purpose there was agreement that collaboration is a must, designing for social impact from the start, being open and acting as advocates, be curious, challenge the status quo and get involved in stuff, like Tech4Good South West and Quartet Community Foundation.
So, that is my take on the event and before I sign off, I want to thank Nicholas Lee and Annie Legge for chairing the session, SetSquared and Engine Shed for hosting us and to everyone who came along.
Written by Ed Howarth, Social Sector Lead at Tech4Good South West
If you want to get involved, here are some options:
Tech for Good South West
Join the Tech for Good South West Network - https://tech4goodsouthwest.org/membership-about
Keep up to date - https://www.linkedin.com/company/tech4good-south-west/
Join our open LinkedIn Group - https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9155546/
Quartet Community Foundation
Find out more about Quartet Community Foundation - https://quartetcf.org.uk/
Volunteer your skills via ProHelp - https://quartetcf.org.uk/help-with-your-giving/prohelp-probono/