Unlocking hidden wealth (Part 1) – finding time

A number of commentators have argued that people do not have the time to get involved in Big Society. Traditional surveys on civic participation over the last decade in the UK indicate that this may be true. Indicators such as volunteering levels appear to have plateaued, with recent falls occurring in 2009-2010, and few people attend public meetings. At first sight, this would suggest that the degree of civic action taking place has already peaked and is healthy but with little room for growth, leading one to ask whether there is any more capacity left.

But there are several problems with this analysis. The first is that there are indications that while the headline levels of volunteering have been relatively static, there is a danger that as the population ages it is increasingly carried out by fewer and older people, who do more each year as others do less, ignoring the potential for others to be more involved who have become less engaged of late in ways that fit their lifestyles, constraints, and circumstances, such as the young. The second, more serious point, is that the headline data does not capture often the many informal activities that would not be classified as volunteering, but which represent civic engagement, from the greeting of a neighbour to attendance at a club, to blogging on a hyperlocal or social media website – all the stuff not captured in formal economic statistics including most of the time we spend online, at home, and with our neighbours and in our communities.

In fact, more granular surveys suggest quite large numbers of people are willing to get involved in activities that affect them. Today’s IPPR/PwC report, Capable Commmunities: Citizen-powered public services has found that 42% of people would attend a regular meeting with their neighbourhood police team, and 18% would volunteer at a police station. 20% would be willing to commit to mentoring a child struggling in the education system, and 46% said they were willing to keep an eye on an elderly neighbour and 33% said they would regularly drive an elderly person to the shops. Over 90% however believe that the state should retain responsibility for delivering most key public services – that there still remains a role for the state.

Stepping back from the statistics, there are three principles to unlocking time so that citizens to get more involved, however large or small, in the Big Society.

Many people have time, or can create it

The first is to realise that there is often more time available than there might appear to be at first sight. For many, if they care enough about an issue and getting involved in society, various alternative time-consuming activities can be displaced (e.g. watching television, an activity already declining among some segments in society). It also only takes a few people to increase the levels of civic engagement that are most of use to society, such as the 3 percent who attend public meetings, to have ripple effects that enlarge civil society, even if most people still do not get involved in such an intensive way. There are also many people in certain demographic groups and at certain stages in their lives who will have more time than others which could be harnessed, if they were to be asked and supported in doing so. Groups such as the recently retired (of which there are every year now an additional 900,000), or those classed as incapacitated either physically or mentally (8.6 million people in the UK are registered disabled), and those who study full- or part-time (2.4m), who work part-time (7.8m). Such groups can often be seen as unable to participate in society as problems rather than having and being assets within communities. This suggest there is huge potential if it can be unlocked in certain segments of society, and where there is an interest in getting involved.

Those who genuinely lack time can trade it

Even where people lack time for whatever reason, whether as a single parent or busy working person or student, there are existing and innovative means for unlocking time to help make the most of the hours that are available for mutual benefit. The first of these is the increased use of mutual aid and bartering of services. Where neighbours and people are connected, arrangements can be created, for example sharing in childcare arrangements or caring for the elderly that can save and release time. These can be further formalised through activities such as time banking, or service credits, in which citizens can actually trade the hours they may have available (e.g. at the weekend or during the summer or over Twixtmas), in exchange for support when they need it to unlock hours for community and social activity (e.g. to get baby-sitting support to attend a meeting or football match with a participating time credit partner who has underutilised space or tickets). A final means by which time can be unlocked is through co-operative and mutual or community ownership of assets. Where citizens feel ownership over a facility or building, they can feel a greater compulsion to invest time in it, both because a strong tie of affection has been established, but also because such an investment will lead to a return whether financial or psychic further down the line.

Services can be configured to unlock time

Much of Big Society however will not necessarily require all citizens to invest vast amounts of time, since for most, their ability to participate in it will be mediated by public, private or voluntary services that have been adapted to work with citizens to harness the little time they have when they engage with the service. So the time used online or waiting in a queue or recovering from an operation could be harnessed to enable citizens to have a greater say, or find out more about the activities in their area, or to make participatory decisions that affect their lives. So services can be delivered more in the community, ideally multiple services at once, reducing travel time and going from one official to another. The rise of citizen games could facilitate real-world problem solving and giving even for busy commuters using online and mobile technologies. Certain services could involve taster sessions to allow citizens to not have to commit upfront to long-term engagement, such as with the National Childbirth Trust courses, which in turn feed longer-term participants. And chains of service providers can enable complex challenges to be tackled by the very committed but in scalable ways, harnessing the deep commitment of the few to benefit more and more people. Finally, we could probably do a lot more to make it easier for citizens to get involved in formal statutory processes and make them more inclusive, particularly for those from lower income backgrounds. Do we have to have so many meetings? Do they have to be held at times when only those that are around at that time can make them? Can we use technology such as mobiles and blogs and social media to hold ongoing conversations? Can we have meetings where people actually congregate already, such as in shopping centres and community centres and cafes? Could the format of the meeting be less dull and more interactive? Could meetings and consultative processes be run by locals in their front rooms or on the back of existing activities such as drop ins and meals on wheels deliveries and in the course of community organiser conversations on doorsteps? Could we reward attendance at such meetings with time credits? Maybe people do not go to public meetings not because they cannot be bothered but because the format of those meetings no longer fit our busy lifestyles and how we like to operate, and therefore need to be adapted.

 

Unlocking time through credits

Time credits appears to be one of the most promising developments that could help fuel the growth of the Big Society in years to come. The challenge, as I have learnt over the past week or so, will be how to build it to scale.

Last week I spoke at an event hosted by the Young Foundation looking at the Just Add Spice model of public sector time credits. And yesterday at the Cabinet Office, I attended a seminar given by Edgar Cahn, regarded by many in the field as the father of timebanking globally. He gave a number of insights from work he has carried out recently in the US which I have captured below and started by claiming that the core economy (the economy not captured by GDP data but covering everything we do for each other in the home and community and civil society) is the ‘operating system of society’ (sounds familiar). He shared a number of innovations which he has been trialling with various States and with the Obama administration including:

• youth courts in Washington DC to which 70 percent of non-violent juvenile crime cases are now referred using time credits in which young people sentence other young people to community service (including to jury service in the same courts) that have reduced reoffending by over 50 percent
• school-based time credits for older pupils to mentor younger ones to help them read and study which has reduced truancy and improved test scores
• ‘Homecoming Academy’ time credits which are used by ex-offenders to help each other settle into life after prison in which they serve the community by providing safe passage to kids in gang areas to get to school and to mentor kids who truant back into school
• eldercare credits (similar to social care credits) to enable care to be given to the elderly inside and outside hospital (changing lightbulbs, befriending, and other practical support)
• lawyers using time credits alongside a community to help close down crack houses and regenerate an area (could also be used in other cases where professional help is needed such as with asset transfer)
• university scholarships granted in exchange for time credits earned
• work apprenticeships using credits as part of the process of being trained (here the credits act as a kind of credit history analogous to that used in microfinance)
• timebanking in Chinatowns to help provide translation services

Key enabling ideas that could support the scaling of complementary currencies and time credit usage included:

• creating incentives and prizes for ‘frequent flying’ to reward those who had served the most and to celebrate commitment
• tying in time credits into procurement and changing the latter to recognise social value and the leverage of time credits bring in (in the US,Cahn has discussed with the Obama administration a citizen time match being a requirement of public contracts where possible)
• hybrid social enterprises which run with lower financial overheads and utilise time credits to create value and achieve their mission with communities online and offline (rationing the limited money available)

A lot more needs to be done to help scale up time credits, removing barriers in commissioning, in perceived and real risk, to educate the population at large, and to embed this approach in our public, private, and voluntary sector systems and mindsets. It could however be a third leg alongside public sector paid for services and pure volunteering in the quest to help release more citizen capacity (just as social investment is emerging as a third leg in social funding alongside public sector spending and philanthropy).

In Shoreditch, I’m part of a time credit scheme called the Timberwharf Timebank which has gotten some traction since its recent launch, and started to show benefits for participants in terms of improved wellbeing and mental health. The key challenge now is to scale the model learning from the above and to find partner organisations across Hackney willing to offer opportunities (finding willing individuals has curiously not been a problem, it is more the opportunities for them to help others that have been needed!). We are looking for members, be they GP clinics, schools, parts of the local authority service provision, and others from the private and voluntary sectors who act as anchors in the area. The deal is that partners provide both timebanking opportunities to share skills and where they can rewards (such as free use of space in offpeak times or services; cinemas and sports venues even offer seats; taster sessions and consultations). The timebank is currently looking for more opportunities for people to help others, so if you live or work in the area and have service opportunities and/or underutilised assets and capacity that could be used as rewards to offer either as an individual or organisation, get in touch.

Public sector reformers – we need you

One of the questions I get asked a lot these days is what public sector reform has to do with the Big Society. Surely supporting people to take more control of their lives, in association with each other, and with fewer barriers is mainly about volunteerism and neighbourhood action rather than who runs the job centre or how civil servants and front line professionals operate.

The truth is though, we are going to need public sector reformers, or as I prefer to call them – public reformers – just as we will need social entrepreneurs and civically engaged business people and workers to support this shift in power and control to citizens from within. The system needs to change to be more responsive, less obstructive, and more tailored to how people live so they can get more involved in ways that better suit modern constraints on our time and resources and particularly in deprived areas where the state often fails to help the people it should with its one size fits all approaches.

The most striking aspect of the recently published departmental business plans was the crystallisation of the Coalition’s commitment to push power and responsibility down to communities and front line public service professionals. It was woven into the detail of each and every department’s plan, not just in those bits labelled explicitly ”Big Society”. As David Cameron said, the plans were about “power to public sector workers, power to communities… a radical redistribution of power from government to communities and people”.

So there’s a clear theme here – Central Government should be focused on allowing public services to be steered by the people who work in them in response to the needs of the people who use them as well as directly or jointly by and with citizens. This theme is move away from top-down bureaucratic programmes and associated fixed targets to an approach where standards are set by the best service providers and transparency online and offline helps hold them to account alongside a strengthened role for Parliamentary and local democracy, with the help of local and national media, and citizens themselves.

Previous Governments have talked the talk about such empowerment but this Government is starting to walking the walk. This is set to be a cross Government effort. To illustrate, here are a few tasters from individual business plans and also some examples where progress is already being made:

Cabinet Office – The first wave of Pathfinder Mutuals are already active with twelve employee ownership projects taking control of service provision such as youth support and learning disability services. The next phase of pathfinders is to be launched by December 2010 and in January next year the department will publish plans to further expand employee ownership.

Department for Communities and Local Government – An end to the ring-fencing of grants to local government, except for the dedicated schools grant and the public health grant, by April 2011. This will hugely increase the ability of local authorities to respond to the specific needs of the local population.

Department for Education – Introduction of Free Schools with the first up and running by Sept 2011. The first free school groups are already working with the Department for Education and the New Schools Network to develop and finalise their plans.

Department of Health – Plans to give GPs and GP coalitions full power to commission health services for their patients from April 2013. Other groups of front line health professionals are already working with the Department to set up social enterprises to run local services such as a homeless healthcare service.

Business Innovation and Skills – Launch of a civil society red-tape taskforce to identify ways of reducing the bureaucratic burden on social enterprises and voluntary organisations, reporting by May 2011.

Whether you agree or not with these underlying policies you cannot dispute that they represent on the whole a desire to shift power to the frontline and citizens away from Whitehall. Of course, a lot still needs to be learnt in each of the cases above as elsewhere about how to support transition and overcome the technical barriers to getting involved. However, this is only one side of the coin – the onus is also very much on communities and groups of public service workers to engage and grasp their opportunity.

An area where the active engagement will be absolutely critical is the intention to allow groups of public service staff to club together and
“spin out” from public sector employment to form independent employee-owned social enterprises.  Don’t get me wrong, great results can be achieved from within Public Sector organisations but it can take even the most inspirational public sector leaders years to effect meaningful change from within public sector bureaucracy. Giving a group of staff a fresh start in their own independent organisation allows them to quickly sweep away unnecessary and non-statutory bureaucracy and focus on the things which genuinely contribute to achieving real outcomes for service users. It also encourages those remaining in the public sector to up their game or become independent themselves.

A demonstration of how this can work is the Department for Education’s Social Work Practice pilot programme, which is testing the delivery of social care for children by independent organisations. One of the models I came across recently being tested involves a group of local authority employed social workers who have “spun out” to form their
own independent employee-owned social enterprise. The flexibility and reduction in bureaucracy that operating as a small independent
organisation allows is already proving a great experience for both the Children in Care and the social workers e.g. social workers are able
to spend more time with the children and young people than they were able to from within the local authority; decisions are taken much closer to the children and young people with quicker turnaround times; staff satisfaction levels are high as staff feel empowered with more control over their work; and they have  been able to use their office space to create a much more welcoming and comfortable environment for both children and young people and staff compared to the norm which tends to be very impersonal.

The freedom and flexibility with which organisations like these can operate gives them a tremendous capacity to use their collective professional judgement to try new things and react to feedback from service users and citizens. Innovations which work can be shared whilst those which do not work can be contained (and their impact limited); lessons can be universally learned and systemic failures are avoided. In this way public service reform will be driven from the bottom up through the efforts and creativity of the front line staff who deliver the services. Andrew Laird has explored this innovation process further on the Big Society Network blog.

So far from public sector reform being a sideline in the Big Society debate, it is actually very much at the heart of it. Citizens need to be supported by public sector staff who are willing to involve and support them, who are free to innovate and yet still held to account publicly for the long term outcomes they produce or by citizens directly rather than by central Whitehall diktat. Such staff exist and it does not take many of them to start a movement that can genuinely improve services even in such constrained times. We need to support them as citizens, businesses, voluntary organisations and within the public sector itself.

Public reformers – your country needs you.

The Great Transition: what it means for voluntary and community organisations

It has been an eventful few months for the voluntary and community sector. Having worked as a social enterpreneur myself and been involved in social action at a local level I know what it is like to go from grant to grant, and to struggle financially, whilst demand for your services rises inexorably. I also have experienced the exhilaration when funds start to flow, when you begin to see the impact that your charity is making on the ground, and when it starts to scale across the country, indeed the world. And I have also witnessed wise and courageous Trusteeship and leadership at work, balancing the temptation to accept certain kinds of funds even though it might distract you from your mission or put you in a vulnerable situation in future, with a desire to have a more mixed model with funds from earned, private, and philanthropic sources.

It would be an understatement at this point to say that this is going to be one of the most challenging times for our sector, a time in which many organisations will – having experienced tremendous growth in government grant and debt funding for charitable activities over the last decade – see real reductions whether at the local or central level. Many are now already taking having to adjust to the new climate, and some are months away from running out of funds. It is not surprising therefore that there is concern from a range of quarters, including over the last few days from the Archbishop of Canterbury himself.

But there is also another way of looking at what is happening – to acknowledge that this is a time of huge transition for the sector. Transition – not just because of the need to move away from government funding to a greater mix of sources of funds from different sources; but also because the charitable and voluntary sector is about to enter a new phase of growth and prominence, and will require a boost to its skills and a repositioning of almost every organisation and group in it to make the most of opportunities coming just over the horizon. Whether you are large, or small, or in between, organisations in the social sector up and down the country are not just coming to terms with more constrained times as we all are in society, but also having to think about what their role might be in the coming era.

To make this shift well there are several things that will have to happen, through partnership between the public, private, and voluntary sector, and with the involvement of citizens as well. The first is simply to survive. I’m pleased that the government has announced a £100m transition fund to support organisations from £50k turnover to £10m to help bridge this period, with a focus particularly on those most at risk of state funding withdrawal. Organisations in this size category have the greatest exposure to government reductions since they have the capacity to apply for state funding relative to smaller organisations.

There is more we need to do to help those organisations with a turnover below £50k, even though their exposure to statutory funding can be as low as 14% depending on what statistics are used. Such organisations tend to be partially staffed or have no staff, and they are particularly hard for central government to reach because of the sheer number of them. This is a time when we as citizens can respond because the sums needed can be within our reach to help fundraise – £5k-20k, sometimes more. Here in Shoreditch, as I’ve written about before, I’m involved in setting up an informal group called the Shoreditch Group (sorry not a very original name I know) to help respond to need and support new and existing local voluntary and charitable organisations. The basic idea is that I and about 10-15 others with a heart for the area will get together in the pub once a month, enjoy each other’s company and have a few drinks, and then share our skills and networks to help identify and support local voluntary and community organisations. I’ve put out a challenge to those joining the group to pledge £5k this year over a twelve month period for us to donate or socially invest, which I’m asking everyone else who joins to match – not huge compared to some of the super wealthy philanthropists I’ve come across, but I guess that is the point. The idea is that actually everyone can get involved in philanthropy, and join effectively what is a social angel group, and at whatever level. Some groups might get together with each pledging £50 a year, others might pledge £500k a year. It’s a movement that has been historically popular in this country over the centuries, and also in the US with organisations such as Giving Circles. If more of us applied our skills and funds in this way, as we’ve seen with campaigns like the Dispossessed Campaign in London, we could achieve a lot. (Incidentally – do get in touch if you are interested in joining the Shoreditch Group via twitter at #natwei – the more the merrier.)

The second challenge beyond survival is to look at how what one currently does could be done in alternative ways that reflect more constrained times. Perhaps by partnering (or even merging) with other charities in the area. Or by finding pro bono space or support. Or by focussing on your very core activities and working with other organisations or individuals to ensure that non-core activities that have demand are still being carried out in some form. Those that have excess space and resources whether in the voluntary, private, or public sectors, might look at sharing that space to help small organisations at risk reduce rent and property costs. Some staff may be willing to go part-time (this happened to me at a charity I worked for during the recession), which is a method used in the private sector over the last few years to not lose people but which acknowledges the challenges everyone is facing, whilst helping everybody transition.  Timebanking is also an option for non-core activities, which means the charity can focus on its core, but offer to those around who have time to provide peer-to-peer support and self-help, with the right training and oversight. I also know of charities that have shifted their volunteer recruitment to get people who can in turn manage other volunteers, allowing management to focus on core operations, reviewing strategy, and fundraising.

The third challenge will be to understand what the future landscape for your sector will look like, which is rapidly evolving and segmenting. In future it won’t be enough just to call yourself a social enterprise or charity and hope for the best (if it ever was!). Some will decide they are and want to continue to be a professional charity or social enterprise out to get government contracts on a payment by results basis or through tenders, and will need to either join consortia or get working capital to participate in the opportunities that will be opening up (a share of £60bn worth of public contracts annually). Others will eschew government funding, and seek to become mainly earned income social businesses, selling direct to customers or institutions, and offering patient or commercial equity and debt to help them get established and scale. Still others will want to focus on fundraising because of the nature of their cause, either through targeting the mass market or high net worth individuals or foundations. Given these tend to be right now quite swamped, I think it is also a good idea to look at fundraising opportunities that are allied with shopping, online and offline. Giveasyoulive.com for example allows users to download an application, and if you shop with their affiliate online retailers (of which they have many), as much as ten percent of your purchase can be donated to any charity of your choice via justgiving.com. This market alone apparently could generate £2bn of donations a year for charities. Still others will want to continue to operate as very local community organisations, social enterprises, or charities, and will draw a mix of local funds. Sites like localgiving.com here can be really useful as a way to signal your existence and tap into a market of donors interested in getting involved in organisations in their neighbourhood.

The fourth challenge will be to understand what your skills and financing gaps are to help you realise your mission. This review could either be done in house or with the help of mentors and external volunteers, and will cover everything (even if just on the back of an envelope) from the make up of trustees and directors, the business plan, a growth strategy, a staff and leadership strategy, a volunteer recruitment strategy (including how one might make the most of timebanking), and where there might be opportunities for offering investment opportunities (whether loan or patient capital or hybrid). Crucially for those wanting to tap into the future social investment market, it will be important to work with organisations known as “social venture intermediaries” or “social finance intermediaries”, who specialise in helping organisations, new and existing, to tap into such finance. An alternative is to go to social angels such as the group I am setting up with finance skills, as well as to – in future – social exchanges – where organisations looking for investment can put their pitches up online. Another route would be to use the skills of a lawyer or accountant or business person with financing skills (or get them to join your board of Trustees!).

The fifth challenge will be in knowing what your impact is and making the most of future funding opportunities that will arise so that you get paid for the achievements of your voluntary and community organisation. So if you play a valuable role in creating social capital in future and have a powerful model that works, apply to the Community First fund or in future to local neighbourhood budgets (which will ideally be co-commissioned with citizens). Or if you are a youth organisation that happens to also reduce crime (e.g. midnight football I am told can reduce crime by 70%), look to get paid for by results for the crime reduction achieved, and not just seek funding for the work you do with young people generally. Or if you are really good at managing the space you rent from the council, and they are threatening to double your rent and want to put other tenants in alongside you, suggest that they keep your rent the same and let you bid to manage the contract to look after the space with the other tenants (this is a true case I have come across recently; and with the right to bid it will be easier in the future to do this).

There is no getting away from the fact that this period of transition will be difficult. But the potential rewards for those that successfully make it will be immense: greater freedom, more diversified streams of income, greater focus, better partnerships, greater impact, happier and more satisfied beneficiaries. As the state and private sectors respond to and adapt to support the Big Society, the voluntary and community sector has a huge opportunity to become more sustainable and self-sufficient by working more closely with each of the other sectors  to support citizens in turn to take more control of their lives. And we have an opportunity as citizens to help the sector in turn successfully meet the challenges that will arise in the Great Transition.