It is a real pleasure to be able to write this post both here and on TechCrunch. This week will be the first in a series of posts I plan to write every month or so on the use of technology in building the Big Society, under the heading Big Crunch.
The Big Society is an approach being championed inside and outside of
the government in the UK and increasingly in other countries to enable
citizens to take more control over their lives, based on the belief
that people often know how to solve the problems they care about and
improve their communities better than anyone else. Whilst built on
centuries-old principles, it is also optimistic about the power of
technology, and has been inspired by the more open, inclusive, and
effective ways of working expressed through the Internet, social
media, and crowd sourcing.
It has three phases that parallel the way in which the Internet itself
has evolved. The first phase started mainly in May 2010 after the UK
General Election, and consisted in government, and other large
institutions, being encouraged to release powers, data, and
opportunities that enable people and groups inside and outside
government to take more control of public services (such as through
setting up of schools, or appointing police commissioners), of the
shape of their neighbourhoods (such as through open source planning,
or bidding to take over local assets), and of their lives through
social action (such as by relaxing laws that prevent people from
volunteering, and encouraging norms around giving). In this phase, the
black box ‘mainframe era’ of centralised control has started to give
way to the early ‘PC era’ of more decentralised power. The second
phase is just beginning, an era in which pioneers or “civic
entrepreneurs” analogous to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, whether from
business, government, or social sector backgrounds, start to invent
and mash up platforms (analogous to Windows and the Mac GUI) that take that power, data, and information, and make them more easy for
citizens to engage with, whether to establish that new school based on
a pre-existing model or chain, or to interact digitally with
neighbours through virtual beat meetings to scrutinise crime data and
suggest solutions to their commissioners, or in a million other ways.
The third phase will involve citizens using multiple platforms to
tailor their lifestyles in ways that fit their constraints,
creativity, and passions together with those around them, just as many
today design their lives around social media, YouTube, and digital
devices. This will be particularly important for those who are
excluded, isolated, or less digitally connected currently, as well as
for those in the mainstream, who will be trained and supported by a
network of 5000 community organisers currently being recruited. Local
funding to enable neighbourhoods particularly in deprived areas is
also being established to help build confidence and connections where
it is lacking partly to prevent a social digital divide from
developing.
Many of these civic entrepreneurs and their platforms will use
technology, though many will also be analogue only. A social venture
capital scene is also likely to emerge to fund them analogous to what
we see at the moment in for the profit digital ventures space,
stimulated by the launch of a $1 billion wholesale fund called the Big
Society Bank. As platforms start to proliferate we will probably see
many hybrid forms emerge, which cannot be neatly classified as either
businesses, charities, or public bodies, but rather represent a mix or
ecology of one or more types taking many different existing and new
legal forms. The focus of Big Crunch will be on showcasing these
platforms, to put the spotlight on them and their users instead of on
the politicians. If you are engaged in creating a platform worth
showcasing, get in touch at govadviserbigsociety@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk with information about it.
This week’s Big Crunch platform is called the Good Gym. Born out of
founder Ivo Gormley’s frustration with wasted energy generated on
treadmills and a desire to reduce the difficulties in recruiting
volunteers, the Good Gym was established to channel that potential
into social good. The Good Gym offers a new model of volunteering by
focusing on the positive experience of the volunteer, in the hope that
it will increase the number of people stepping up to give time.
Realising that willpower is often not enough to get us to don our
trainers and hit the gym, Ivo considered how people’s exercise
routines could be motivated by social action instead. Given that
research indicates that 17 per cent of older people are in contact
with family, friends and neighbours less than once a week and 11 per
cent are in contact less than once a month, the Good Gym was set up to provide elderly local residents with a friendly visit, and the runner
with a purpose to their exercise.
The scheme works by pairing up runners (athletes) with an isolated
member of the elderly community (coaches). During their weekly run,
the athlete then incorporates a visit to their coach, often bringing a
newspaper or snack, and in return receives some motivational advice.
The concept has since been expanded to include other community help;
locals can submit civic jobs, via a section of the website called
‘FixUp’ that they need doing, such as box moving in a community centre
or shifting soil to an allotment, and the task is completed on one of
the monthly group runs.
Good Gym aims to make volunteering easy, and to use individuals’
existing enthusiasm to exercise and get fit. The organization pairs
the athletes and coaches up, performs Criminal Record Bureau (CRB)
checks, but then allows the relationship between the pair to develop
on its own; and thus, whilst once a week is the minimum, runners are
then free to decide if they want to go more or make their visits
longer.
In fact, one of the biggest issues facing Good Gym now is a surplus of
volunteers. The flexible model of volunteering they practice has led
to a steady growth of people signing on, while at the same time
finding the elderly most vulnerable to loneliness is a real challenge.
It is in order to try and solve problems like this that they are
currently looking at collaborating with other enterprises, such as
those that already operate befriending schemes, but are short of
volunteers.
The project is currently piloting in Tower Hamlets in the East End of
London, but there are expansion plans including ideas for franchising,
in response to interest from people wanting to set the scheme up where
they live. They have ambitions for a fully interactive site, where
runners can store and access run data, and to provide a tailored
service so people are matched with jobs and tasks in their own area,
which can potentially be used to generate funding.
The Good Gym model of volunteering which unlocks untapped energy and creates a motivation for social action is an innovative yet
practicable example of how to turn social potential into social
capital. In future it should benefit as a result of phase one reforms
from more streamlined and less onerous CRB requirements, referrals
from newly freed up healthcare practices (to boost their pool of
elderly coaches), and potentially more diverse streams of funding from
local budgets, local authorities, as well as social investment. Ideas
such as this will help bring the Big Society into fruition. It will
need to do further work to build a scalable funding and governance
model and tech platform, but so far I think it deserves an excellent
power rating* of 4 out of 5.
Website: www.thegoodgym.org
Location: Tower Hamlets, London, UK
Founded: 2009
Funding: The venture is currently entirely run by volunteers. The
website was set up with a grant, after the idea won first prize at the
Social Innovation Camp in 2008. They are exploring further models of
funding.
The Good Gym is a simple concept which connects runners with members of the community who need some help, allowing volunteers to do social good and keep fit at the same time.
*the cumulative power rating that I am currently beta testing seeks to
express the increasing degree in which a platform or initiative takes
power from those who currently possess it and puts it in the hands of
citizens: 1 = does something good for citizens, 2 = shifts power,
data, and opportunities closer to where citizens live, perhaps by
reducing bureaucracy, enabling different providers to operate
services, or using the web and other means to allow more direct
access, 3 = seeks to harness cognitive surplus, presenting tasks and
activities in more accessible ways by changing the way we think about
them to appeal to our interests and passions, 4 = strengthens social
capital (particularly the bridging kind) by encouraging peer to peer
activity online and offline, 5 = finds ways to open its governance,
funding, and surplus involving employees, members, and users using
cooperative or other methods to create a strong sense of group
ownership over the venture
