Aligning constellations

​This week I was privileged to visit B-Inspired in Leicester. This was part of a learning camp supported by the community business funder Power to Change. 

Five people from Plymouth joined folk from Hartlepool, Wigan, Grimsby, London and elsewhere to discuss how social enterprise and community business is developing and to see how B-Inspired has been leading development in Braunstone – a suburb of Leicester.
 
Unfortunately, the learning camp was cut short due to Covid19-Coronavirus but not before we had had a chance to do a brilliant walking tour of Braunstone and attend several workshops on social enterprise and community business themes.
 
We started the day by visiting several projects run by B-Inspired. A business park – Business Box – felt similar to Plymouth's own Millfields and Wolseley Trust models. Profits from the park are returned to the B-Inspired charity. We saw a food bank, well run but sadly expanding in use, a health centre and a sports/social centre. With five football pitches for hire, it was interesting to see how sport, health and education combined to build benefits for local people.
 
A mighty fine and spicy curry lunch and 'energising' dance session (I still got the moves) was followed by a workshop on storytelling facilitated by BUD. In the past I've been a little sceptical about storytelling (give me the numbers!) but this was intriguing and fun - no stats without stories.

​Then two community businesses – Grandad’s Front Room from Bognor Regis and The Exchange from Morecambe – talked about their journey from start-up to now.
 
The wrap up event was a pub quiz, where the Plymouth crew did our city proud; coming in in a respectable second place. Networking in the bar followed long into the night…
 
So, my reflections:

1. It’s all about owning assets. If you own property you can generate rental returns. You can borrow against the assets to develop new projects in a lower risk way. You have more control. This made me think about the phrase ‘asset transfer’. So often this is a term used to disguise what is really a semi-commercial lease. A 25-year lease at a market rent is not really an asset transfer. A lease at lower than market rent is a technical smokescreen to meet a loose definition of asset transfer but doesn’t really transfer power. The landlord retains “light reins of control” (this was a quote I heard from a council officer in a distant county once when discussing a possible asset transfer).
2. It’s all about governance. Well managed, well run organizations - like B-Inspired - gain the confidence of stakeholders and the community. This platform provides a basis for delivering truly impactful benefits. Sloppy governance does not serve communities well. Of course, how you define governance is important and culturally imposing a narrow definition of governance can be disempowering.
3. It’s all about leadership. And ideas, and judgement, knowledge, facilitation, empathy, listening, passion, creativity…
4. It’s all about impact. Prove it. Ask yourself ‘so what?’ every time you see a statistic like ‘we supported x thousand people this year’.
5. It’s all about money. Make money. Make it well. Reinvest it. Donations, grants and contracts are all great and earning money can give you more independence. This then leads to another point:
6. It’s all about selling. Converting to a social enterprise, community business model will not make you automatically more sustainable. You are only as good as your ability to sell -  whether it be football pitches, office space, widgets or cups of coffee. Selling is a term often used pejoratively: a phrase that conjures images of door knocking oily salesmen pushing dodgy products. But selling is also about relationships, trust and fulfilling people’s needs and wants.
7. It’s all about the system. In one of the world's richest countries how can there be food banks and poverty?

 
It’s about all this and a whole load more stuff aligning in a beautiful constellation.
 
We need better pay, conditions, rights and to restore the natural environment. We can have any economy we want. Stand up and be vocal. Stand for public office if you want folks. Run a social enterprise (in any form – co-op, community business, CIC, trading charity, whatever). That way we can create a better economy - one that works for people and planet - just like B-inspired are trying to do in Leicester.

Thanks to The Rank Foundation and Power to Change.