I’m happy we did it again by getting Café Sunlight catering the event. They’re wellknown for the quality of the food they prepare maybe less for the social good they make, that”s probably why we want them on board to champion their social impact and help them grow.

Their meat is grass fed and free range, their fish sustainable and their vegetables seasonal. They’ve already been the choice of  other companies in the sector such as Charity Bank and Big Society Capital helping them delivering successful events. They are a natural choice for us as well.

Café Sunlight is part of a social enterprise network that uses business to help change lives for the better.  They support training, volunteering and vocational placements across their business to develop a legacy of skills in the community.  They source seasonal, high quality ingredients from the best suppliers throughout Kent and the South East.  Cafe Sunlight is a wholly owned trading subsidiary of Sunlight Development Trust.  Any surplus made by Cafe Sunlight is either reinvested in the business of gift aided to the Trust, a charity which exists to tackle health and social inequalities through community development and social enterprise. 

The menu for the day:

Main Course

Chicken and parmentier potatoes in tarragon and white wine sauce with bacon lardons and baby onions 

Bean & Butternut Squash Ragout

Fish pie made with pollock haddock, salmon and smoked mackerel, layered with potatoes and topped with herbs and breadcrumbs

Salad Table

Herb Couscous
Mixed Leaves

Raw Beetroot Salad
Tomato and Horseradish salad

Mixed Bean Salad 

To Follow

Homemade fresh fruit pavalova

Or

Profiteroles filled with Chantilly cream and coated in fair trade chocolate

Both offered with jugs of fresh double cream

• All fish will be sustainably sourced
• All meat will be local and free range
• Vegetables will be seasonal and locally sourced wherever possible
• All herbs are growing in our Cafe Sunlight Garden

 Buon Appetito !!

When I spoke to him recently, I decided to investigate a particular angle that intrigued me about him, namely that this man of our time, a whizzkid from dot.com days, harks back to a bygone age, claiming his world view is rooted in Victorian values.

His 30-plus years in the technology sector began straight out of Cambridge. He joined IBM which had awarded him a scholarship while he was studying and later moved to hardware company Wang Laboratories.

With so much written about ‘digital natives’, we often forget that people like Ken, now 60, also belong to a significant information age demographic, the ‘digital granddads’ if you will. They possess invaluable insights based on their first-hand knowledge and overview of the past forty years of dizzying technological advances and their world-changing implications for business.

Weathering the dot.com boom and bust, Ken turned his entrepreneurial zeal towards founding Interregnum, the technology merchant bank which floated on the AIM exchange in 2000.

His philanthropic work benefits among others London’s homeless – he is chairman of the charity Thames Reach – and his old Cambridge college, Fitzwilliam. His involvement with numerous public companies includes a non-executive directorship at Thomson Reuters. He is also a member of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.

Is it true, I asked him, that he is driven by an ethos dating back to Victorian times?

“It’s a fair summing up of my own values,” he agreed. “Absolutely! The Victorian ethos is important because there was an entrepreneurial zeal, an energy about the Victorian era, and all the great creations of that time.”

He sees it as a time when everything was possible. “And that’s really rather important, if you’re an entrepreneur, to believe that everything is possible.”

He is drawn to the era’s drive to create wealth. “Of course, without wealth you can’t do hospitals and schools and roads and infrastructure”, he says, “but what is massively importantly is that although rich Victorians kept a large amount of their wealth for themselves, they felt a social obligation to improve society at large.”

He cites rich Victorian visionaries such as George Peabody, founder of the London housing association Peabody Trust, where Ken served on the board for a decade.

“George Peabody was J. Pierpoint Morgan’s colleague in setting up JP Morgan’s bank, but he gave the equivalent of half a billion pounds to house the poor and needy,” he continued. “So he made lots of money and then he improved society with the wealth he had created, having obviously created jobs and wealth for people along the way. That’s what I mean by the Victorian ethos.”

Restoration Partners’ mission statement is full of old-fashioned words like ‘integrity’ and ‘discretion’ and terms like ‘one’s word is one’s bond.’ With his own ethical stance clearly informing his life and work, I wondered if he sees a new era of integrity in banking dawning.

“Integrity is something that comes from within, not something which is imposed. I’m not particularly optimistic,” he admits. “I think people will behave a lot better, but that’s because it’s being imposed upon them, not because they believe in it.

“At the moment, what’s happening in banking is that integrity has become synonymous with regulation, and that’s not the right answer. So there’s a societal problem here, not a banking sector problem.”

With his invaluable experience in seeking and granting investment, his approach to wealth creation as essential to changing society for the good, and his reputation for plain-speaking, he’s an ideal motivator for aspiring entrepreneurs and investors in the social enterprise sector.

Entrepreneurs attending SBC12 could hear his advice to work out a strategy : “Decide what the success of your venture would look like in five, ten or fifteen years’ time, and then work out how the heck to get there,” as he puts it.

“Having a clear sense of destination in answer to the question what does success look like, is critical to all organisations, whether they are commercial, non-commercial, for profit or not-for-profit,” he says.

In his keynote, he may refer to his opinion that social enterprise still has to sharpen up its image if it wants to attract investors: “I think social enterprise is, unfortunately, still a poorly defined term,” he warns. “It means so much to so many people … it’s too broad a category.”

From his perspective, an investor in social enterprise is finding a wealth-creating way of being a philanthropist, where philanthropy is defined as ‘practical benevolence.’

“Investing money, expecting a return, implies a discipline on the recipient of the money, and the return will be a financial return, plus doing social good,” he continues.

“I think practical benevolence should be the t-shirt slogan everyone should be thinking about. And applying discipline to the recipient of one’s money is a way of being seriously practical.”

Known for his wit and pithy answers, his reply to my next question was my favourite:

“So, do you think holding this kind of conference will help define this sector for investors?” I asked.

To which he replied: “Clearly so!”

Buy-one-get-one-free. Not two-for-the-price-of-one packs of loo rolls to take home from Tesco, but a scheme which matches a purchase with a twinned gift sent to the developing world.

A growing number of social businesses are applying the principle to necessities such as shoes, prescription glasses and baby clothes.

In the case of ForestNation, a sponsor of our SBC12 conference in October, it’s trees, or perhaps more correctly trees-to-be. What’s on offer are small tree kits containing all you need for planting and watching them grow in your garden. They come in the form of a small, biodegradable ball, with the option of bespoke branded packaging for promotional campaigns. Nervous gardeners like myself will be heartened to know that each pack contains spare seeds in case of horticultural malfunction.

The “You Plant One We Plant One” scheme was the brainchild of Andrew Pothecary, ForestNation’s founder and managing director. For every kit sold, a tree is planted in a country such as Haiti, Malawi, India, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Uganda and Kenya.

Each tree has a unique code and can be registered online and added to a map showing where all the trees have been planted, a total approaching 200,000 since ForestNation’s founding in 2007.

Andrew talked to me recently about the scheme’s potential for sales to individuals and corporates: “There are so many places we could sell and work with the tree kits,” he explained. “From hotels, to trade shows and event giveaways.” Even, apparently, as rewards in hotels for guests who “opt out of room cleaning”, which was a new one on me.

Spanish energy giant Repsol gives them out to communicate their corporate social responsibility credentials. Canada’s Totem Building Supplies sell them as a promotional tool in their DIY shops.

ForestNation’s latest campaign will tap into the huge fundraising potential of US schools: “In the US it’s normal for kids to fundraise with fundraising envelopes, collecting money and giving it to the teacher,” continues Andrew. “The numbers really are good”.

He calculates that in just a small area containing 40 schools, 75,000 tree kits could be sold.

“With 125 kids in each school, low projections are 15 kits per child, as they are already doing much more than this with the traditional door-to-door sales of cookies and chocolates,” he explains.

He sees many educational benefits for the kids who will get a tree kit each: “It’s a totally eco-friendly approach to fundraising rather than unhealthy cookies and chocolates. And the fundraising can be linked with classroom learning about social responsibility, deforestation, climate control, and cultures around the world.”

In a recent blog, Leon Kaye of GreenGoPost.com referred to criticism of the one-for-one social enterprise model. Detractors have described it as a new form of colonialism, fostering dependency and ignoring the deeper problems of poverty. Others argue that such donations distort developing markets without building a business culture that could benefit everyone.

“The people that we plant with work with the local population. They do a needs assessment to see what trees they need,” counters Andrew, adding that ForestNation works with NGOs and charities in a sustainable livelihoods effort.

The trees could be fast-growing varieties planted for firewood, or trees needed for medicine, animal food or fencing. They may be sited to rejuvenate degraded land.

“It’s the local farmers and villagers who select which trees they actually want, they’re shown how to grow them from seeds and set up their own nurseries. They end up looking after them on their land … it’s their tree,” Andrew explains.

New plans for ForestNation include offers on ready-grown plants or trees: “There’s no reason you can’t go into B&Q, and buy a tree with a label on it that says ‘you plant one we plant one’. And there’s no reason why on ForestNation website we don’t already sell fully-grown trees to send out.”

Another idea is for social responsibility certificates, reporting on a website’s activities such as how many trees have been planted and how much they’ve given back to local communities. “Every step of the way we can give companies marketing benefits and interactivity benefits, which makes it much easier for them to be socially responsible.”

As Andrew cultivates his vision for the future of ForestNation, he also maintains a down-to-earth realism: “We’re not saying that growing your own tree at home is the answer to solving climate change, or desertification, or pollution. It’s just a very important step, because it’s something everyone can do. The interactivity will hopefully change the way in which we live our daily lives. Maybe the knock-on effect will be people will end up switching the lights off. People might think, well actually it’s not that easy to grow your own tree … I’ll think twice before I damage the next one.”

—–
Website: http://www.forestnation.com
Twitter: @ForestNation
For more information on the promotional opportunities around the tree kits, contact Andrew Pothecary: apothecary@forestnation.com

Any problems just give us a shout. Remember, the code will expire after ten uses so you’d better be quick! Oh, and please don’t share the code with anybody who hasn’t sent their Tweet – that wouldn’t be cricket.

Bristol Together Community Interest Company creates full-time jobs for ex-offenders through the repair and refurbishment of empty properties. The employees learn all aspects of the building trade, from plastering and painting to carpentry and bricklaying. Our aim is to bring empty properties back into use, and to finance the job creation on the back of the rising value of the properties we renovate.

We have just completed a £1.6 million social impact bond issue – enabling us to finance our job creation programme for the next five years. A huge thank you must go to Triodos Bank who acted as our corporate finance partners, and who I can not recommend highly enough. I am also hugely grateful to Unltd for very early support and advice and of course to our friends at ClearlySo.

It will surprise no one to learn that there is an urgent need to create real jobs for ex-offenders. Not only is the cost of re-offending a huge burden on society, but it is a tragic to see so many young men (and it does seem to be predominantly young men) devoid of hope or purpose because they are deemed unemployable due to a mistake they made earlier in their youth. We want to help those that are serious about their rehabilitation to rebuild their lives whilst they renovate empty properties.

We started work last October and have already created jobs for over 20 ex-offenders. However, now the capital raising is complete, the hard work really begins!

_____

Bristol Together were awarded our Social Business of the Year Award at last year’s conference; beating 29 other social entrepreneurs who pitched their businesses to the panel of judges. Paul walked away with a £2,000 cash prize – provided by private bank Coutts & Co – and a ringing endorsement that set him in good stead for the year ahead. The award will be back again this year and you can register your interest to enter the competition when you purchase your SBC12 ticket.

It also makes it a lot easier for you guys (whether you’re delegates, sponsors or volunteers) to browse this year’s programme, speakers and news as updates develop. We’ll be using this blog to release announcements in the lead up to October 9th, so keep your eye on this very page. Alternatively you can subscribe to our newsletter to make sure you keep your finger on the pulse of not only developments at SBC12 but ClearlySo and the social enterprise sector in general. With time, new pages will spring up around this site giving you more information on each of the speakers, sponsors and SBC staff.

For now, you can check out the programme; see highlights from last year; and bag your ticket at a discounted ‘early bird’ rate. If you have any questions, you can contact the team here and someone will get back to you.

We look forward to greeting you all at LSO St. Luke’s on October 9th for SBC12!

The ClearlySo team.