secrets revealed!

my last post highlighted the reluctance of the Office of the Third Sector to divulge the review of their core funding to a number of sector bodies on the grounds that it would do more harm than good to do so...



well - they've now decided in light of their decision being challenged to now release them!
click here for links to access the reports, and here for Charity Finance's feelings about the whole process (it was they who asked for them to be released initially)


and ThirdSector have also now posted links to all the individual reports too, which seem to give glowing praise all round, so why all the secrecy to begin with..?

What are we/they hiding?

a recent enquiry by Charity News Alert to the Office of the Third Sector to ask about how their core funding to 11 national infrastructure bodies in our sector is going has been rejected on grounds that '...it would do more harm than good to make that information public...'!!

But surely this decision only fuels speculation that things must be going very badly, or else why would they not want to be open and transparent? After all, all front line groups are expected to be forthcoming with information about their performance - good and bad, so why is the Governement and our sector representative and infrastructure bodies (who lead these calls for greater trasparancy) apparently exempt themselves?

By not revealing anything, we assume the worse - that up to £26m of government money is being squandered, and that there are gross inefficiencies amongst the 'great and the good' in our sector.

Even if there is bad news to tell, surely better to be open and explain how its being addressed and learnt from rather than hiding behind the veil of 'small print' clauses in the Freedom of Information Act?

22nd September - this story is now updated here

Pornography is more ethical than tobacco

...at least, that's the finding of the most recent research into charity investment funds.

What surprised me most isn't the ordering of what's most and least ethical, but the gap between them: nearly 90% avoid tobacco, while only 36% avoid alcohol.

But what are these ethical views based on? In the case of this survey, it was principally the fear of reputational risk to the charity. But other institutions base their ethical decisions on what their customers view to be the 'most' ethical from a short-list of options (for example, The Co-operative Bank).

But what should we as consumers, citizens and otherwise general influencers of the world at large be then basing our ethics on?
I wrote a piece a few years ago

arguing that faith-based entrepreneurs could teach us a lot as a movement in this regard as their ethics are based on their faith which in turn is rooted in scriptures and theologies that have remained pretty consistent over the centuries and millennia – and its important that as social entrepreneurs we are aware of the implications of ethics changing: remember that in the grand scheme of things, its not that long ago that slavery was deemed to be ethically acceptable...

Then there's also the argument that its only by actually investing these 'unethical' industries that we can hope to change them for the better.

Hypocrisy over social enterprise marks?

I recently learnt that RISE, the regional social enterprise partnership that developed and pioneered what’s tipped to become ‘the’ quality standard for social enterprise kite marks, hasn’t actually been award the standard itself, despite using the image prominently on its literature.

Looking into this area further, Social Firms UK, the national body who’ve developed the ‘Star Social Firms’ kite mark in partnership with SFEDI, haven’t actually been awarded it themselves either.

So what’s going on? Is it a case of ‘do as we say, but not as we do’ by the great and the good, or perhaps indicative of something else –is it a case that the criteria of these kite marks are too prescriptive and not able to fully recognise the diversity of our sector? (the national review of the social enterprise mark underway at the moment would seem to support this). Or perhaps its more to do with the desire that as a sector we get on with ‘doing’: a key criteria of these kite marks is in relation to trading, so are our networking/umbrella/apex bodies perhaps not entrepreneurial enough? (which harks back to my concern that their message is becoming ‘do as we say, but not as we do’).

Either way, this surely only contributes to confusion about social enterprise that many within and without our sector have about what we are…

fair trade tobacco?

a few years ago, I was asked if I knew of anywhere a colleague might be able to procure fair trade tobacco from - and it got me thinking: why not?

1) Fair Trade producers are inevitably organised as marketing or agricultural co-ops, and there's at least one tobacco growers co-op (in Tanzania - scroll down to the bottom of this linked page to find their contact details

)

2) There seem to be lots of 'lifestyle' goods gaining the fair-trade label beyond food - fashion clothing, footballs...

3) An ethical dilemma? Well, to my knowledge the Fair Trade foundation who administers the mark have no stated restrictions as to the types of goods that they can't assure on the basis of ethics

So why not fair trade tobacco?

For the sake of all those smokers who want to be more ethical, let’s help them at least change the impact they have on poverty through the 'lifestyle choices' they've made (just like we do for those people who can't quite kick their love of chocolate or alcohol in the form of wine...)

Is the CIC regulator trying to tell us something?

At a recent regional Social Enterprise event, I 'caught up' with the CIC regulatory team (given my 'history' with them, and the fact that they have a file on me, only feel its fair to give them a chance to either slap me or kiss me in person...); anyways, after seeing their stand, I'm wondering if the CIC regulator might be trying to tell us all something - the freebies on offer were a CIC stress ball and a CIC air freshener...

is social enterprise being forced to become charitable?

In 2006, there was an overhaul to charity legislation, which included extending those things that are deemed to be 'charitable' in law, and so organisations created to pursue them are now legally required to gain charitable status (and all that comes with it with regard to governance, restrictions on trading, etc)...

An example of this is in respect of the charitable purpose of preventing or relieving poverty (surely something that all social enterprises aspire to) and how it can be acheived through Fair Trade; it caught my eye and gives me pause for concern:

"To prevent or relieve poverty by awarding a 'fair trade mark' (and remember that there are now 'social enterprise marks') to products, the sale of which relieves the poverty of producers by ensuring they receive at least a fair price for their goods and advising such producers of the best ways in which to engage in the trading process."

But Fair Trade is about trading not charity - so the lines between charity and enterprise are becomming even more blurred with what some would see as being quite a fundamental social enterprise activity now apparently being charitable in purpose, and so any social enterprise created to purse fair trade (or similarly 'marked') activities now being legally required to adopt chaitable status, even if they felt another form would suit them better...

Are we then now entering an age where as social enterprises we are being forced to change our purposes in order to ensure we can adopt the legal form that best meets our needs and circumstances?
Is the state perhaps becomming too prescriptive in allowing us the market freedoms we need in order to fully realise our potential?