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?

back to the future - CICs in the 1980s!!

In 2005 the Community Interest Company was formed as a way to encourage social enterprise through giving it (amongst other things) greater recognition in the marketplace - all such enterprises must include the words 'CIC' or 'Community Interest Company' in their trading name, and are subject to a regulatory body who checks that their governing rules show them to exist primarily to create a social benefit and all assets and profits are restricted for that use.

But this, it turns out, is nothing new, and has existed as a legal option since 1985!

In 1985, the Companies Act was amended to allow any company to submit an application to the regulator to show that they exist for primarily social purposes and all profits and assets are restricted to achieving them - in turn, the regulator can allow those companies to drop the 'limited' part of their public and trading name to show that they exist for more 'noble' purposes that more traditional private companies.

Is the CIC anything really new then if this core feature of their functionallity (how they present themselves, how the regulator agrees their status) has existed for more than 20 years already?

why you must change your chairs

a recent story highlights a charity that's has the same Chairperson for 35 years - (that's longer than I've been alive for!), and that following complaints into their management of the charity, there's an investigation being conducted by the Charity Commission about claims of inappropriate and mis-management and their subsequent removal from post.

It illustrates a key danger to the governance of our sector: entrenched board members.

Having a committed, keen and enthusiastic board is vital to the success of any organisation - and its increasingly difficult to find people who'll happily offer their time to do so.
However, having the same person in the same post for too long starts to bring inherent dangers - people can become complacent, stuck in their ways and as a result hostile to change, ("after all, we've always done it this/my way..."), even when those changes are needed because of changes to legislation or expectations and trends amongst our communities. Their being so long in post also deters new blood from coming forward to join the board, as it becomes seen to be a 'closed shop', having the same people in post for so long.

Just as we appraise and review our staff and volunteers performance and conduct, so we should with that of our boards - and if they're found wanting, we should be brave enough to say so and either support them to gain the necessary skills and knowledge, or else ask them to move on.

To put it another way, how well would notions of member participation and democracy be being manifest if a country had the same leader for over 3 decades?

how private business shames social enterprise

Recently I blogged about the debate that's raging in social enterprise land about what the purpose of social enterprise is, and how the various forms that can be adopted serve to confuse the issue unless you see them for what they are - various options to allow you to manifest your vision within a specific set of values that define what social enterprise 'is'.

A recent blog on the Guardian by Jonathan Bland, chief exec of the Social Enterprise Coalition about how social enterprise can show private business how to 'get in right' got me wondering how far this issue of models can be taken - let me give you an example:

if I was to describe to you an established global food business with a multi-million pound turnover; that seeks to source all its products from various sustainable, local, organic and fair-trade suppliers; that specifically seeks to set up new branches in areas of non-affluence (ie where the rich people aren't); that charges customers a price that is affordable to just about everyone; that has created its own charitable trust as well as actively supporting various other charitable causes; that offers all of its employees structured accredited training programmes; that seeks to educate its customers about its various practices and its impacts; and has also just committed to recruiting at least 1/3 of its next years intake of staff from people who have been long-term unemployed, and all without any taking ant form of grant or public subsidy, would that sound like an ideal social enterprise to you?

Sadly its not - its McDonalds, that big international company that all us ethical eco-warrior types fought against in the 80s and 90s, but is now shaming some social enterprises and charitable groups by its ethical practices being of a far greater standard than can be typically found in our sector, and still turning a handsome profit in the process.

And this causes problems for the ethical consumer: McDonalds is not a social enterprise in that it still exists primarily to make as much cash as possible for its investors, but in doing so its realised that it can also create a whole heap of good stuff for people and planet along the way.

Its not a social enterprise as we currently define them and yet its practices shame some of the wider third sector...

I'm lovin it, but I'm not sure that I should...

do we really need another 5,000 charities?

I came across a sobering statistic recently - in 2008, there were 5,000 new charities created. That's roughly 1 new charity every 3 hours (allowing for weekends, Bank Holidays and tea breaks).

And it got me thinking about other statistics and 'headlines' in the third sector - about the difficulty existing groups have in attracting approriate trustees, about the increasing competition for dimishing grants, and about the growing bureaucractic overhead of mandatory reporting requirements that charities must comply with.

Surely, given all that, do we really need so many more additional charities when it must be better to combine forces, to collaborate more, and even dare I say, look to merge activies where they could be seen to make savings and so offer greater support and impact to the communities that charities are created to benefit.

Could it be then that the founders of charities aren't always as altrusitic as we might believe - perhaps more people than we'd care to admit like to feel that only they can solve particular issues in their own special way, and that to do so they need to control all aspects of their own projects, because they think that no-one else sees the world in quite the same way they do - "vanity, vanity, all is vanity...";

Or maybe its more to do with the legislation - after all, charities have to be very specific about what they do, who they do it to, where they do it to them (much more so than companies), and so as communities change, are existing charities unable to continue to meet these changing and evolving needs and so new charities are needing to be created to continue the work that charity legislation would otherwise prevent them from doing?

Or maybe... or maybe there's some really obvious and rational explanation that someone can share with me and others using the comments button below.

either way, I think most people would be shocked at this statistic...

(for comparison, in the same period there were 814 new Community Interest Companies)