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Getting to Grips with Social Finance – FREE TRAINING

June 12, 2012 by admin

Urban Forum has FREE places available on the following half-day seminar on Getting to Grips with Social Finance.

21st June 2012 in Wakefield

Social Investment? Community Finance? Charity Bonds? Crowdfunding? What does it all mean and what does it have to do with us?
In these times of austerity, public service transformation and changes to voluntary and community sector funding, there is a greater emphasis on new forms of financing social action through social investment. In a nutshell it’s about using money to achieve both social outcomes or ‘returns’, as well as financial ones.

These seminars, organised with local and national partners, will:

  • Provide an overview of social investment and community finance
  • Share some practical examples of how new funding models can be used
  • Discuss practical implications for community organisations
  • Enable participants to explore how to assess whether social finance can work for them
  • Signpost to available sources of support

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE AND BOOK YOUR FREE PLACE http://www.urbanforum.org.uk/our-events/getting-to-grips-with-social-finance

The Getting to Grips with Social Finance workshop programme is being supported by the Santander Foundation.

Urban Forum

Email info@urbanforum.org.uk          Web www.urbanforum.org.uk

Tel 020 7253 4816

Filed Under: Development Tagged With: community, community development, finance, management, strategy, training

Inward Investment – What’s the problem?

May 1, 2012 by admin

Inward investment – the short cut to a prosperous and fair city where all of our communities can flourish?

But, what exactly is it?

It is the process where an investor believes that this is the best place to put their money to get a secure and sufficient return.  They may invest by setting up a factory or, more likely these days, an office or call centre.  And most cities employ specialist teams to attract inward investment – to present the best case for their city or region as an investment proposition.

But it can go further than this.

We may be able to offer specific incentives to investors to bring their money and their jobs to our city.  We may provide them with low or no-cost infrastructure, or other benefits such as an enterprise zone where they may enjoy high speed broadband, simplified planning requirements  and reduced business rates.

So inward investment becomes a highly competitive, and sometimes very expensive process to get those scarce investors to being their money to our city.  Inward investment teams are under pressure to deliver, and the dynamic gets interesting as sassy ‘investors’ play country off against country, region against region, city against city and even neighbourhood against neighbourhood.  But just look at the prize for the winners.  They get ‘investment‘ and even better ‘jobs‘.

But, we must remember the investment comes because there is an expectation of a return.  And it has to be a good return.  The net flow of cash over time will be out of the local economy and into the pocket of the inward investor and their shareholders.

But, inward investment brings many gifts…

Inward Investment brings Wealth to the City

This of course is true.  But it does little to distribute wealth.  It concentrates it with the lucky few.  Inequalities of wealth and health are, in my opinion, increased by inward investment rather than decreased.  It drives social stratification and is unlikely to be a great policy for a city that wants all its communities to thrive.

Inward Investment Brings Jobs to the City

This too is true.  But usually the jobs that go to local people are largely low skill, low wage. Often inward investment can increase local unemployment rather than decrease it as investment tends to create relatively few jobs and automates as much as possible.  Lets face it if employment costs are a large part of your business and you require large volumes of low skill workers then you are not going to be looking at the UK.  And if you do create high wage, high skills jobs what are the chances of local people being able to take them up?  It is likely that these jobs will go to incomers too.

Inward Investment Builds Houses

Very true.  Inward investors may take over a problem community – demolish or refurbish it and turn it into an aspirational address.  House prices are driven up and often beyond the reach of many local people

Inward Investment Creates Dependency

We become a blue collar community reliant on employers and investors.  They become powerful influence on the politics, economics and education in our communities as they demand more and more ’employability’, better and better conditions for business.  We end up with much time and energy being put into retaining our 100 largest employers and continually tipping the playing field in favour of ‘business’…. Becoming a dependent client class I believe has negative impacts on the wellbeing of community and acts as a significant barrier to the development of innate potential as we are shaped to meet the demands of employers.

Loss of Local Control

Not only are we dependent on the presence of inward investors in our communities but we cede control to them.  They manage their investments on the ground and if they choose to create redundancies in our communities there is precious little we can do about it.

Inward Investment is Fickle

The mobility of much modern business means that inward investors can go almost as easily as they come.  You might have to have very deep pockets to retain them in the face of all that competition for their ‘jobs’.

Inward Investment can Undermine Local Business

By competing for talent and skills and by driving up land values and costs beyond the reach of local independents.

It Plays a Zero Sum Game

If an inward investor moves from one part of the county to another there is not net gain in jobs.

Put More Strain on Local Services

Schools, hospitals, roads and other infrastructure may all face increasing demand as a result of inward investment. These costs are seldom met by the inward investor but is funded from other budgets.  Meanwhile in the community that the investor has just left services may lose viability and be forced to close.

It is Resource Hungry

Playing the inward investment game is a high stakes, high cost business. Renting a yacht at MIPIM and taking a high powered delegation there does not come cheap.  But that is just surface.  Someone has to pay for the business rate subsidies and the infrastructure demanded.  And every pound spent on helping an inward investor to realise a profit is a pound that is not spent elsewhere in supporting the local community and its economy.

But I am not Against Inward Investment…

It has a role to play in bringing ideas, innovation and fresh blood to our city.  What I am against is a political and business narrative that says it is really the only game in town, and one that says it is the only strategy worthy of real investment.   Instead of economic hunting perhaps we need to look at nurturing the potential our own communities a little more, and recognising that there is much more to creating sustainable and fulfilling lives than the ever increasing growth of GDP and a touching faith in the trickle down fairy.

 

 

Filed Under: Community, Development Tagged With: community, community development, enterprise, entrepreneurship, Leadership, Leeds, management, Regeneration, strategy

The Age of Stupid

March 6, 2012 by admin

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: community, community development, Leadership, strategy

A Way Forward for Communities?

February 16, 2012 by admin

Sustainable community based enterprise

There is no doubt in my mind that community based and bottom up approaches to enterprise support like those pioneered by Ernesto Sirolli and subsequently developed and transformed by projects like Bizz Fizz and on a much more modest scale Elsie, provide significant clues to the emergence of truly sustainable and enterprising communities.

But instead we get celebrity entrepreneurs and academics delivering masterclass after masterclass after enterprise competition on a seemingly endless treadmill driven by incoherent policy and the increasingly desperate search for those Holy Grails of ‘narrow’  economic development – the quick win and the high-growth start-up.
It must be time for us to develop a focus on long term, community building  approaches to sustainable development that embraces the economy, culture and social cohesion as an inseparable trinity.  These things cannot be pursued successfully as separate entities managed by different silos. They are all part of the same process of ‘development’.
We need to develop affordable processes that engage the whole community in nurturing the development of those willing to act boldly and helping more of its members to see that bold action will often reap its reward, not just for the individual but for the community as a whole.  We must help to build communities that know how to recognise and help enterprising people who are looking to make a living and leave the community better off as a result.
And we must persuade policy makers, economic planners and perhaps most importantly our fellow citizens that entrepreneurship is not the only valid form of expression for our enterprising souls.

Filed Under: Community, enterprise, entrepreneurship Tagged With: community, community development, community engagement, development, enterprise, entrepreneurship, LEP, person centred, policy, practical, regeneration, strategy

Product, Price, Place and Promotion – lessons for the entrepreneur from a virtuoso violinist

February 14, 2012 by admin

What happens when you take a £3m violin, a virtuoso violinist and a platform for them to perform?

Well, the answer is – it all depends.  If the platform is the mass transport system of Washington DC or the Concert Hall with tickets going at $100 and more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myq8upzJDJc

At least two lessons to reflect on here:

The first is pretty prosaic and pertains to that classic of the 4 Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. You have to get all four right.  A brilliant product is nowhere near enough.

The second is more metaphysical and probably best captured by Weingarten:

 “If we can’t take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that — then what else are we missing?”

Filed Under: enterprise, Progress School Tagged With: 4 Ps of Marketing, community engagement, culture, enterprise, entrepreneurship, strategy

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