The Prince Update - June 28th
Richard Prince shares his regular horizon scan of the sector news, flagging up developments, new funding and opportunities in the social sector for portfolio careerists and others to be aware of.
Sector news
Housing association merger
South of England-based housing association Aster Group, which manages just over 32,000 homes, has announced plans to merge with specialist older people’s provider Central & Cecil Housing Trust (C&C). The addition of C&C to Aster Group would follow that of Dorset-based East Boro Housing Trust in early 2020, and would take its total portfolio to 34,500 homes, with services to around 100,000 customers.
Riverside in ‘partnership’ talks with another housing association
Riverside said it has agreed to work on “coming together in partnership” with One Housing later this year. The announcement follows a torrid financial year for One Housing, a member of the G15 group of London’s largest housing associations, after reporting an £8.6m loss in January for 2019/20. Riverside and One Housing said consultation will take place with customers, colleagues and key stakeholders as the plans are developed. A target date for One Housing to join Riverside has been set for the end of the year.
Independent review of Access Foundation
The independent review was commissioned by the Oversight Trust, the organisation that oversees the companies that receive and manage funds from dormant assets. Access is a 10-year, spend-down foundation, that provides a mix of grants and loans to charities and social enterprises in the UK which would otherwise struggle to access social investment. Set up in 2015 with a £60m endowment from the government, and later receiving an additional £40m from dormant bank accounts, Access also runs the Growth Fund, a £46m blended finance programme.
The report found that Access’s contribution to the development of the social enterprise and charity (CSE) sectors had been considerable thanks to its blended finance model. Grant funding in addition to loans was necessary to balance the “market failure” that would otherwise hinder small social sector organisations. As the Growth Fund is due to make its final investments by 2022, the report said it was “an urgent task” for Access to secure new long-term subsidy funding to sustain the flow of blended capital beyond this. “If Access closes as planned in 2025, an effective plan and funding is required by 2023 to ensure hard-won learning, experience and trust is not lost.”
Read the full report on the Oversight Trust website:
Big Society Capital - the social impact investment sector
This brief report summarises the views, experiences and priorities of those working within the Social Impact Investment Sector (SII), including their views on the progress made over the last few years, what aspects of the sector are working well and the challenges and difficulties they encounter.
Their findings show that the SII sector has become considerably more established and settled over the last 2-3 years, with good levels of confidence and knowhow reported amongst most of those involved in the investment process and a growing sense that SII is becoming more achievable and accessible. There is also widespread recognition and agreement that the sector is making progress in achieving its aims. However, that is matched by a strong, prevailing view that there is a lot more to be done and the majority still recognise significant challenges and difficulties.
Number of organisations using social investment tax relief falls by a third
The latest government data shows that in the year to the end of March 2020, 30 social enterprises received investment through SITR totalling £3.3m compared to 45 enterprises raising £4.7m in the previous year. The scheme offers a 30 per cent tax break to people who invest in charities and social enterprises that meet certain criteria, such as having assets of less than £15m. Since it was launched in 2014, social enterprises have raised a total of £15.8m through the scheme. Earlier this year, a group of social finance bodies and others successfully campaigned for the measure to be extended until April 2023.
Comment: SITR had a lot of promise when launched, but has consistently disappointed in its reach and scale
NPC Guide - Theories of change for campaigning
Campaigning consists of actions that aim for broad changes in policies, populations, communities, institutions, or systems. Rather than helping people directly, campaigning seeks to create change in the external environment surrounding an issue. It is an opportunity to have a greater and longer-lasting impact than you could by working with those who are directly affected by an issue. A theory of change describes how we think our activities will create the change we want to achieve. Traditional approaches to theory of change can be difficult to apply to campaigning—because the route to change is convoluted and difficult to predict, the external environment is complex and changeable, and there is no exact precedent for what you are trying to achieve.
This resource builds on NPC’s Theory of change in ten steps guidance. It explores the challenges that campaigning situations pose and how you can overcome them and develop a theory of change for campaigning.
Charities Bill Factsheet
This factsheet from DCMS gives an overview of the Charities Bill, which will implement recommendations from the Law Commission’s 2017 Technical Issues in Charity Law Report. The measures in the Bill will address a variety of technical issues in law, simplify a number of processes and provides a more consistent legal framework, whilst ensuring appropriate safeguards.
It’s worth noting that the government expects changes outlined in the Charities Bill to save the sector £28m over ten years. There are approximately 169,000 charities in England and Wales registered with the Charity Commission with a combined annual income of more than £83bn. Therefore an annual saving of £2.8m represents a small fraction of the sector's resources. It is also unlikely to offset the losses felt by the sector as a result of the pandemic. Previous estimates for the latter half of 2020, from Pro Bono Economics, found that the charity sector faced a £10.1bn funding shortfall. Many charities are also anticipating massive drops in income as a result of Covid-19. Macmillan Cancer Support, for example, is predicting it will lose £175m in three years.
2. Charity careers and future of work
The cult of the personality versus the character ethic
This ACEVO blog article by Mark Hollingsworth (CEO of The Nutrition Society) sets out the early case for the banishment of the cult of the personality in leadership and for support to the ‘character ethic’.
“We have seen situations where a lack of foresight or of vision, of anticipatory planning, or even the ability to interrogate conflicting sets of data to make valid decisions, contributed to a ‘head in the hands’ moment for those of us watching and impacted by the outcomes. In essence, the experiences of 2020 and 2021 demonstrate we witnessed a leadership contest (perhaps long overdue) between the ‘cult of the personality’ against the ‘character ethic’. I believe, based on my experience, character is what separates the successful from the mediocre. This idea of character is based upon principles of fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, excellence. These principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value. It is my belief that for too long the cult of the personality, the ego, has driven the perception of success in leadership, when in fact the character ethic has quietly continued ‘behind the scenes’ to deliver lasting and sustainable success.”
Comment: this article chimes very well with my personal experience over a working lifetime – I wonder what others think?
The problem isn’t remote working – it’s clinging to office-based practices
Post-pandemic, employees may ask employers to justify the need to come into the office. Yet many organisations are still resisting this more flexible future. They argue that employees’ wellbeing is compromised by remote working. But remote work itself is not the problem. The problem is that, though most office workers are currently working from home, the way we work is still inherently office-centric. Pretty much all of our work practices – when we work, where we work, how we work – are designed around location.
What would happen if organisations looked outside this way of working, and trusted employees to set a non-linear schedule, based on their individual circumstances, that kept them healthy, sane and productive?
IPSE: “Hidden cost of the pandemic”: 200 per cent increase in freelancers with mental health problems in the last year
IPSE (the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed) report that the proportion of freelancers reporting mental health issues has risen by over 200 per cent during the pandemic – from 6 per cent of all freelancers reporting poor mental health, to 20 per cent. More than half of all freelancers (52%) also said their mental health had deteriorated during the pandemic.
Lived experience on nonprofit boards
A new guide from the Centre for Charity Effectiveness and Malcolm John of Action for Trustee Racial Diversity explores how “the benefits of ensuring lived experience of the organisation's cause on nonprofit boards far outweigh the costs, even with the adjustments that may be needed to overcome some barriers”.