WHAT IF…..BUSINESS REALLY WORKED WITH COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS?

DAVID GRAYSON CBE - BUSINESS IN THE COMMUNITY & THE NATIONAL DISABILITY COUNCIL

What if …many more businesses were convinced that they could benefit from forming long-term, substantial partnershiips with organisations like Community Links?

.Imagine a day in the life of an organisation like Community Links not too far into the future. The Trust serves a tough, inner city neighbourhood. It runs a range of facilities, for children, teenagers, parents, pensioners and disabled people. There are art facilities, English as a Foreign Language classes; benefits advice; counselling services; a toy library and a cafe.

At the heart of its activities is a 'Learning for Life' Centre for people of all ages taking on
their own learning at their own pace, using a range of media: CD roms etc.This centre is a social franchise which the organisation has taken on rather than trying to invent the whole concept from scratch.

The Co-Director of this Trust: Janet, is preparing for the next board meeting of one of the major banks - of which she has become a Director.

In the conference room, her Co-Director: John - is pre-occupied with preparations for the annual 'Ten (d) to Zero' meeting with the Trust's main corporate partner. Each year they sit down as a partnership and evaluate each key aspect of the partnership: "aspects which are very poor score a 10, those which are excellent score a zero - hence the objective to move from "Ten (d) to zero."

Throughout the building volunteer staff are engaged in their own continuing professional
Development. One volunteer: Guy - a young corporate financier - is plugged in via an IntraNet chat room, because unexpectedly he had to go off to see a key corporate client in Frankfurt the night before. Another volunteer - Jill - has been a volunteer mentor over the Internet for the last six months, since her law firm transferred her to their Shanghai office.

One group of volunteers and paid staff are discussing the results of the latest social audit which the Trust has undertaken - and in particular, how well they are communicating the work and services of the Trust to their different stakeholders.

Later in the day, you might see the board of the Trust watching Community Link Television.

Whilst the board meeting is going on, staff from another local voluntary organisation are using the Trust's IT facilities to surf the InterNet and to swop information and ideas with another group of organisations working with HIV+ and AIDS issues in America.



AN EXPLANATION OF THIS VISION

A range of services:

Social entrepreneurs start with one set of activities usually, such as housing refurbishment or anti-vandalism. They gradually add on additional services, as their
confidence and credibility and resources as their understanding of local needs has grown so they branched out and developed new and additional activities.

Learning for Life Centre:
All of us, whatever our backgrounds and previous qualifications are now going to have to
get used to learning and relearning throughout our lives. But for the: 'getting nowhere' generation, this learning is going to have to be very accessible - and it won't necessarily be in schools or other conventional educational organisations. Take the Cyberskills Workshops - first begun in Bristol. This has now been taken up by ICL as a 'social franchise' - the Cyberskills workshops can be very liberating, in terms of inter-generational contacts and can overcome people's fear of the new information and communications technologies and be a gatewy to a whole range of new learning opportunities.

Community organisations can "borrow" techniques from business like "franchising." Just as franchising has proved a safe, half-way house for many people wanting to run their own businesses, but with the security of following a proven model, so now there are successful models for improving social cohesion which could be "franchised" This combines top-down and bottom-up - the cafeteria and the percolator approach to community regeneration. One of the skills of community groups and business partners in future, therefore becomes the ability to turn successful pilots into franchises, and then to decide which franchises meet the needs of the particular community to be served. This stops reinvention of square wheels - without dampening local autonomy or enthusiasm.

A Community Entrepreneur on the Board:

Big companies are used to having non-executives from other companies, academics,
politicians - but I don't know of a single FT100 company in the UK which yet has a non-
profit person on the board. Yet the skills which voluntary organisations will increasingly
be seen to have, will make them relevant to corporate boards. For example, how to manage diversity, how to gain early warning of changes in social perceptions of business.
Cor Herkstrotter then world-wide boss of Shell concluded after Shell's Brent Spar and Nigeria debacles that

'We have to admit that we have made mistakes,
we have not handled some of the new challenges as well as we could have... I am talking
about a series of faulty assessments, misreadings of the situation which has lead us to
take poor management decisions... Why do they come about? I think that the
fundamental answer lies in our failure to fully recognise the social and technological
changes... Simply put, the institutions of global society are being reinvented, as
technology redefines relations between individuals and organisations.'

Having access to different perspectives in the boardroom is going to become more important.

The Ten (d) to Zero Model:

Ten (d) to Zero has been developed by auto parts firm: Unipart. They use Ten (d) to Zero in their long-term shared destiny relationships with their suppliers. It could just as easily be used with a community partner.
Every voluntary organisation should have at least one substantial and sustained long-term, two-way relationship. In future every company should have at least one substantial and sustained long-term, two-way relationship with a community partner. The Ten (d) to Zero type model is a way of achieving this.

Volunteers and Continuing Professional Development:
Successful voluntary organisations will increasingly be those who can attract, induct, develop and therefore retain high calibre volunteers. That means more training because
volunteers will increasingly demand that they are equipped properly to achieve the
maximum impact.

The Absentee Volunteer:
Particularly in cities like London or New York where there is a highly mobile group of
'global cosmopolitans' 'voluntary organisations will have to be able to respond to their lifestyles and their work commitments if they are going to attract and retain them. This is very much the approach of New York City Cares - who are very much geared up for rapid response to New York Volunteers. They run hour-long induction sessions - three evenings per week: Tuesday through Thursday and in-company orientation seminars and they have an Internet site. Volunteers get a monthly magazine listing all volunteering opportunities each day with precise times and descriptions. Additionally, there is a last minute Volunteering Hotline which is updated every Wednesday evening for volunteering opportunities which are still open for the following weekend - this is aimed at volunteers who find it difficult to commit very far in advance because of work or finding schedules constantly being re-jigged. A10 substantial investment in IT means City Cares knows which volunteer has done what and can generate thank-you notes for extra service. Business in the Community is now working with a group of companies, the Home Office and voluntary organisations to adapt this concept to the UK under the umbrella of "Cares Incorporated."





Social Audits for Voluntary Organisations:

Voluntary organisations can expect the same increased scrutiny and pressures from
vigilante consumers of their services, as government and business have already had to
face. A new generation of more articulate and assertive disabled people, for example, are demanding much greater control over organisations serving disabled people: the move is from organisations for disabled people, to organisations of disabled people. That is going to be a general trend. The New Economics Foundation - a leading pioneer of Social Audits - has developed the methodology for not-for-profits. I believe companies and other supporters, will want to know more about the effectiveness of their potential
community partners. The Social Audit results will be part of "due diligence." Which major companies will do on their key community partners - as well as vice-versa.

Project Team of Volunteers and Paid Staff:

It is going to be increasingly difficult to tell them apart. My friend Geoff makes his
money aa a masseur and an aromatherapist, but when he goes into the offices of a
campaigning organisation where he volunteers, he talks about "going into work."

Community Link TV:

Businesses and other organisations on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly using
dedicated business TV for Continuous Professional Development, two-way communications and briefings. The costs are plummeting. The Media Trust is now mobilising communications industry support for a Community TV channel in Britain.


Surfing the Net:

When I visited the original Cyberskills Workshop they told me of the Women's Refuge in Swindon which had gone on the Internet and found a similar centre in Seattle. They are
now communicating regularly with each other exchanging ideas and techniques.

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All of the technological innovations described here are already available. We need the same degree and speed of social innovation as is occurring in the technological field.

The benefits to business are increasingly clear: community involvement can build the skills of employees who volunteer and the loyalty of the company's workforce generally; working with innovative groups like Community Links it can help an entire business to learn new skills of networking and infectious innovation. It may boost long-term corporate reputation and be an investment in the "trust bank" with different stakeholders of the company.


Community organisations can benefit from business help such as:

- technical expertise
- firepower / clout: the ability to open doors
- credibility: to help community partners to be taken more seriously
- contacts
- an ability to focus on making things happen and to get results
- customer-focus
- financial disciplines

In turn, however, many community organisations need to be more proactive and self-confident in asserting what they can contribute to business.

Taskforce 2002 (sponsored by business in the Community and the National Council of Voluntary Organisations) which brought together leaders from large and small firms, together with representatives from national charities and front-line community groups, identified some of the benefits which non-profits can offer business such as early warning of societal concerns; "innocence by association;" and skills in motivating footloose knowledge-workers.

Taskforce 2002 articulated a vision of a "two-Way Street" - mutually beneficial relationships between business and non-profits. We saw this as being healthier to both sides, far more sustainable in tough times - and far more replicable. We were also convinced that such partnerships would become much more substantial - and, therefore, be far more attractive to Government too, because they could deliver more and be more reliable. They would, of course, also be able to give honest feedback and argue with government when necessary - and say

"no - in our experience this new ministerial wheeze simply won't work "

when Government comes along with "an offer that can't be refused" by perilously funded community groups.

Creating and sustaining cross-sectoral partnerships is no easy task. It may come naturally to a few visionaries. Most of us though would benefit from learning from what has worked already. Why, for instance, have some communities had a long track-record of good partnerships? What's in the air or the water in those areas? Are there some critical success factors like taking the time to build up trust between the partners; to develop a clear vision and strategy - with an agreed action plan to deliver and definite accountabilities and timescales - and active communications to ensure that the wider partnership is kept up to speed and engaged?

If business, government and community groups are serious about wanting to work more in partnerships, perhaps we need a School for Partnerships. This would harness the expertise of organisations like Community Links as well as successful business partners and offer modules on courses run by existing groups like Common Purpose, Civil Service Top Management Programme, business schools - as well as offer their own courses.

Just imagine - if we could over the next 2-3 years train several thousand rising star civil servants (those responsible for policy-making and for implementing ) business people and community entrepreneurs, then the ambiton which many of us have had for a long time now to clone Community Links could be realised.



David Grayson CBE is a director of Business in the Community and Chairman of the National Disability Council. He was chairman of Taskforce 2002 and was co-founder of one of the first local enterprise agencies: Project North East, in 1980.