The idea
All over the UK there are literally thousands of organisations – public, social, charitable, commercial – who want to make the world a better place. They’re all doing different things to help, working with different groups of people and using different techniques and emphases to make an impact in their chosen fields. Most of them don’t know about each other, and very few know who’s working on similar projects or similar areas. There are collaborations between Government and large organisations, but smaller organisations find it harder to engage. If they worked together, shared best practice, co-marketed, formed joint projects and collaborated more effectively, they could accomplish far more with fewer resources.
What social need does it address?
The conventional public policy on this problem is to encourage charities and social enterprises to merge, scale their projects, become larger, work with big business and the Government. But this ignores the vital property of small solutions; that they are simply much better at reaching the people they target and tailoring solutions to them. They achieve far greater impact, albeit on a smaller scale, because they are culturally close to the people they seek to help. The larger the organisations, the “harder to reach” many of their targets become. What is needed is a more effective way of supporting diversity, not the false economy of aggregated uniformity.
What’s new about it?
Social networking sites get people together, online and offline, in groups, societies, projects, teams, networks of shared interest and behaviours. But social networking is for individuals. What we need is social networking for organisations. Partner Up would be a web tool that makes it as easy as possible for organisations to find out who is doing similar work to them, and partner up on joint projects to make their activities more scalable and successful. By making it easier for them to share resources and ideas, it will also make it easier for small companies to have an impact, and hopefully even provide a commercial incentive to collaborate and share.
What inspired you?
The idea was inspired by my time as a student at the School for Social Entrepreneurs, where I met dozens of people who are doing excellent work in local areas or with particular groups. I was inspired by the common threads between their projects, the sense of an emergent approach to genuine change, but I was also frustrated at how little awareness there was in the social sector of best practice, commonality and opportunities for joint projects. I’d also previously worked in the media support sector, and became aware of the huge number of government, public-funded and charitable organisations working to promote the arts and media, widen access and other goals. There seemed to be dozens of related approaches to the same problems, but little sense of a coherent plan or a collaborative approach.
Idea submitted by Andy Gibson
Andy is Co-founder and COO of School of Everything and Founder and Director of Sociability
February 26th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
This links with a Practical design for Social Action initiative http://technologyandsocialaction.org/node/528 and it would be great to partner up.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Hi Andy
I totally agree with you – there are so many organisations working to change the world. It seems crazy that everyone is trying to re-invent the wheel – when I’m sure the solutions are already out there but nobody knows because we work in too much isolation.
Here are a few thoughts to throw into the pot …..
It would be great to have a website that perhaps starts by listing specific, target problems – and then builds a community around each problem – eg “how to tackle increasing gang violence” / “how to reduce teenage obesity” etc. People could submit models / best practice case studies that have actually worked locally to solve each problem. Eg someone sent me a link to this project on the Roehampton estate which really seems to work to reduce gang activity – http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa_sSp6WJEg – more people should know about how it works.
Sometimes I think orgs lose their focus on exactly what problem they are trying to solve. By starting with the problem, it would provide a renewed focus for collective brains to come up with innovative solutions for that problem. Then people can build partnerships and use their resources more wisely to provide effective solutions.
It would also be good if the website engaged networks of people who experience the specific problems listed. I think that many public sector orgs try to make change without sufficiently involving the people they are trying to help – and it may be that it is the people who experience the problem directly who have the best solutions.
Jo
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:09 am
Hi Andy,
This connects to bits of thinking we are doing at the Innovation Exchange – http://www.innovation-exchange.org . We are particularly focused on bringing third sector organisations together with one another and with commissioners to engage in collaborative innovation, but technically may of the challenges are the same.
I look forward to talking these issues through at on the camp and thinking about how they connect with the Exchange and how it might be able to help.
John Craig
March 4th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Hi Andy
I think you have brilliantly identifed the need for small organisation collaborations – I’m just not sure a web tool will be enough on its own
I think you’ll need a mix of collaboration “thingies”
http://www.designingforcivilsociety.org/2008/02/what-are-collab.html
http://www.designingforcivilsociety.org/2008/03/storytelling-fo.html
… and one key element will still be personal – the attitude of the chief exec/director. For example Simon Berry shows how Ruralnet is prepared to partner by his open style of blogging on a personal site http://beamends.typepad.com/simons_blog/
coupled with a co-creation approach to developing the business
http://www.ruralnetonline.org.uk/
Maybe the web tool should encourage people to take a collaboration health check. Potential partners would show their scores in their profile …
March 13th, 2008 at 12:09 am
[...] no doubt see more of him at the Social Innovation Camp where I’m really interested in his Partner Up proposal … but that’s another story. There’s only so much Internet-assisted learning I can [...]
March 13th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Yes, interesting. Particularly given the difficulties in getting smaller organisations engaged in procurement / tendering / commissioning process, which are often to do with scale. Also relates closely to our “long tail of social entrepreneurship” argument, which similarly talks of the need for diversity, innovation, local tailoring etc. as part of a general third sector ecosystem.
Couple of points: one, building on David W’s point, is that many of these smaller, grassroots organisations tend to be at the ‘less tech savvy’ end of things. As Andy will know from his time with us, some have no PC / web connection / e-mail address, never mind navigating social networking sites etc. Aka the web is not enough (see also points about slacktivism / web as tool not solution)
The second, related, point, is that partnership and collaboration in practice on the ground is hard work, with lots of associated risks: to quote myself (I know) from another document:
“Partnership is not easy and many fail because of unclear governance and accountability, muddled purpose and roles, time-heavy meetings and administration. Partnerships may slow and dilute the power of the participants, and differences of values and approach may result in breakdown and failure. These risks are particularly apparent to social entrepreneurs, who tend to be action-oriented and mission-driven in the pursuit of their goals.”
David W and others will know much about how to avoid the above, but collaboration and partnership aren’t always the way to go….
March 13th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
[...] I am referring to goes a few steps further than existing examples like WiserEarth or plans like Partner Up, not just in terms of scale and ambition, but also in terms of integrated web 2.0 applications [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 12:50 am
How will people find it easier to find partners on partner-up than using Google search?
If you could provide a taxonomy for social entrepreneurs, to navigate around and find each other, that might be valuable, rather than a keyword search.
Such a taxonomy might work with Deli.cio.us or Yahoo’s directory http://dir.yahoo.com/ rather than meriting a whole new social networking service.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Thanks to everyone who’s commented and offered to help with this. Excellent “partnering up”, I think.
Since SI Camp hasn’t selected this idea, we need to find a way to take this forward independently. I’m looking for organisations with strong links and authority within the third sector to get behind this concept, and then we can begin to tie in all the various ideas around this together.
I’ve just written a post on Sociability about this (www.sociability.org.uk/2008/03/25/steal-this-idea-1), but happy to continue the conversation here too. I welcome your ideas on what we can do to progress this, it feels like there’s a lot of good energy around this that it would be shame to lose.
October 14th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Sounds like a nice idea to get social enterprises linking up, to ’social enterprise’ their supply chain and communications rather than having to use non-social enterprises