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Paul is Managing Partner and CEO at Bethnal Green Ventures.
What do you do?
I help run Bethnal Green Ventures – we’re a VC firm that invests in early-stage tech for good businesses. That’s for profit startups that will also have a positive social or environmental impact on millions of peoples’ lives.
Given you hold a senior role in your organisation, can you explain the motivation for what you do?
Really it’s about putting technology to work to solve big social and environmental problems. Historically people in the tech industry have pretended that tech is neutral but that’s never been true – the way it is used is full of value judgements. My motivation is that I want to see tech used for good and not just to get people to click on ads more often.
What’s been your direct experience of Covid-19 – professionally and personally?
Professionally, like a lot of organisations we’ve gone virtual. The whole BGV team is working from home and then we’re running our programme of support for ventures online as well. Overall the portfolio has done ok – some ventures have been negatively affected (particularly those that sell direct to consumers) but others have had to really step up. For example DrDoctor found that there was a huge increase in demand for their software in hospitals and Talklife saw demand from universities grow very quickly.
Personally I feel like I’ve been lucky. I don’t have any close friends or family who have died because of the virus. Being locked down has caused stresses and strains that others have felt too but I’m all too aware that I’ve been one of the lucky ones.
What were the main challenges you faced in your role before the pandemic, and what were the causes of those challenges?
The big challenge in impact investment at the moment is that a lot of asset owning investors (usually known as LPs in our world) are talking more about impact investing but there’s not much real action. When you look at the big financial services companies and pension funds and so on, they say they are taking impact seriously but they’re not really doing much about it. The challenge in my role is to try and convince them to invest in our funds.
How has the pandemic changed the nature of those challenges? Has it created new ones?
Fundraising has always been difficult but the pandemic has made it more difficult at least temporarily. However the signs are that investors are understanding that they can’t just keep on doing what they’ve always done. They need to put their money where their mouth is if we’re to build a more sustainable, equitable economy and planet.
Many people are talking about Covid-19 being a game changer for society. What do you understand ‘re-set’ to mean?
Starting from first principles in terms of asking how do we create a better society. I think it also means stopping doing some things pretty quickly that are obviously unsustainable. Now is the right time to tackle air pollution, end poor employment practices, stop austerity that leaves us unable to cope with a crisis and many other things that would help build a better system.
What do you think has to change? From a political, economic, technological, institutional and behavioural perspective, for example?
All those things are related and we need them pulling in the same direction. I get the sense that the financial world has genuinely changed but it will take a while for that to be felt. I’m not so sure about politics – I worry that there’s a lack of humility and learning going on in the UK Government.
What do you think will change?
Change tends to happen very slowly and then very quickly. The long arc is definitely towards a better world so hopefully this will be the opportunity to accelerate positive change.
Thanks Paul.
Simon is a director at AND Digital.
AND Digital was established in 2014 and is one of Europe’s fastest growing tech companies, employing over 600 people and generating an annual turnover of £42m. In this year’s The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For, AND was ranked at number 10, demonstrating its people first focus for tech talent.
Given you hold a senior role in your organisation, can you explain the motivation for what you do?
There are a couple of angles to that. I feel an immense responsibility for both the clients we serve and the people I’m responsible for, so there is a clear motivation in terms of doing right by them and doing the very best I can for clients who pay us money to deliver results. There is a significant motivator there in terms of ensuring that we do that and we do that to their satisfaction.
There’s a big responsibility in terms of making sure I support, protect and look after and help grow the people in the Club. That’s a weighty responsibility and something I take very seriously.
And on a simple level, I always want to do my best. I want to finish each day knowing I’ve done everything I can to deliver the best results. Often there are challenges, but I suppose that’s why you’re in the role.
What’s been your direct experience of Covid-19 – professionally and personally?
Professionally – in senior roles you manage a lot of change and ambiguity and that’s been heightened in this scenario with the need to provide a degree of clarity when there is little out there. There’s been a lot of focus on managing client work where either there’s a move to complete remote working; or just finishing because a particular client’s financial position has changed significantly and they have to pause or stop the work or the projects they were doing. It’s about managing those aspects, which one does anyway, but it’s been significantly increased in this period.
And then, I suppose, managing people on furlough. So furlough – great scheme, hugely, hugely appreciative of the support the government has put in place. But where we’ve got people who aren’t out with clients, we’ve put them on furlough. It’s the logical thing to do. Then we have to manage that group of people ensuring that they’re falling within the guidelines in terms of not contributing to work with the company, and supporting them and helping them be engaged and motivated. To make sure we’re walking that line effectively in terms of looking after the individual without compromising any guidelines.
And then personally? I suppose I’ve tried not to dwell on that too much. I’m not doing the commute, which is great. I’m doing a bit more in terms of exercise, which is good. Lovely to see my family more, most of the time! The homeschooling – I’ve got a new respect or increased respect for teachers. Yeah… one does miss those informal or chance encounters with people, or interactions, whereas everything now is structured and I spend all day, every day on Zoom at my desk. Now, there are far, far worse things in life, but – you know – that human interaction, those chance conversations… you have to be very deliberate now in order to affect those.
What were the main challenges you faced in your role before the pandemic, and what were the causes of those challenges?
In professional services and in the digital world we operate in, the key challenge is ensuring you’ve got the right skills to fit the client’s needs. Now and in the future. So trying to make sure you’ve got that match and you’ve got that compelling proposition – that’s the one of the big questions you face. I don’t think that necessarily changes in this scenario. It’s probably eased to a certain extent. So with our model, we look after our clients within the club. So if we can’t service a particular need for a client, because of a specific tech stack we might not have experience of within a club, we typically have to turn it down rather than reach out to other clubs. Now, with everyone operating remotely, that gives us a bit more leeway actually in terms of a bit more of a level playing field – so it’s far more easier for someone in Edinburgh to support a London client. I prefer to think of the positives in these scenarios, rather than the challenges.
Work with our financial sector clients is cracking on, going well. As the lock down hit and the Covid 19 implications began to play through there was a bit of a wobble but, fundamentally, we carried on and the work we’re doing is going really well. I think where our clients have to change their business model to adapt to the new scenario, how that plays through takes longer. Media – when advertising revenues drop, how do you address that gap in the revenue coming in and the content you’re putting out? How do you generate different revenue streams? Obviously there will be different revenue streams and there will be a load of ideas coming through, but in some instances where there are fundamental issues it can take a bit of time for those to flow through. Media is an example, retail is a really great example: some retailers are thriving; some, where there is no online retail presence – huge issues, what do they do? Do they get up online quickly? If not, how then do they manage? So yeah, some interesting questions.
Many people are talking about Covid-19 being a game changer for society. What do you understand ‘re-set’ to mean?
I was thinking about this this morning as I was preparing for the call. It seemed to me that it’s quite similar to New Year’s resolutions. It’s a much bigger example, but it’s a chance to pause and reflect on: what do we take out of this, what are the positives, what are the behaviours or the ways we’re working or the cultural shifts that have happened in this period that we want to continue with and how do our priorities change?
And I suspect that someone will continue – some will be stuck to, and some will be broken.
I think there are some obvious ones, which I’m sure that the other individuals you have spoken to have spoken about. The myth of working remotely has been exploded, I think, in terms of where people didn’t have confidence it could work or didn’t have confidence that a workforce or their employees would be able to operate in that space… actually, by and large, in my world in the digital space and I’m sure across most, it has worked very effectively. So I think there will be a shift. Now I don’t think that means we’re all going to work remotely forever, but I think it will be much more of a natural aspect within a working week.
I suspect that most companies will look to have a higher degree of financial stability for those rainy days. I think a number of companies were caught on the hop in terms of level of reserves. Now everyone can be very clever in hindsight and I’m not suggesting that people should have done better, but having a greater ability to ride out a rainy day might be sensible going forward.
I do think that one of the real positives has been seeing the positive impact, to a certain degree, of the environment and the planet. I think if that can be continued and held up as an important aspect of moving forward I think that will be a really big win.
And I think, finally, respecting those key workers who are the ones making the world turn at the moment. Who are actually keeping us together. The food producers, the health workers, the delivery drivers, those people who make the fundamentals of this world work in terms of what we need rather than what we want. And I think the people who deliver what we need, making sure we actually, I hope, in a respect and remuneration sense, acknowledge them more fully than maybe we have done previously.
What do you think has to change? From a political, economic, technological, institutional and behavioural perspective, for example?
In terms of the ability of people to work remotely I think that there’s been a huge shift in terms of tools and ways of working. There’s all sorts of meeting tools, communication tools and so on, all of which are being refined and approved. Zoom is updated pretty frequently and, actually, 3 months ago a lot of people wouldn’t have had the confidence to use it because they hadn’t had exposure to it. But it’s becoming much more accessible. There are a load of digital solutions that are enabling people to operate effectively remotely and we should continue that and hopefully that type of capability will be taken forward.
I do think there has definitely been a greater respect, or caring, for each other at a personal level. And I think if we can continue to remember and do that when lives probably become busier again then I think that will be a huge, huge positive off the back of this. So when someone went to shop for their elderly next door neighbour, is there any reason why that kind of relationship does not happen when we rush back to offices or when schools kick off again? I hope not. I hope when we actually say thank you to the delivery person or the nurse or the doctor who has a big impact on your life… I hope we all have a bit more respect and support for those people around us.
Thanks Simon.
Jack is the Leader of Lambeth Council.
You hold a leadership role in your organisation. What’s your motivation?
I grew up in public service. I believe in it. I believe in making the world better. So, it’s a great opportunity to do that. To improve the lives of my residents, my neighbours, businesses and shops in the place that I live.
What’s been your direct experience of Covid-19 – both professionally and personally?
So I think personally, obviously lockdown: you start to see the world a from a different perspective. I was talking to you earlier and about recognising that ten year olds can manage an hour of unsupervised play, and that’s it! And then an adult needs to be in the room. And the things that you miss when you’re just rushing through life. So it’s been a time for reflection.
Professionally it’s been really, really intense. I’ve effectively just worked seven days a week. And, certainly at the start, from 6 in the morning I’d get up and start doing stuff, phone calls with the Chief Exec five times a day, you know, emergency control meetings, key decisions, emergency decisions, lots of questions, a whole bunch of councillors to point and direct and to get information from. Professionally it was really, really intense, but, you know, satisfying, and Lambeth’s done fairly well out of it so I’m fairly proud.
What were the main challenges you faced in your role before the pandemic, and what were the causes of those challenges?
I suppose at a macro level, the challenges before the pandemic have just been the same ones that have been exacerbated. People on low incomes, bad wages, no access to green space, overcrowded conditions, precarious work, danger on the streets. We’ve had a lot of young people killed in our borough on the street. That hasn’t been happening but we’ve had other people dead from being on the street.
And the causes of those challenges – I mean, they’re huge. Structural racism, generational poverty, poor social networks, higher prevalence of co-morbidity indicators anyway within certain communities.
So, the challenges are clear: inequality’s causing it, poverty’s causing it but there are so many different ways of trying to get out of it. And I suppose that’s been the biggest difficulty of this, the same challenges organisationally – how do you turn as much resource as you need to solve some problems, and who does it?
The council can’t do these things, we know that; we can’t solve youth violence and poverty, but working with other people we can. How do you get the resource that exists in that area focused on solving a problem together? But, you know, Covid has made us work in different ways, it’s been great – a lot of stuff I was trying to push beforehand to try and get the organistion into a better space, working around people’ sneeds, around where communities operate, working across departments, or agencies or public sector partners or whatever… that’s all happened.
So Covid has super-charged our ability to transform the organisation. I suppose it’s now about catching it on the other end and saying, ‘what was good, what do we want to keep, what did we miss and reshaping the organisation to be fit for what the post Covid world is going to look like.’
Many people are talking about Covid-19 being a game changer for society, about recovery and reset. What do you understand that to really mean? What do you think ‘reset’ means and what do you think other people think it means?
I think it’s quite difficult at the moment, because in my head I’m in this space right now. And it’s just time limited. I am thinking a little bit about the future, the far future, what would the world be if I could click my fingers and say, ‘right, let’s get there’. A lot of my thinking over the last week has been about what are the immediate challenges, like schools opening, community centres opening, people going back to work, second spikes, contact tracing. You know, what are we going to do with all those kids who’ve just missed months of education. What can you do safely. So I think about all those sorts of things and make sure that we’re dealing with them.
The thing that’s been great about this is the solidarity. But the second that some people starting getting let out, that solidarity goes out the window, because people just want to get back to work and they forget about the fact that someone who lived across the road from them for ten years has been going to food banks for ten years, but they only just realised that these things existed. Now how do you make sure that people retain a sense of, ‘I don’t think it’s good enough that people who live on my street don’t have access to green space, or get paid bad wages from companies I buy stuff from?’ How do you get people to care about the situation of their neighbour they don’t know, that’s different from their own? And to say, ‘Ok, I’ve got some choices I can make in my life. I’m going to stop buying from Amazon because their warehouses are terrible and they crush union labour and they treat their workers really badly. You know, air quality in our part of London is the best it’s ever been because people aren’t driving. You’ve got kids cycling around in the streets – that’s great, isn’t it? That’s nice.
So people have choices to make. Government and local government cannot make people behave better to each other, so the solution has got to come from everyone. That’s why you’ve got to co-produce the solution with people, They’ve got to recognise their role in it and their stake in it. When we come out of this, we’ll come out with a Lambeth Recovery Plan. But it won’t be a council plan. Everyone will have contributed to it. Because we need them to do their bit and recognise where they fit in the jigsaw. If they just say, ‘Right, oh good, this is what we want you to do, the council, then kids will still go back to dying on the streets, we won’t be able to properly fund services, people won’t change their behaviour and sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others, whether that’s not buying stuff from Amazon or getting on your bike to go to Sainsbury’s rather than driving. So they’ve got to be part of that solution. Or otherwise they’re not going to do it.
What do you think has to change? From a political, economic, technological, institutional and behavioural perspective, for example?
Well, I think one of the problems that we’ve got in a place like Lambeth is that people don’t know enough about how other people live. Big issues like the climate emergency, people either don’t care or they cheat. There are very few people in the world who are really good environmentalists. The problem is that they’re so bitter about it that no one listens to them. Hair shirtedness and holier than thou – I’m talking about the green lobby. I’m not necessarily talking about new groups, like Mums for Lungs, which is groups of local mums getting together to stop people driving and improve air quality and all that stuff.
So perhaps the outcome will be that there will be more ways in which people have connected with each other. To encourage each other to behave well, to recycle more, to save us money. That might be an outcome, but that’s very self directed. We can be a partner but we can’t mandate that from government because it doesn’t work. So there’s a whole nature of government change because if the solution to this that’s going to work it has to be co-produced, which means that government has got to give up power and share it with their citizens. Central government has got to give up some power and share it with local government. And I suppose the tension will be if neither of those things happen and we have a bad response to a second wave and loads more people die, then people’s trust in government institutions is broken, even further than it was before Brexit, right? If it is co-produced and it does work, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. So you’ve got a very different style of democracy and decision making that’s a lot closer to the front line. I mean, we’re still the most centralised country in Europe politically, you know. That’s why we need money from government; I mean, Jenryck has just turned round to us and said, ‘You’re not going to get all your money back.’ Well, we will need that. Right at the start he said, spend whatever you want, then they started rowing back and we started lobbying hard on it, they put some more money out and then today he turned round and said, ‘you won’t be recompensed for everything’. Local government took ten years of austerity because of the bloody banking crisis. We didn’t cause that, the bankers caused that. But we got ten years, 60p in every pound from our budgets, gone. And they’re going to do it to us again.’
What do you think will change?
It’s really difficult because thinking about it from a council perspective there’s the different politics of it, much more grass-rootsy, direct democracy. Economically? God knows. God knows what’s going to happen. You’d have to ask an economist for that. I mean a lot of people are going to be unemployed Lots of people are going to get depressed. So there are all sorts of ramifications on health.
Technological… I don’t know. Christ, I going to have to do more Zoom calls. I’ve got no excuse not to be somewhere.
Institutionally, everything changes. One of my pals, he’s done very well for himself. He runs a make-up business. Got factories in China. Made a fortune. Lives in Hampstead. In the most amazing house. And he’s shutting his office. He’s like, ‘Don’t need that’. He’s just going to hire a fancy, private members club to do team meetings and away days all over London. We’ve proved we can work from distance. Get everyone together once in a while just to make sure no one’s switched off. So how is that going to change the market for people working locally, what does that mean for out of London, what does that mean for central London? House prices? If people aren’t going to want to get on a tube for a long time, what’s the value in living near a tube station? They reckon that forty grand in my part of London in Vauxhall is the price of a parking space or a garage. Is that still going to be the case? How are we going to value things going forward? And I mean that on a personal level as well. We were talking earlier about a different pace of life. Still getting to do what you need to do. Less expectation on you because everything is a bit slower. People being nicer. Actually saying, ‘How you doing? You alright? How’s your family?’ And really meaning it, instead of the normal, ‘You alright Dan, yeah, right, down to business.’
Lots of futures are possible. It just depends who’s pushing and who’s in the ascendant. I’m bloody glad that Keir Starmer is the leader of the Labour Party now. The level of coherence, professionalism and diligence, God, it’s marked. It feels like a much better place to be and this is when you need a government held to account.
And what’s interesting is that in local government we’re sharing our thinking and our strategy and we’re co-producing solutions. We couldn’t do it without healthy living platforms, Sue Sheehan or our business improvement districts… we wouldn’t have achieved anything. Because we co-produce it. What Keir Starmer’s asking of government is: ‘why aren’t you showing us the working?’ We can agree to the plan, but you’ve got to show us the working. Why are you trying to do everything in a room?’ And you think, well, that’s not a plan that’s going to work, is it?
Thanks Jack.
The Social Value Exchange and partners Supply Change have created the ‘Social Enterprise and Community Organisation Directory’ to keep everyone connected in these challenging times.
Covid-19 touches almost every facet of our lives and has presented us with a wide range of challenges to grapple with and everyone has been affected in different ways.
Social enterprises and community-based organisations are no exception to this, yet their work is arguably more important than ever. These organisations support people who will be particularly vulnerable to the effects of isolation and social distancing such as the elderly, refugee and migrant communities, and those with mental health conditions. The crisis has meant that many have had to cancel their face to face services/workshops and drop-in centres indefinitely leading to economic uncertainty and concern for the people they help.
Despite this, the sector is proving to be a crucial player in mitigating the impact of Coronavirus on communities demonstrating resilience, creativity and innovation. Some like We Are Digital and InCommon have moved entire businesses online in a matter of weeks whilst others like Dare to Care Packages have emerged as new initiatives set up purely in response to the crisis.
Many organisations have adapted their services to support the most vulnerable, thanks to willing volunteers and donations. Badu, a sports charity, has moved online and is providing families with care packages under a new initiative called ‘One Community.’ Cooking charity Made in Hackney has already crowdfunded an astonishing £66k and is delivering emergency meals on wheels service.
The crisis has also underlined the limitations and fragility of global supply chains, the importance of a diverse and local supplier base and the need to rethink the way we do business as usual. Once we start to move towards recovery the case for social and community organisations, who are rooted in local economies, will be stronger than ever. This is particularly true for local authorities and the housing sector who exist to help communities thrive.
And, relatedly, a well-resourced community sector will be needed to mitigate the effects of the economic crisis that will likely follow the health one. We have seen during the health crisis that local voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) organisations are important and necessary delivery partners to the government — this will be even more the case as we see the economic fallout begin to impact local communities.
Supply Change and the Social Value Exchange are two digital solutions that aim to broker relationships between the public, private and VCSE sectors. Our organisations have complementary approaches, with both aiming to help deliver social value from the procurement process and deliver positive social outcomes at the same time.
About Supply Change
Supply Change is a platform that aims to increase the visibility of social enterprises. The platform hosts pre-vetted B2B social suppliers delivering a range of goods and services and connects them to public and private sector buyers. The platform enables organisations to find the best supplier for their needs and get in touch at the click of a button.
About the Social Value Exchange
The Social Value Exchange matches private sector resources — IT hardware, business expertise, funding — with accredited local community projects: we get resources to where they are most needed in local communities.
In challenging times, collaborating with like-minded organisations can be key to achieving maximum impact. As Supply Change and the Social Value Exchange both offer brokerage solutions at different points of the procurement process, we’ve decided to form a strategic partnership.
To kick our partnership off we’ve created the ‘Social Enterprise and Community Organisations Directory’. Because our public sector partners are so busy responding to the COVID-19 crisis, we’re changing our approach. We’ve collated a directory of social enterprises, cooperatives and community organisations, which will allow all of the public sector partners and corporate businesses we’ve worked with over the years to see who they can either still buy services from or offer financial and non-financial support to during this time.
By creating this open-source directory we hope to ensure that the amazing organisations we work with still have access to as many networks and opportunities as possible and promote the work they do.
Shazia is the Assistant Chief Executive at the London Borough of Brent.
You hold a leadership role in your organisation. What’s the motivation?
Primarily for me it’s about creating a society that is fairer. Councils are there, especially in this day and age, to support the most vulnerable and my motivation is that – making sure that people who need help and support, whichever way that might be, are able to receive that and are treated in a way that is inclusive. That’s my main motivation, if I had to sum it up. It’s about creating a fairer society and councils have a big part to play in that.
What’s been your direct experience of Covid-19 – both professionally and personally?
So, personally I haven’t had any member of my family who’s been affected in any way, but I suppose my personal experience of it is that obviously I can’t see my family, and we’ve got quite a close family.
On a professional level, our Gold meetings take place every single day, which is our emergency planning. So the first 6 weeks – although we’re still doing it – it was full on. We were working flat out. We were just trying to get all of our emergency response up and running and everything was changing on an hourly basis.
National government gave its directives through the London wide Gold meetings, made up of Chief Executives. This passed through to local authorities, where we have our own Gold meetings, where we take decisions and report back.
We also changed the way the council made decisions. Normally decisions are made through Cabinet, but because Cabinet hasn’t been able to meet, those decisions have been delegated to the Chief Executive. So that’s been interesting and that’s actually meant that decisions have been made differently and to some extent they’ve been made faster.
We’ve put a lot of our core business to the side and only dealt with emergency planning. We’ve started to deal with recovery now and we’re starting to think about what recovery might look like. And little bits of business as usual are starting to trickle back in as we get a little bit more breathing space.
What were the main challenges you faced in your role before the pandemic, and what were the causes of those challenges?
The challenges that we have now are not that different from the ones we had. Social care has been an issue for a long time. This isn’t a new problem and I think what the Covid 19 emergency has done is put a stronger lens over it. Alongside social care – the issues around the credit crunch, the issues around the most vulnerable people, the climate emergency – all of that was on our radar; we were looking at it but it wasn’t as heightened as it is now.
We think the costs of Covid 19 is something like £30m, just for Brent, and we’re getting something in the region of £18m, and that’s just to date [editor’s note: as of 24/07/20] – that’s before it goes on for, potentially, another 3, 6 or 12 months.
The other big challenge we’ve had is about food. And getting food aid to those that are shielded, those that are self isolating, those that are suffering from hardship, or those that are just have no access to a network.
We got the first list in the first week and we had to contact thousands of people. We had to completely set up the food hub from scratch, which is a massive operation. We’ve got something like 500 food parcels a day going out to people. And had to do that while social distancing. It was tricky, but we had a good operation, and the manager responsible has done really well. But even so, we found, thankfully, some really isolated people.
The Mutual Aid groups that have emerged out of the Covid 19 response have grown from nothing. It’s a mix of old and young, mainly mobilised through social media. And they’ve done an amazing job. They got fliers out, they let people know, they’ve been getting food and emergency relief to people for the whole period and much of that is self organised.
What do you think has to change? From a political, economic, technological, institutional and behavioural perspective, for example?
I think that as people start to demand change then institutions will automatically have to respond to that. And the government and the politicians will have to respond to that. And it will work in that way, bottom up rather than top down.
And I think the longer Covid-19 goes on for, the more change we’re likely to see. I think if we go back to normality in the next 2-3 months, people will go back to old habits. The change hasn’t happened for long enough. I think you need 12 months for people’s habits to change. People are very habit forming.
What’s interesting is that people can cope with change, people can evolve and actually technologically it’s all there for us. We’ve got all sorts of tools which we have put quite a lot of investment into.
The way that we brief members – that’s now via a webinar. All the councillors now have an opportunity to ask the corporate management team for an update on the areas we’re responsible for. It’s been really good, it’s been a really good way to keep all the councillors briefed. Many backbenchers don’t get real access to us and don’t get that level of information. It’s been good for decision making and it’s been good for managing the volume of members’ enquiries.
We’ve also adapted our external communications. We started issuing very concise and very informative information on the virus. We’ve had a really high take up in terms of people reading information, tweeting and checking our social media channels. It’s been really effective, and it’s been effective because it’s information that needed to go out to people, rather than it having a promotional nature.
And we’re looking at our business across the whole council. We’re doing an engagement with members, we’re doing a full staff engagement as well, and we’re trying to use this opportunity to see if we can change things, to do things differently. We can stop doing certain things that we don’t need to do and focus on the opportunities that will create greater benefits and better outcomes.
Thanks Shazia.
Jake is the Chief Executive of Hackney CVS, trustee of NCVO, adviser to Sadiq Khan on serious youth violence and chair of the London CVS Directors Network.
Given you hold a senior role in your organisation, can you explain the motivation for what you do?
Originally my career was as a medical student, so I’ve always had an interest in helping others and using whatever skills and aptitude I’ve got for partnership and social issues in a community context.
I quickly realised I wasn’t too interested in being a doctor. I was more interested in changing society and I think when you’re working in a CVS you have the opportunity to change the course of history by ensuring communities have more of a voice, have more of a say in the delivery of services, are supported to be able to deliver more of what they deliver on the ground. We are all starting to appreciate the valuable role that the community sector has played so far in responding to the crisis, working alongside Councils and other public bodies.
So it’s a hugely challenging job. I wouldn’t necessarily wish it on anyone. But the rewards are huge as well and I can sleep at night, you know. I sleep well. Although I don’t sleep much, I sleep really, really heavily and wake up feeling like the day is a new day. My commitment has never wavered because there’s something very rewarding in achieving small but also big gains in terms of the narrative of community development and how you turn that into reality. That is what drives me. I’m also interested in racial inequality. I’m interested in social justice. I’m interested in real equality in terms of the delivery of services and the role that the VCS so often plays to plug gaps in public services or in providing culturally specific support to our diverse communities. Throughout my twenty years in this game, so many times I’ve seen local authorities fail at something because they haven’t done it in partnership with the local community.
What’s been your direct experience of Covid-19 – professionally and personally?
I’ll talk about the personal bits first. We’ve had a few community members die, sadly. Brother Dougie being the most recent high profile person. He did a lot. He was part of one of our community programmes around black men’s health. He was one of those guys that was everywhere and was always putting on really helpful community events at weekends that allowed men to talk about their health. Men are generally more reluctant than women to come forward when they have health issues so it was really important that through Dougie we were able to provide spaces for men to talk about diabetes, mental health, all the sorts of pressure men are under at the minute – if you’re from a different ethnic minority, that type of disease is more prevalent.
I think what I realised, and what society is catching up on really quickly, is that Covid is impacting on the poorest in society. There are obvious links between poverty and places of higher incidences of Covid related deaths. Society really needs to learn from this. I’m actually involved with a lot of work nationally with black and ethnic infrastructure organisations across the country. We’ve been meeting with the Lottery and government to try and make sure that money from government is reaching the parts that it needs to reach. I’ve introduced the idea of a substantial long term endowment that will focus on tackling inequality, and put black and ethnic minority organisations at the heart of the solution. So that could be a really positive outcome. I was talking to Dawn Austwick, the Lottery CEO, recently about this and I’ve managed, through my trustee role at NCVO, to elicit some support for the development of this. This is really new potential development hot off the press, which I think could have a really long standing legacy for our black and ethnic minority communities across the country.
Professionally….? At Hackney CVS we’ve moved all of our services to an online offer of support to local groups. A lot of the work we’re doing in terms of programmes has segued into an online scenario. For instance, the work we do with young leaders, the leaders are supported and resourced by us to do lots of peer to peer engagement on the issues that matter to young people. So we’ve been helping young people work with the police on messaging around stop and search and managing community tensions. Young people are involved in an initiative called the Cool Down Cafe that helps young people talk to each other about mental health, so we’re going through the process of turning that into an online offer. Many of the organisations we fund through our Connect Hackney programme are now supporting older residents online, helping them feel less isolated. We are also keeping the older people’s magazine, Hackney Senior going too as many older people aren’t online and need information in printed form. We’re going to do the older people’s summit through Zoom, probably in July, so how do we get those older people with computers to connect? So there are some real practical challenges from Covid.
In Hackney now a lot of the services are moving to a neighbourhood structure. So rather than them being delivered across the whole of Hackney, we’ve now got 8 neighbourhood areas that largely correlate with population sizes of between 20 – 50,000 residents. So there’s the idea of these multi-disciplinary teams – community midwifery, GPs, pharmacies – engaging in a local area with the local voluntary sector organisations. We started in one neighbourhood about 18 months ago doing intensive engagement work but with COVID we have now had to expand this to provide community conversations across all 8 neighbourhood areas – so it’s been quite tasking to scale up quickly. What we’re doing is facilitating what we’re calling community conversations; so local councillors, health professionals, voluntary groups all talking about how they can work better in the local neighbourhood. Really pleased by that – what that’s done is it’s demonstrated to the system leaders – the heads of all the health agencies, councils – the value of the voluntary sector and how we can be fast moving and agile in terms of connecting people.
A lot of local organisations have been relying on us for support around their fundraising, their governance, their training. Again, we’re shifting that online. We’ve also got some corporate volunteers through the East London Business Alliance who can help local groups, particularly the smaller ones, write cohesive bids. There’s actually quite a lot of money around but because a lot of the groups are working on the support to residents, the idea of filling out an eight page funding application is not high on their agenda, yet they absolutely need the resource.
One of the things that we’ve just got sign-off for is that we’ve convinced the CCG to put £300k into the sector through our Hackney Giving portal. That’s going to be available in the next 2 – 3 weeks. So that’s quite a significant investment by the CCG for one year projects led by local VCS organisations who are dealing with the crisis.
The Lottery, who has £200m of govt investment to distribute, is really keen to receive proposals from organisations that are impacted by the crisis and also those that have lost income, which is really important because it’s not just about getting resources to those organisations who have to increase capacity or do more, there’s also a hell of lot of organisations that have had to close down face to face contact, so all that income has gone. Some are obviously in a really precarious position as a result of losing income and we are mindful of this going forward so we are working with the local Council to continually monitor the situation. The fact that government is saying to the Lottery one of the strands will be for those that have lost income is welcome news.
There’s a lot going on with the black and ethnic minority voluntary sector. A survey done by colleagues of ours in Haringey, the Ubele Initiative, found that of the 150-odd organisations they surveyed, probably about 9/10 were at risk of closure in the next 12 months. Really, really scary horizon scanning going on there.
Coming back to some of the local issues – the digital divide is one of the top 3 problems which plays out in many different ways. For example, if you’re a family on low income and can’t afford a computer, how are you going to help your kids learn at home? It’s near on impossible. If you’re an older person that’s never had a computer, and not really connected, how are you going to get public messaging? If you’re a young person who can’t afford to top up your mobile, you’re potentially being disconnected from society. So all these different layers of digital divide are very much live issues. The Council have started to coordinate thinking about this following all the feedback we have shared with them which is great. Another big issue is preventing the further spread of the disease and we are working closely with Public Health to get investment to local VCS organisations who can help with the implementation of the new test and trace system. Having community champions echoing key public safety messages will be key to the local dissemination
We are going to be working on a local recovery and resilience plan for the VCS which we want to develop in co-production with them and our public sector colleagues. We are just starting this process and it will take a range of meetings and conversations to get right.
Many people are talking about Covid-19 being a game changer for society. What do you understand ‘re-set’ to mean?
Practically, it’s a game changer. Staff welfare is absolutely top of my agenda. If we’re expecting staff to work very differently, work remotely, deliver all the work that we do normally but remotely, that’s a game changer in itself.
I’m, as a CEO, probably doing 12 hour days. I would never have been able to do that in the past. It’s not sustainable either, I’m not advocating that everyone should do 12 hour days, of course not. But I’m not travelling to work for an hour and a half every day. So I’ve got extra hours to work on stuff, which means productivity has probably increased. We just had a management team meeting this morning, talking about if we have a phased return, we’re probably going to have staff that will want to stay working remotely because they find they’re being a bit more productive. So that will change the whole nature of the work environment. So I think things like that are game changers.
I think the fact that Covid has illustrated society’s inequalities is a game changer strategically. It means that previously when, particularly, black and ethnic minorities have felt on the margins, I can see them coming closer to the centre and saying – ‘we want to be part of the solution going forward, we need the investment, we’ve been underinvested in for years, now is the time to properly invest for the future.’ I think there are new relationships forming between voluntary organisations and between voluntary organisations and the state that perhaps weren’t there. So that is a positive.
So I think on many levels this whole crisis is a game changer.
What do you think has to change? From a political, economic, technological, institutional and behavioural perspective, for example?
If you’re talking about Hackney CVS, a lot of our challenges have been technical. Moving to a remote system has really shown how weak our server capacity is, for instance, and our broadband capacity. If you have more than one person using Zoom, the system just grinds to a halt! We’re in conversation with our trustees about investment so that we can move to Google or Microsoft Teams, and a new database to improve how data is shared.
For us a lot of it is about investing in the infrastructure to enable us to be more agile.
As a community centre – so the centre in Dalston is the old CLR James Library. It’s not the most modern building but we’ve invested in it – £250k in a new heating and cooling system and a cosmetic facelift. But as you can imagine, we can’t use it at the moment. We’ve got tenants who rely on us as well, so we’re negotiating a rent holiday with the local authority but I can’t see us returning quickly to being a fully utilised centre that’s open to the public until govt guidance changes. We’re talking about the staff coming back, phasing in, making sure we’ve got enough space, using our conference rooms for desk space to make sure people can keep enough distance from each other. We will be providing webinars about this for local VCS organisations in the same boat as us
As infrastructure organisations we have often been overlooked in the past as what we do is not easy to quantify or understand immediately. The crisis has really demonstrated the important role that we play. Interestingly, a number of funders and institutions are starting to consider the need for long term investment in infrastructure. What’s also great is that funders are changing the way they invite applications – saying – ‘look, get your bids into us, tell us what you need’. It’s a different style of conversation and I think largely funders and councils are being supportive and are elevating the status and importance of the sector. For me it’s an opportune time for us to say – ‘look, you need us now so put the proper investment in, talk to us as equals, have us round the table, don’t bring us in at the last stage of your planning considerations, have us in from the outset, we appreciate your challenges but we know where the pinch points are, the crunch points, the bits of the system that aren’t working’. So it’s those sorts of conversations. We’ve just had confirmation in the last couple of weeks that the voluntary sector will be a specific workstream within City and Hackney’s Health and Social Care Transformation programme. That will give us more gravitas strategically. Investment in the sector will hopefully follow.
Thanks Jake.
To better understand how the recovery from Covid-19 will look, I’ve spoken to 5 leaders across the private, public and civic society sectors to see what they think about these extreme times and what they think will follow.
Jack Hopkins, the Leader of the Lambeth Council
Paul Miller OBE, the Managing Director and CEO of Bethnal Green Ventures, Europe’s leading early stage tech for good VC
Jake Ferguson, Hackney CVS Chief Exec and trustee of NCVO, adviser to Sadiq Khan on serious youth violence and chair of the London CVS Directors Network
Shazia Hussain, Assistant Chief Executive at the London Borough of Brent
Simon Holden, Director, AND Digital, one of the UK’s fastest growing tech firms, Top 10 of the Times 100 (2020).
I’ll share an interview every two weeks, starting with Jake Ferguson on Monday. They are worth reading in the round and I’ll share my overall thoughts next month.
They make for great reading, so thanks to Jack, Paul, Jake, Shazia and Simon for their candour.
With our partners Supply Change, we have created the ‘Social Enterprise and Community Organisation Directory’ to keep everyone connected in these challenging times. This will allow all of the public and private sector partners we’ve worked with over the last few years to see who they can either still buy services from or offer support to during this period.
COVID-19 touches almost every facet of our lives and has presented us with a wide range of challenges to grapple with and everyone has been affected in different ways.
Social enterprises and community-based organisations are no exception to this, yet their work is arguably more important than ever. These organisations support people who will be particularly vulnerable to the effects of isolation and social distancing such as the elderly, refugee and migrant communities, and those with mental health conditions. The crisis has meant that many have had to cancel their face to face services/workshops and drop-in centres indefinitely leading to economic uncertainty and concern for the people they help.
Despite this, the sector is proving to be a crucial player in mitigating the impact of Coronavirus on communities demonstrating resilience, creativity and innovation. Some like We Are Digital and InCommon have moved entire businesses online in a matter of weeks whilst others like Dare to Care Packages have emerged as new initiatives set up purely in response to the crisis.
Many organisations have adapted their services to support the most vulnerable, thanks to willing volunteers and donations. Badu, a sports charity, has moved online and is providing families with care packages under a new initiative called ‘One Community.’ Cooking charity Made in Hackney has already crowdfunded an astonishing £66k and is delivering emergency meals on wheels service.
The crisis has also underlined the limitations and fragility of global supply chains, the importance of a diverse and local supplier base and the need to rethink the way we do business as usual. Once we start to move towards recovery the case for social and community organisations, who are rooted in local economies, will be stronger than ever. This is particularly true for local authorities and the housing sector who exist to help communities thrive.
And, relatedly, a well-resourced community sector will be needed to mitigate the effects of the economic crisis that will likely follow the health one. We have seen during the health crisis that local voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) organisations are important and necessary delivery partners to the government — this will be even more the case as we see the economic fallout begin to impact local communities.
Supply Change and the Social Value Exchange are two digital solutions that aim to broker relationships between the public, private and VCSE sectors. Our organisations have complementary approaches, with both aiming to help deliver social value from the procurement process and deliver positive social outcomes at the same time.
Supply Change is a platform that aims to increase the visibility of social enterprises. The platform hosts pre-vetted B2B social suppliers delivering a range of goods and services and connects them to public and private sector buyers. The platform enables organisations to find the best supplier for their needs and get in touch at the click of a button.
The Social Value Exchange matches private sector resources — IT hardware, business expertise, funding — with accredited local community projects: we get resources to where they are most needed in local communities.
In challenging times, collaborating with like-minded organisations can be key to achieving maximum impact. As Supply Change and the Social Value Exchange both offer brokerage solutions at different points of the procurement process, we’ve decided to form a strategic partnership.
To kick our partnership off we’ve created the ‘Social Enterprise and Community Organisations Directory’. Because our public sector partners are so busy responding to the COVID-19 crisis, we’re changing our approach. We’ve collated a directory of social enterprises, cooperatives and community organisations, which will allow all of the public sector partners and corporate businesses we’ve worked with over the years to see who they can either still buy services from or offer financial and non-financial support to during this time.
By creating this open-source directory we hope to ensure that the amazing organisations we work with still have access to as many networks and opportunities as possible and promote the work they do.
If you’re a community organisation looking for support and would like to be featured, sign up here.
If you’re a supplier of any B2B goods or services and you would like to be featured on the directory sign up here.
