Lessons for a budding Social Enterprise from Elevate

Statistics Learning Centre is a social enterprise set up by Dr Nic Petty and Dr Shane Dye after leaving the University of Canterbury. Our aim is to help the world to feel better about mathematics and statistics, by inventing, creating and disseminating resources and ideas to learners and teachers. We believe that facility and confidence with mathematics and statistics is as important as literacy in enabling individuals to participate fully in their world.
We didn’t always have our mission or aim or vision as well articulated, and if asked we tended to give some vague description like – “we make stuff to help people learn maths and statistics.”
StatsLC identifies as a social enterprise because we are driven by a purpose beyond making profit for shareholders, and our purpose is a social good – in this case education. A social enterprise exists in the continuum between a business which operates for profit, and a charity, which is strictly not-for-profit, but measures its effectiveness in different ways. We wish ultimately to be self-sustaining so that we are not at the mercy of grants or contracts with outside providers.

Ākina Elevate

We, the directors, have spent the last eight months, on and off, working on our purpose, customer focus, financials and operations as part of an Elevate course with Ākina. The course is aimed at social enterprises, and we have been participating with between five and eight other social enterprises based in Christchurch, New Zealand.
At our last session Ākina wanted to know what value we have gained from the course, what it does well and what can be improved. Ākina itself is a social enterprise that helps other social enterprises. Social Enterprise is a popular phenomenon, particularly in our area, where recently Ākina hosted the World Forum.

Impact

The first unit of four sessions, one morning per week, addressed our impact. We needed to identify what we are trying to achieve, why and how. We talked about vision, mission and purpose. This would help us later to think about who are our customers and who are our beneficiaries.  I still find the delineation between vision, mission and purpose a bit confusing. Our vision has expanded during the course. This is where we are up to now, though it is still a work in progress.
Vision – a world of mathematicians
Purpose: We invent, create and disseminate resources and ideas to enable people to learn and teach mathematics and statistics enjoyably and effectively.

As we considered our impact we realised that we are making an impact. We have over 1000 views of this blog daily. There are over 35,000 subscribers on our Youtube channel. Hundreds of children and teachers have been inspired and enthused by our “Rich Maths” events. You can see more about our impact here: Statistics Learning Centre Impact.
We have not been doing well at specifying exactly what impact we aim to have, and measuring it. Originally our impact was with teachers and learners of secondary and university level statistics. However we are now thinking bigger, and wish to create a world of mathematicians.  We truly believe that education is a political act, and knowledge of maths and statistics empowers people, allows greater career choice and enables informed citizenship.

Customer

The “customer” or marketing section of the course was the one we felt most in need of, and probably are still most in need of. We learned that we need to ask what problem we are solving and for whom. This has led to serious thought and discussion on our part as we have so many ideas about how we can do good, and for whom. However, the point of social enterprise is that you are not a charity, so need to trade or provide services for money in order to be sustainable. So we need to identify our customers – the people and organisations that will pay money for what we do – either for them or for others.
At the time we were gearing up for a holiday programme, and we used some of the ideas to advertise on Facebook. One outcome of the course is that we have decided we need to employ someone to help with the marketing.

Financial

As we already have an accounting package, Xero, and work with an accountant, the need for help here felt less imperative. We have developed different systems in using Xero that will help us analyse our progress. One idea that was valuable was to do with the value of our time. Time and money emphasis did not have to be commensurate in all circumstances. Two sessions on budgets were helpful when thinking about grant applications. We have thought more about cashflow, though a crisis at the end of 2016 had already made us aware of potential problems. We started paying ourselves.
What has become clear throughout the course is that we do not have enough time between the two of us to do all the things we need, as well as maintaining cashflow through contracts. This has helped us to recognise the need to employ someone to cover our areas of weakness, in particular marketing. We also need to develop more passive income streams.

Operations

What was extremely valuable in this section was learning about employment contracts and health and safety. We are now formalising our contracts with staff. Being a responsible employer, even for family members, takes a bit of work.
Another useful session concerned governance, management and operations. As a small enterprise, both of us tend to fill all three roles. At this point we need to get some advice at the governance level – even just having someone to ask us questions and to report to periodically. It can be easy to spend too much time chipping away at the coalface, and losing direction. It can also be seductive to spend all our time discussing visionary ideas for future development, rather than getting on and producing. Like most of life, the answer lies in a balance.

Other thoughts

A common expression in social enterprise is Mission Drift meaning letting the commercial aspects over-ride the social impact focus or mission.
We tend to suffer from something similar, that I call mission lurch. I’m not sure it is the right term, as it is more that we are adapting our mission in order to align it better with activities that will lead to sustainability. Our problem is that we need to be doing some more activities that bring in revenue to sustain our mission.
One big benefit from participating in the programme has been making contact and building relationships with others in similar circumstances. This builds confidence.

Big lessons

For me the big lessons from this course are

• Articulating our mission
• Confidence to do something big

A year ago I was quite happy to dabble around in the edges of business/social enterprise. We were not really making enough to keep us going, but had hope that something might change. Over the course of 2017 we have had contracts with Unlocking Curious Minds, to take exciting maths events to primary schools. We have also gained contracts writing materials for other organisations. Our success in these endeavours, along with the help from the Elevate course has helped us to think bigger.
Watch this space!