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How to change the world with marketing not charity

Fishing poor
An inspirational story of how understanding a market others might ignore can work for a company and change the lives of the poor. And also a surprising statistic about the biggest selling mobile phone.

Posted by Sarah Brown on 05 Jul '13 | Tags: entrepreneur charity social enterprise marketing inspiration collaboration focus on action

Better Decision Making

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We make decisions every minute of every day even if the decision is to keep doing what we are doing but scarily too many decisions can work out wrong. Based on Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath I've developed a tool "The Decision Improver"(c) to help you make better decisions. Firstly be aware that it is rare a decision should be whether or not - widen your options, then test your assumptions, reduce the emotion, get your distance and then prepare to be wrong in either direction - overly successful or failing.

Posted by Sarah Brown on 25 Jun '13 | Tags: entrepreneur charity goal setting social enterprise strategic development inspiration business planning action decision making

The three ways to grow your organisation

Collaboration
There are only three ways to grow your organisation: organically but this takes time and money; mergers or acquisitions but this is high risk and difficult; collaboration and partnering which can be quick and effective if done right

Posted by Sarah Brown on 03 May '13 | Tags: collaboration goal setting strategic development entrepreneur charity social enterprise community interest company

Community Interest Companies - are they coming of age?

Above the canopy
Community Interest Companies are in the news doing all sorts of things in all sorts of places. Its encouraging social enterprises are becoming so newsworthy if people understand that CICs are social enterprises that is

Posted by Sarah Brown on 26 Apr '13 | Tags: charity social enterprise funding and investment community interest company cic

U-Mix opening - a day of social enterprise in practise and theory

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Having been involved with U-Mix project supporting with funding bids, business planning and the practical development it was great and quite emotional to see it open today. The event was well supported reflecting the mix of people that have helped to make it successful and a credit to FURD who organised it. Before that I was at the Working Capital Conference which had some interesting comments from the head of Bid Society Capital.

Posted by Sarah Brown on 12 Apr '13 | Tags: charity social enterprise business planning strategic development inspiration collaboration local authority public sector

Something you might need to do immediately about the budget - and it's not about beer

Cormorant head
If you tender for public sector business or plan to, or get a grant as a charity then you need to think about your allowance for inflation in salaries plus updating your forecasts from April 2014 to reflect the new Employment Allowance

Posted by Sarah Brown on 20 Mar '13 | Tags: public sector business planning social enterprise local authority tendering sme social investment charity

3 things young people want

Flower singapore
Researching with young people last week their top 3 requests were somewhere safe and interesting to be to keep them off the streets, activities for them not shared with adults, and active and interesting stuff to do not just hanging around.

Posted by Sarah Brown on 25 Feb '13 | Tags: charity tools goal setting creative think tank aspiration

Two high profile examples of charity and business collaborating

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Charities and businesses can both profit from working together and getting in the Christmas spirit

Posted by Sarah Brown on 22 Nov '12 | Tags: charity entrepreneur marketing csr

The five top risks for a charity becoming a social enterprise

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Any charity moving to income generation needs to be aware of the dangers - here are our five top risks from our experience of 2 decades working with social enterprises

Posted by Sarah Brown on 14 Nov '12 | Tags: social enterprise charity marketing feasibility study business planning strategic development goal setting

Creating successful charity partnerships for new funding

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With the new Advice Services Transition fund being launched, even more charities will be considering how they can work in partnership. In my experience if you don't have strong strategic input in the beginning you can waste months in fruitless talks

Posted by Sarah Brown on 02 Nov '12 | Tags: charity strategic development collaboration local authority

First seminar for investment and contract readiness has a sweet ending

Seminar table compressed
People found our first seminar to let organisations know the detail about investment and contract readiness so informative that we expect to schedule more. With a mix of specialist advisers and charities the seminar focused on how the fund could help improve the success of social ventures by building their capacity and providing tailored support.

Posted by Sarah Brown on 23 Aug '12 | Tags: charity social enterprise investment contract readiness

First application sent in for the investment and contract readiness

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After just a week we're really pleased we've already been able to get an application into the contract and readiness fund. A social enterprise with lots of potential and no time or resource to pursue their ideas.

Posted by Sarah Brown on 18 Jul '12 | Tags: social enterprise strategic development funding and investment charity feasibility study business planning collaboration investment contract readiness

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