July 2012 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 9
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Cover story |
Social enterprise
market, because everybody’s driving down to the other end at the moment, just
trying to survive. I don’t think that’s the route – it’s not sustainable.’
*****
One of the first partners to come on board is Manchester abstinence-based
treatment and housing organisation, Acorn. There’s also a partnership with
Liverpool prison as well as a small contract to develop the scheme with the National
Offender Management Service (NOMS), but generally he’s wary of involving ‘big
partners’, he says.
‘One of the things about working with big bureaucratic agencies is they are always
retrospective and never innovative. Trying to drive innovation by working with big
partners always restricts your ambition and restricts the time, and it’s really
problematic. I don’t necessarily blame them for that – or their officers – it’s just that’s
the beast that they are. Treatment would be much more effective if it was managed
by the likes of Acorn. They can give it the personal touch – and bigger agencies can’t –
and the data says that, as well. All the data says that it’s going in the wrong direction.’
So he won’t be approaching any big treatment organisations to get involved?
‘I’ve got no interest in doing it unless we’re driving it,’ he states. ‘What we’re trying
to do is change the culture of treatment and rehabilitation. Unless you control the
process from start to finish – bringing people into treatment, offering them the
support and then pushing them out the other end, but with real opportunity –
there is no point in doing it. They’ll be back, and quite quickly. As the data says.’
Instead the funding is coming from big corporates as well as ‘social finance
agents’, the latter ‘bringing in the philanthropy money and boxing it up as a
blended package’, he explains. ‘But it is about paying them back – there’s no grants
in there. It’s strongly commercial.’
But things are looking positive on the funding front? ‘I’ll tell you what the
restriction is – investors now want to invest in programmes of £4m or £5m or £6m,’
he says. ‘That’s where they’re getting the returns, that’s the market now. It’s “bigger
is better”, but they’re harder deals to do, obviously. The message is if you want to go
outside of the public sector, you won’t be able to do it unless you’re going for scale.
But it has to be quality as well, so there’s a bit of a conflict there. What we’re trying
to do is build something from the grassroots up – you get the quality right, and you
maintain the quality, but you don’t go too big. The moment you become too big you
lose the concept, you lose the quality, and you fail.’
*****
The aim is to launch the first kiosks in Liverpool around the end of the year. ‘If I’m
honest, going live with street food in mid-winter is quite difficult – you want the
run of what summer we get. I’d look for a spring launch, but this is the way it’s
turning out. What I’m really committed to is putting a brand on the streets that
really does compete with the big fast food chains. We’re ready to go – the kiosks are
designed and we know exactly what the tuition regime will look like.’
Next on the list after Liverpool will be Manchester – to launch next year – and
then Sheffield. The project is limiting itself to cities with population of 400,000 and
above, he stresses. ‘You need that to make this model work, because obviously
you’ve got to have custom, and that custom has to be culturally diverse enough to
want world food, because we’re going live with Indian, Mexican, Greek, Thai and
Italian food – two of each in each city.’
Although the scheme is yet to go live, early feedback from offenders is very
positive, he points out. ‘Interestingly, we’re working with six offenders in Liverpool
prison, and we want them to be with us on a long-term basis – we don’t want it to
be transient. The prisoners that we’ve got we’ve had for three months already and
none of them want to leave. They’re actually running around the prison as our
advocates now. They’re quite a diverse bunch – they’re in there for all kinds of things
– but every time I go in it’s, “hiya Robbie, what are we doing next? How can we
‘I’ve got no interest in doing it
unless we’re driving it... What
we’re trying to do is change the
culture of treatment and
rehabilitation.’
Robbie Davison
make this better?” They’re actually becoming our selling agents in the prison, and
that’s because it’s quality and it’s personal. If you can do that – get that quality end
– you get the reaction.’
If quality is the key to survival then it’s something that’s very often overlooked, he
believes. ‘There are lots of models that I’m not going to name that are failing, because
they’re self-serving more than anything else. There’s a big industry out there and all
it’s doing is keeping that industry itself going, but in a few years’ time it will have
disappeared because we’re now, with all the cuts, at the bottom of the trough. The
ones that will survive are the ones that do put something of quality on the table.’
What sort of organisations does he feel are getting it right? ‘I’m a really big fan
of places like Acorn,’ he says. ‘They’re doing it for the right reasons. They understand
treatment because they’ve been there themselves and they’re not on a treadmill –
they’re always having that internal dialogue about the integrity of the project. For
me, the critical mass will come from agencies like that coming together and doing
something that might seem left field now but in two years’ time it won’t be,
because we’ll be delivering the results.’
While the project may seem like a huge challenge, he has the experience to pull
it off, having raised money to kick-start and sustain a whole range of initiatives,
mainly in the regeneration and housing sector. He was one of the founders of the
Furniture Resource Centre in the late 1980s, which has grown from a small
community response to local poverty to a highly successful business providing
furniture to local authorities and social landlords, among others. ‘That’s still held up,
rightly or wrongly, as one of the leading lights for social enterprise in this country,
and I managed that for two years on my own.’
So what advice to would he offer to anyone thinking of starting up a social
enterprise? ‘Make sure you’re not driven by the heart,’ he says.
Really? ‘Completely. Doing good’s fantastic, but make sure you’ve got the money
to do good. I’m passionate, but so what? That doesn’t get you a pound. Make sure
that your model is both socially and economically aware, and I’d definitely say
economically first.’
DDN
www.cancook.co.uk
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