Rehearsals are over – Forth Sector is ready for the show

The Name is Pond, James Pond

Over the last two decades we have: opened nine businesses and closed five. We have served a million customers with half a million filled rolls, laundered a quarter of a million items of clothing, including 10,000 muddy Scotland Rugby kits and some money (left in pockets). We made and sold 100,000 bars of soap, and provided 55,000 overnight stays, embroidered 20,000 polo shirts, and last Christmas floated 500 ‘James Pond’ ducks (don’t ask).

Babies & Leaky Roofs

Over the years we have employed around 700 people, celebrated the birth of 26 babies and lost a few close friends. We have shed tears of laughter and of sadness. We have written around 300 ‘congratulations on your new job’ cards for our services users, and welcomed some back. People have moved on and have been promoted; most loved working here but some didn’t. We have had good years and bad years and lived in four different buildings, most with leaky roofs.

‘Post it’ Notes, Blood, Sweat & Tears

We have probably used too much paper, energy; paper clips ‘post it notes’ and sweat. We had a company bike once and now have four company vans (the bike was stolen). We are on our fourth photo-copier contract and we would love to get one of those interactive white boards.

We have issued redundancy notices on more than one occasion and often wondered if we would make it to the New Year. We have taken risks, succeeded and failed; but mostly we succeeded.

We have helped other social enterprises in the UK and beyond to survive and grow. We have helped governments to better understand and support social enterprise. We have help to shape policy, practice, finance and measurement. We have argued the case for social enterprise and we have argued against it.

‘Every one of us gets through the tough times because somebody is there, standing in the gap to help us close it’. – Oprah Winfrey

But our greatest achievement in the ensuing years was to take an idea and cash and use them to accompany more than 3000 real people with mental health problems on their personal journey of recover and fulfilment. All the blood, sweat and tears have been for this.

The Future in our Lap

“The future has a way of arriving unannounced.” – George Will

During the last few months the future has landed in our lap. Even if people with mental health problems found it easy in the past to find a meaningful job (which they didn’t) the current economic climate will make it difficult in the extreme. Our task is clear and unequivocal – if the market can’t or won’t offer people meaningful jobs, then we have to. To do this we need to be bigger, better and bolder. This is our strategic direction. The last twenty years has been a rehearsal, and now we are ready for the next show.

Leaner, Meaner, Bigger, Better, Bolder

We are paid to support people with mental health problems, but never enough. We subsidise our work from trading income and this is being squeezed. We can whinge about it or we can roll our sleeves up; we have. Costs have been cut by 20% in a year and, as painful as it is, two loss-making businesses have been closed, without reducing the number of service users and whenever possible finding alternative jobs for staff affected. We are leaner and meaner.

Becoming bigger means investment, and investment requires a business plan and we plan to spend a lot of time and money producing one. Every part of our organisation is under the microscope. Each of our businesses will undergo a detailed review to establish under what circumstances it can a) be sustainable in future and b) provide an environment where people with mental health problems can flourish.

If our businesses cannot pass this test they close. But, if we can show that with investment they could achieve these two things, we will find the money to invest – big time! We don’t mind what type of businesses we run as long as they meet these criteria. Internally we call this ‘the bananas syndrome’ i.e. “we don’t care if we sell bananas as long as it is sustainable and provides a flourishing environment” (though we would draw the line at banking).

Not everything that can be counted, counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. – Albert Einstein

We have done great things but couldn’t tell you exactly what is was we did do and how we did it. The acid test is always what the service users think (and they love us) but the funders and investors want ‘proof’, so we have embraced Social Return on Investment’. In future proposals will tell potential investors what they really get for their money in terms they can understand.

So for example, Six Mary’s Place, our award winning guesthouse set up with Andy’s spare cash produces a 5:1 return on investment annually (£5 for every £1 invested) and the £100,000 original capital has made a tenfold investment return as well as a huge social return.

We do things better than we did a year ago, next year we will do even better and the year after that we will do better again.

Hell, there are no rules here– we’re trying to accomplish something. – Thomas A. Edison

We are getting bolder by the day. Two years ago Forth Sector Development our consultancy business generated amade a profit, this year it will turnover 50% more and make a good profit. Next year it will make a very good profit, and we have a lot of business in the pipeline: in the process we will share what we have learned by running social firms with social enterprises throughout the UK and globally.

Flattening & Uncorking

We don’t pay big bonuses and we sure don’t do it for the money. It’s hard work. Some days we love it, other days we would rather be on a beach. But people usually stay and they like it. They like the fact we are about real business and they like the atmosphere. Most of all they like the fact that what they do has some meaning in a world that seems to have forgotten.

Many of our staff have lived experience of mental ill health, some used to be service users. We can’t tell you who because often we don’t know ourselves and anyway, does it matter?

We hate having to make tough decisions but we don’t shy away from them. We are professional, ‘though sometimes we fall short and when we do we know it, but we know where we are going and why we are here and that’s what matters.

We used to have a paternal attitude to service users, now they have a say in what we do and how we do it. We used to have a top-down management structure; it’s much flatter now and like the organisation, leaner. There is more argument and challenge, but it falls short of anarchy and it’s about positive change. We call it ‘uncorking’.

The Age of Aquarius and the Butterfly

We have helped so many people in the last twenty years but the comfortable chrysalis of funding and a vibrant economy is dissolving before our eyes. If we want to help people with mental health problems to flourish in the next twenty years we have to shed the past and embrace the future.

The planets are lining up; our Aquarius is dawning again. The need for what we do was always high but it is about to increase dramatically. We have the skills, the experience and the people, and we have access to capital. We are up for it.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.  – Richard Bach

At Forth Sector we are Innovators by necessity, entrepreneurs by nature