The value of scale, the power of small

There is much talk these days about the need for social action and innovation to be scaled up. As the public sector retracts there are calls for social enterprises to expand and run public services, and for great examples of social action to be built on and replicated.

In the main feature of this month’s New Start – Business as usual? – we assess the progress of corporate social responsibility as it scales up. While CSR 1.0 was defined by tokenistic nods towards social responsibility (Nestle gaining Fairtrade status for its four-finger KitKat, for example), CSR 2.0 is about responsibility moving to scale (e.g. Walmart pledging that all of its cotton products will be organic and all of its fish sourced sustainably). New forms of social investment and new legal structures for businesses are helping socially-focused companies push through to the mainstream.

But as we consider the need for scale we should not forget the value of small steps and of personal involvement in social change. This month New Start has partnered with Church Action on Poverty, the Participatory Budgeting Unit, Urban Forum and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust on the People’s Budget. The aim of the campaign is to help community groups take control of 1% of their local authority budget.

It sounds like peanuts, like crumbs from the table. But if the 1% target is achieved the impact on communities will be huge. Anyone who has been involved in social action will know that the value of even small breakthroughs on the ground is multiplied tenfold by the knock-on impact of that success on those individuals and communities involved. Not only are they strengthened and empowered but they have learnt important lessons about how to organise and to create change, and generally they don’t stop there.

A seemingly small local victory – having a say in the budget for a new playground or taking over the management of a community asset – can be the trigger for far greater and deeper involvement in change. In many cases the process that led to change matters more than the victory itself.

What’s struck me most about the Occupy protests has been the excitement of the protesters as they experiment on a small scale with new processes and new forms of organisation and involvement.  The web and social media make it easy for protests and campaigns such as this to scale up, to go viral and global. But those personally involved in the protest are exploring new ways to organise with others, to build non-hierarchical systems and a new understanding of power, lessons they will never forget.

As two protesters writing in the Guardian said: ‘We are providing an example of how the 99% might move forward. We ask people to stop seeing themselves merely as consumers and start seeing themselves as participants. Start organising in your own community. Work through existing channels if you like. But take back the initiative…Change is possible, if you want it – that is what we’re trying to show people.’

So as we look forward to a new era of corporate social responsibility, of social innovation entering the mainstream and of people power forging through real change, let’s not forget the importance of those small interventions and experiences of change that help pave the way there.