BtF Blog

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The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has put forward a similar initiative to what Labour have proposed, this call for more responsible capitalism. Clegg’s focus has been to promote greater employee shareholder ownership, following a similar co-operative led business style. His aims and objectives behind this is to “unlock growth” and use this as another method to get the economy engine starting again. The process of employees being involved in the ownership of the business that they work for, creates for them greater incentive to put a bigger input into the business. The consequence of this is seen to create a more productive business where there are lower numbers of staff turnover, low absenteeism and lower production costs. Also employees are seen to gain from greater employee benefits and higher wages. Nick Clegg s said "Employee ownership can also help fulfil the increasing desire we have for more influence in our work so as to unleash our potential and productivity". The subsequent benefits for businesses are that they are more effective in becoming successful and established such as ‘John Lewis’ and there is greater benefit for the workforce at the same time.

The Government’s objective for greater employee ownership is impart part of their crack down on ‘crony capitalism’. Part of this could be seen to be a response to the continuing occupy protest and as a result the government having to look at giving shareholders more power over executive pay. This employee ownership is also part of a similar strategy which Lib Dem Business Minister Ed Davey is currently layingout. His aim is to help remove the barriers that prevent employee ownership. This new drive for great employee participation in business is a positive one as it helps to develop better business for the future.

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Dan Zastawny of BtF has just returned from Lodz Poland where he has been discussing with our ETOS Project partners the development steps that are going to be taken for the project to get underway. ETOS stands for “Effective Training for Outsiders of Society”.  The strategy the team have undertaken is to help marginalised minority groups who are made up of people that are unskilled and consequently workless. These minority groups are extremely diverse; ranging from school drop outs, immigrant groups and those without any formal qualifications. The ETOS team are outlining creative and effective ways to develop stable jobs and employability skills for a lifetime.

The strategies that the team are formalising will help minorities engage with employment by focusing on building skills through on the job training. Skills for these individuals will be gained by practical work and further developed by a mentoring scheme.  The mentoring scheme is a setup of mentors who will train entrepreneurs and support them when they take on minority individuals.  The entrepreneurs will pass on their skills and experiences to the unemployed so that these individuals learn in a way that will benefit their employment for the long term and not the short term.

The meeting established that the official strategy for the ETOS plan and decided that the Pilot will start in 2012. The project looks to involve 90 stakeholders in 6 EU countries, with 144 beneficiaries.

The business community is often seen to have certain sectors of society  over populating the business landscape and entrepreneurial leadership.  This has created a stereotypical idea of what a business person should look like and what they shouldn’t look like, which is shaping the orientation of the business environment. These perceptions have created a void and formed social barriers and levels of exclusion for minority groups. Society today has progressed in reducing negative perceptions and stopping discrimination particularly through the work of policy makers and business leaders. However misrepresented perceptions of minority groups do remain.

It’s our ambition to further help reduce the stereotypes that are given to minority groups and to break down the specific barriers that prevent them from participating fully in business. We are looking to build relationships and networks with ethnic minority groups, LGBT groups and disability groups. What we aim to do is help create opportunities for people in these groups to be able to exert their entrepreneurial skills and establish businesses. Furthermore we want to support them as their business grows and through their involvement in business encourage an anti-discrimination attitude within the business landscape.

At BtF we believe that we have the right services that would benefit these members of minority groups who are seeking to establish a business. It’s our aim to use our business incubation support to guild minority entrepreneurs in there running of their businesses as well as linking them up with the relevant people that would push their business forward. Also we hope to use our grant services to apply for funding that we could use to help and encourage minority groups to become involved in business. Not only are we looking for new minority entrepreneurs but also existing minority entrepreneurs who may need business support or who are willing to network with us and become part of our mission. For us at BtF we believe that it is important to have a diverse and expanding business environment where diversity and equality can be seen at the very top of the business ladder.

Edge Partnership and SSAT have been working with BtF’s project management and support team in running the EDGE & SSAT innovation and leadership hub. This hub has been developed for the West Midlands region to provide a social enterprise solution where by schools are working together to meet a local need. The hub does this through providing high quality CPD training which mainly has a focus on building up middle leadership. The hub takes a strong approach on ‘teachers teaching teachers’ this provides effective training and allows for the best and most vital experience to be applied to the training programme.

The Training Programme itself tackles four key areas for teaches, whose roles are involved in middle leadership:

1. middle leadership development
2. multiagency working in schools
3. success in challenging circumstances
4. a new approach to engaging students

These CPD course work in both twilight and school visit sessions and are taught by head teaches from some of Birmingham’s most achieving and transformative schools. We at BtF are proud of the developing achievements this SSAT hub has and is provided in our region of the country.

Grant Central is a new business that is being built by BtF through our business incubation services. Grant Central has been born out of our current grant writing services that we have provided for our clients. This service has led to BtF producing a near half a million pounds worth of awards for our clients. Some of the awarding bodies for these grants have come from Vodafone, Big Lottery Fund, Garfield Weston Foundation, The Youth of Today Leadership Fund, William A Cadbury charitable trust and many others.

Due to the success of this service MD Duncan Chamberlain has decided to establish a new social enterprise which will be led by Dan Zastawny. Dan has already been very involved in grant writing as he has led our grant writing services within BtF and has also been BtF’s company secretary. With Dan’s experience and Duncan’s guiding knowledge we hope to see success in our new business venture.

The services that Grant Central will be offering are:

• Search and Find
• Research and Report
• Writer and Apply
• Evaluate and Advise
• Train and Coach
• Deliver and Activity

Bridging to the Future’s expansion of its income generation and fund raising services will offer a greater ability for social enterprises, schools and charities to create the income streams to enable them to deliver programmes and projects that will benefit communities and individuals. Bridging to the Future delivers coaching, guidance and support across the complete process of income generation from identification of needs through to delivery. Their services include concise auditing of needs, specialist fund locating, grant writing and expert coaching in grant writing. BtF has already built successful relationships with a range of charities and schools, including the Edge Partnership of Schools and King Edward VI Five Ways to generate significant income to enable often ground breaking work in some of our most disadvantaged communities. With a particular focus on coaching other organisations in their successful grant writing methodology and fund raising approach, BtF continues to help local social enterprise expand through credible, trusted and practical services.

Expansion of fund raising and income generation services: Charities, schools  and social enterprises offered bespoke coaching and services in income generation  and grant writing technique

BtF has been developing a number of ways for the Third Sector to develop more capacity and freedom in these times of economic hardship. The resource optimisation service looks at using the resources that organisations already have and how these can be harnessed to support the work of organisations to increase income streams or reduce costs and at the same time enhancing the services to the community.

Big Society Hub Shops are a key way of ensuring the Big Society movement actually works and delivers the quality and consistency of service that individuals and communities need and ask for. Big Society Hub Shops will:

• be a physical presence on the high street – a big society shop is a way of seeing it
• offer a drop in service to potential social entrepreneurs and existing Third Sector organisations so they can receive practical and on-going support for the business and the latest information on opportunities, tendering and market shaping
• be a physical location for offices for the Third Sector
• be a drop in centre for members of the community to seek advice and to say what is needed by them and their communities
• be a source of information for individuals, groups and businesses
• be a small scale seed for funder where appropriate
• be a coordinator for the Third Sector response to need in the community and to tendering so that the Third Sector can compete with larger corporate groups that will wish to deliver contracts
• be a coordinating body to apply for tenders and apply for grant money to deliver services
• be a viable, trading social enterprise in its own right by delivering services as the Big Society Hub/Shop so it has on the ground experience similar to the other groups competing for work and trying to make a difference to the community

Bridging to the Future’s development has been considerably enhanced by the recruitment of three new members of staff: Dan Zastawny, Ed Aston and Ben Smitton. Dan, Ed and Ben will add to BtFs ability to deliver on a wide range of services.