University of Northampton launches social entrepreneurship degree

I have just learned through the SEEM (Social Enterprise East Midlands) newsletter that 'the University of Northampton has become one of the first universities in the UK to launch a degree in social enterprise'. The course fact sheet begins with a quote

“We don't hire people to bake brownies; we
bake brownies to hire people"
Guiding principles of Greyston Bakery, who make
brownies for Ben and Jerry’s Icecream

I like that. Social enterprises are businesses with a social aim. For them the people come first. The business arises out of the need. It's not just about making money. This is one of the themes I covered in my presentation at the university. We started our enterprise as Safe Kids Walking with the aim of promoting walking to school. To rephrase the above quote "we don't promote walking to school to sell high vis; we sell high vis to promote walking to school"

Promoting Social Enterprise & Co-operation at Northampton Business School

A while back I was asked to do a guest lecture for about thirty students studying at the business school. Originally I thought I'd do it and then Alison got interested and I could see she would end up doing it. However due to workload she decided not to go and so I had free rein.

I hadn't done a formal presentation with powerpoint slides and stuff for about ...ohh I don't know, 20 years? Anyway I picked a date in December as I thought we'd be a bit quieter then (fat chance)!

I learnt a lot in preparing for it. I guess I had it in the back of my mind for a few weeks mulling over a few ideas. A few weeks back, once Alison had pulled out, I had a vague awareness that I would actually have to go through with this and I did have a slight feeling of angst.

It was fun going back over the history of BrightKidz with Alison recalling how we started off as a campaign group promoting walking to school never with any idea of setting up a business. How we eventually realised there was an idea for a business selling hi vis waistcoats and how things developed from there to include reflectors, stickers, bags, umbrellas etc. How we started adding custom printing, invested in printing equipment. It was interesting to looking at where we are now and relating it back to our roots. How our green promotional merchandise range has developed organically out of our existing relationships with our customers.

Anyway I was determined to do as good a presentation as possible and followed all the advice on mentally preparing for this kind of thing. I visualised the presentation in my mind, mentally rehearsed it. Saw the room and the students, imagined the feeling of confidence giving the talk, imagined the feeling of elation after a successful presentation. When I arrived at the lecture room I was surprised it was actually so similar to how I imagined it would be even though I hadn't been there before.

Before starting the talk I followed a tip from my Tae Kwon Do instructor about concentrating on the first couple of moves of your pattern before starting as a good start sets you off in the right direction (literally in the case of Tae Kwon Do). I made sure I knew exactly how I was going to begin the presentation. This gave me a great start.

A major part of the presentation was to talk about what being a social enterprise meant to us and why we chose the worker's co-operative model. After the talk we had some questions and answers and I was impressed with the quality of the questions and discussion. The class was then split in two and asked to discuss a couple of problems that we have in the business at the moment.

Problem one was how we should brand our green range of promotional products. Should we use the brightKidz brand or should we develop a new one & how was I to promote the business. Did I need two business cards for example?

Problem two was how do we get secondary school kids to be visible? This question arose out of the discussions vision is to get every year 7 pupil issued with a hi vis rucksack, which I think is a fantastic product. There was some discussion over whether this would work.

Overall the presentation & discussion went on for about 2 hours and I was thrilled with the outcome. Well worth doing and hopefully I've spread the word about social enterprise and co-operation. The whole presentation was videod so hopefully I will be able to put a snippet on the website when I get a copy. I will also put the presentation on our website.

Incidentally I have just been tidying up my inbox and I found a link to a couple of presentations done by Divine Chocolate on social enterprise. If only I had seen them last week it would have given me some good ideas. On the other hand maybe it was better just to do my own thing. However I would recommend these presentations.