Numeracy and innumeracy in public life
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it. Malcolm X, 1965 There are many in the third sector who find themselves deeply uncomfortable with the notion of “empowerment”. It brings with it an implicit assumption of noblesse oblige. After all, if power…
How many social enterprises are there in the United Kingdom? No-one seems to know. Back in 2003, the Government thought the total was “in the region of 5,300”. By 2012, the number had ballooned to 62,000 (Hansard, 21 Jun 2012, Column 1867). Then, two and a half years ago, it claimed there were “an estimated…
The School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) has been a hotbed of talent and fresh thinking since its foundation by Michael Young in 1997. Its latest innovation, Match Trading®, draws on this experience and is attracting interest from across the social sector and within the corridors of government. Match Trading is brand new type of grants…
If you want to learn what the spirit of the people is by means of arithmetic, it goes without saying that that’s extremely difficult. Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina” When CP Snow published The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution in 1959 it seems unlikely he had the voluntary and community sector in mind. Yet more than 60…
It’s always tempting to go to Twitter with a half-formed idea. Always tempting and always a mistake. I (re-)learned this lesson at the end of last month when I tweeted a half-formed idea about risk assessment of all things. My takedown was swift and brutal: first from my old friend @ukcivilservant (aka the excellent Martin…
Published in late 2016 and drawing on evidence from more than 30 countries, Challenging the third sector perfectly anticipated the renewed global interest in active citizenship marked in the UK by the publication in August 2018 of the government’s Civil society strategy (HM Government, 2018) as well as the more recent final report of the…