Are you a CEO in the Social Sector?

The programme runs over 9 months, starting in September and gives senior management time out to share knowledge, reflect on opportunities and get one on one mentor support.

Only 15 places are available. (Registration closes 30/06/2008) Sign up today!

Contact:
Gavin Butterworth
Blu Zebra Limited on behalf of School for Social Entrepreneurs
028 90 667772
Gavin.Butterworth@bluzebra.co.uk

or

Danny Angus
School for Social Entrepreurs
028 90 328918
07866643347
Entrepreneurs@btconnect.com

THE PROGRAMME- Ready, Steady, Grow!

Ready Steady Grow! is a pioneering personal and project development programme aimed at CEOs and senior managers and designed to help you confidently tackle the challenges of significant growth in a rapidly changing environment. It recognises and addresses the distinct problems that social entrepreneurs face in redirecting their energies from running an existing organisation to expanding it or setting up new enterprises.

Ready, Steady, Grow! has been designed to provide structured, relevant support, and crucially, new levels of confidence for social entrepreneurs who are ready to extend their reach and overcome the barriers to growth by:

• Strengthening Entrepreneurial Behaviour
• opportunities to think through your goals and renew your creativity
• increased effectiveness through reflection on personal style and behaviours
• mutual support from fellow students while you move your organisation to its next stage
• critical examination of ‘expert witnesses’ – practitioners who’ve been there and done it and who share what worked – and what didn’t
• Developing Skills
• recognising opportunities and managing risk
• achieving sustainability
• building effective networks and gaining influence
• accessing capital
• succession planning
• Gaining Knowledge
• briefings on latest government policies and initiatives from the policy makers themselves
• the inside track from social investors, funders, banks and venture philanthropists
• how your organisation fits in to social and political trends
• detailed case studies

PROGRAMME CONTENT

Timescale: the programme will run on a part time basis over a 9 month timeframe (September 2008 – June 2009)

It consists of the following elements:
(i) Organisation Audit: Identifies areas to be addressed within your organisation and helps to shape the content of the programme (undertaken in September 2008)
(ii) Study sessions: 6 x 2 day intensive sessions
(iii) Action Learning Sets: 6 x ½ day facilitated group meetings
(iv) Mentor Support: 1-to-1 mentor support throughout programme

ACTION LEARNING WITH SSEI

Ready, Steady, Grow! is built on learning by doing, an approach that emphasizes experience, experimentation and individual needs.

Through Ready, Steady, Grow! a group of 15 participants with a demonstrable track record will come together for intensive study periods to hear from practitioners, innovators and experts in their fields, visit other organisations and, importantly, to learn from each other through challenge and critical discussion.

They then put those new skills and techniques into action in their own organisations. Individual learning comes through support from mentors and tutors, personal learning plans and regular action learning sets where students explore problems, exchange ideas and reflect on the way they work. SSE also offers a range of practical information and expert advice through its extensive networks so that help is available as and when it is needed.

Ready, Steady, Grow! won’t tell you how to do it by numbers - experience tells us those approaches aren't helpful. Instead it will help you to better understand the world you work with and enable you to develop the insight, behaviours and confidence to become more effective, more quickly. For Ready, Steady, Grow! participants, that is likely to mean covering some of the following:

• organisational and personal 'health checks';
• understanding past success - and taking these factors into account as you plan for the future;
• raising the vision and inspiring others to realise it;
• managing growth strategies - from diversification and social franchise, to developing your asset base and replicating;
• developing new markets, raising sales and benefiting from the new public procurement agenda;
• working with the new forms of finance - venture capital, equities, soft loans, venture philanthropy (meet the financiers themselves and increase your chances of success);
• embedding entrepreneurial practice in your organisation and developing your people management approaches now you're getting bigger or working in dispersed locations;
• unlocking creativity - in practical ways involving all your stakeholders and engaging your workforce in driving the change process;
• gearing up - quality management, marketing, financial reporting, ICT - all the systems that need to be robust enough to support growth;
• regionalisation for projects going national, working across boundaries for international projects;
• dealing with greater levels of risk and scrutiny;
• measuring the impact and capturing the double or triple bottom lines;
• new ways to develop yourself and renew your confidence and energy as you drive growth;
• bringing it all together in a comprehensive business plan

WHO IS THE PROGRAMME AIMED AT?

We are looking for senior level individuals with an entrepreneurial track record who can effect change within their organisations. They should be linked to a not for profit organisation.

HOW DO I APPLY?

Applications are being welcomed now! Simply complete the attached application form and we will contact you to arrange an interview. The programme will start in September 2008.

WHAT ABOUT FEES?

The programme fee is £1,950. Your organisation is used to securing funding for all sorts of activities. Why not focus efforts on securing this investment in your future?