Enterprise

Handling Covid19 – The Circle Dundee

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The Circle is a “More Than Profit” organisation based in Dundee and is focused on working with social entrepreneurs, community activists, charity leaders, commercial business leaders, trustees and non-executive directors. The Circle is a hub for charities, social enterprises, community groups and socially aware businesses in Dundee. They provide affordable offices, co-working and community space, as well as affordable meeting and event spaces.

We spoke to The Circle’s Founder and CEO, Kirsty Thomson on how the charity is adapting to the challenges of Covid19.

In a usual week, The Circle are based in a thriving community hub in a large 1970’s building right in the heart of the community. They are usually offering 5 main services: affordable office space, event space, consultancy services, The Circle Café and The Circle Academy. They currently have a team of 13 staff and has 15 tenant organisations within the hub. The building usually sees up to 700 sign-ins every week which includes tenants, volunteers, service users and visitors attending meetings or events in our spaces. Kirsty explained “we have a wide variety of tenants and host events on almost a daily basis and as such, we don’t  have too many ‘normal’ days – we’ve been known to turn our hand at becoming renovators, delivery drivers, wifi experts, and even emptying flooded drains with buckets!”

However with the lockdown in full force due to the Coronavirus pandemic, The Circle have been working to adapt how they work in order to continue supporting their tenants and other clients. They were in the midst of delivering their ‘Circle Academy‘ to their second cohort of candidates when the programme had to be swiftly changed to be offered digitally.  The team has also been offering free one-to-one consultancy sessions and will be running a series of webinars during June and July for people in the third sector.

Kirsty explained that one of the hardest parts has been not being able to run their café, and being unable to see their volunteers and regular visitors who access the services of their hub tenants. However, the team have been keeping the spirit and social culture of The Circle alive and their daily team lunches have become daily team catch up calls and Friday evening quizzes.

So what next? The team at The Circle are busy planning for the next cohort of The Circle Academy and trying to find ways to get their café back up and running. They are also continuing to support the local community through The Circle Superstars, a new initiative to be launched this summer supported by the Wellbeing Fund to support children and young people in the local community. Kirsty told us “the biggest challenge for us during this period is making sure everyone is well and supported through a time that is undoubtedly posing emotional, health and financial challenges for our staff, volunteers, tenants and service users.”

You can access more information about The Circle at www.thecircledundee.org.uk

You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @thecircledundee and on Linkedin. RankNet members can find Kirsty Thomson and the current Time to Shine Leader, Alice Watts on our online community platform members directory.

For any specific enquiries, please email reception@thecircledundee.org.uk

Resilience Fund: CHAC and HYST

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On 3rd April 2020 The Rank Foundation launched the Resilience Fund in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Applications are open to all RankNet members, and the fund has been implemented to cover cashflow, fundraising and loss of income challenges relating to the current covid-19 related climate. This includes those facing significant, unplanned demand on services. Within hours of opening, applications were received and the Grants Manager and Foundation Executives began processing the applications, assessing management accounts and cash flow forecasts, knowing that access to this type of funding was a priority.

We will be looking at some of the Resilience Fund grantees each week, starting with Hull Youth Support Trust and Cleveland Housing Advice Centre.

Cleveland Housing Advice Centre

Organisation Overview:

Cleveland Housing Advice Centre (CHAC) was opened in 1992 and provides one to one advice, lay advocacy, and representation in all aspects of welfare benefits, housing, and debt issues along with the various spin-off problems arising from them such as repossessions, evictions, domestic violence, poverty, and distress. They offer their services to their local community in Middlesbrough, currently ranked as the eighth most deprived local authority area in England.

Difficulties due to Coronavirus:

Due to the high demand in applications for universal credit, CHAC are unable to reduce the numbers of staff or take advantage of the Government Job Retention Scheme (JRS), as all of their staff are needed to deal with the surge of Universal Credit advice and assistance on completing forms.

They are also unable to provide their Job Training programme for prisoners and young people at risk which means that the charity is losing an average £6,000 per month, an income which contributes directly to staff wages.

What will the Resilience Fund grant be used for?

CHAC will be able to continue providing telephone and online advice on welfare and debt, and assisting in completing Universal Credit applications. They deal with 105 clients per day and issue an average of 30 food vouchers per day. Due to the increased demand on their services, CHAC has had to consider using some of their small reserves to pay staff. The Resilience Fund grant of £20,000 will allow CHAC to pay their staff salaries for the next 3 months without accessing reserves, which may be needed in the future.

Hull Youth Support Trust
Organisation Overview:

Hull Youth Support Trust (HYST) first came to Rank’s attention in 2016 and were part of the second phase of Place-Based funding in Hull. Since then, they have been significant and engaged members of the Rank Network.

HYST provides young entrepreneurs (aged 18-30) with heavily subsidised office space for a two year period in order to make those first few years as comfortable as possible. Together with dedicated one-to-one business advice and personal support HYST aim to give every young person the fundamental skills to succeed in business. HYST look to work with young people who have previously been; unemployed, under-employed, disadvantaged in some way or totally new to the world of business.

Difficulties due to Coronavirus:

HYST have a 23 office incubation centre where their businesses (during normal times) work out of and use meeting facilities.

The biggest concern is ongoing cashflow if the tenants are unable to pay their rent due to the downturn in work within their own businesses. A loss of 60-70% of HYST’s rent (on average) coming in would result in a significant loss per month to the charity.

What will the Resilience Fund grant be used for?

“We would hope that with a support package to help our cashflow over the next 6 months we would have what we require to not only support us as a charity get through the downturn but to offer our tenants the support they need to get back on their feet and start trading effectively again”

The Resilience Fund grant of £15,600 will cover 6 months of predicted office space rental losses, allowing HYST to help their tenants get back to usual or adapted business.

Update: Accelerator Winners 2018

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On the 19th June The Rank Foundation launched applications for the Accelerator Event 2019. Every year we invite the Network to apply to pitch an Enterprising idea at our Annual Conference. This year, the Conference (and the Accelerator Event) will have a particular focus on ‘Valuing Place’. For more information on eligibility and how to apply, please see our latest post on the Accelerator Event 2019.

We wanted to update the Network on the success of the 2018 winners: Nudge Community Builders and Compass Advocacy Network.

Nudge Community Builders

What did Nudge pitch?

Local people need extra support, encouragement and financial backing to take a space at Nudge’s monthly markets. By providing this support, Nudge can enable local people and young entrepreneurs to be at the heart of the markets. This funding would enable Nudge to offer spaces for free or on a commission basis if they have a good day.  Alongside this, Nudge will provide bespoke mentoring support before, during and afterwards. 

Update Spring 2019

“The Manor Street Market started this year on 31st March and is becoming a much loved date in the diary in our local area. Each market has had live music, at least 12 stalls and we have really improved the food options for people by working with local businesses.

We’ve had two markets so far this year with 5 more planned up to September and hope to invest further in the infrastructure to make it suitable through the winter. The market is improving in quality and feel. We used materials from the Scrapstore and volunteer help to make yellow decorations that have had a really good impact and have also had some promotional photos done by FotoNow.

We have had 5 young people participate to run stalls and sell from suitcases, and have 7 more booked in for upcoming markets. This has included selling sweets, popcorn making, hand drawn cards, pottery and running challenges or competitions. We have seen some of our regular community who come to our free Soup sessions now feeling brave enough to take a stall. This has been really challenging for some of them as they have complex needs and mental health issues. They have needed support to feel confident and mentoring to keep trying and to develop their offer. We have spent time promoting the opportunity to local young people at careers fairs and through the local foyer and groups. It is taking time for people to feel confident. So we are noticing that they need to come along to a market first to see how it works and tend to pop in at least twice to talk things through.

From this learning we are developing some more support and resources for young people to use around budgeting, selling techniques and pricing.”

Community Advocacy Network

What did CAN pitch?

CAN’s Social Enterprises enable them to generate their own funds and are all environment/service-based. CAN want to take waste plastic and do something meaningful with it, via a ‘Precious Plastics model’. They wish to purchase the equipment to create a new processing facility with the aim of re-purposing the 17 tonnes of waste plastics they have at their disposal. The Precious Plastic model will create beautiful products, made by adults with learning disabilities for local shops and online.

Update Spring 2019

“Since becoming an Accelerator prize winner we have been extremely busy with the Research and Development stage of our “Precious Plastics proof of concept” initiative, in partnership with Dr Dorian Dixon Msc, Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering at the Ulster University. We have now completed sample stress testing of various different types of plastics and now have a significant body of research as to the particular properties and potential product applications of our recycled plastics. We have also carried extensive research into types of equipment and machinery required to enable us to produce products with production methods that enable our members here at CAN to be fully involved, so that they can learn new skills and be fully integrated into the production process from start to finish. This very important phase of our initiative is now complete and we are now forging ahead with phase 2.

As part of phase 2 we have now taken delivery of a more industrial plastic shredder following experimentation with a small bench top machine and have also ordered our 1st Plastic injection moulding machine which should mean we will start full scale production of our 1st product made from recycled plastic before the end of May.

We already have customers lined up for our 1st product, which is a tourist related item that lends itself to other applications which is part of phase 3 and we hope to showcase this later this year at one of the Rank Foundation’s events.”

Plymouth News

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In October 2018, The Rank Foundation launched a new Place-Based programme in Plymouth. The programme is supported by Phil Davies, the Plymouth Rank Associate and Laura Kelly, who splits her time between Nudge Community Builders and The Rank Foundation.

They sent us an update on how Plymouth has continued to flourish over the past six months, and what we can look forward to in the future.

Plymouth’s social enterprise sector have been up to a range of exciting things from launching new initiatives to dance and a few costumes, check out what they have been up to below;

Iridescent Ideas have been broadcasting webinars with community business leaders in the sector, discussing topics from who has the power to taking Plymouth’s social enterprise success global. You can view one of their webinars here.

Street Factory’s Saturday sessions are getting better and better each week connecting people through hip hop dance and spreading a bit of love, especially on Valentine’s.

Nudge Community Builders have been all dressed up on Union Street consulting with their community differently, finding out what they would like to see on the street as part of a grant to visually improve the area over 3 years in creative ways.

It’s a year of tens for Memory Matters, Fotonow and Plymouth Hope celebrating 10 years of their amazing work in Plymouth. Memory Matters is launching a new Hub in Moment’s cafe on the 15th March, a free one stop shop on the High Street for those living with dementia and their carers. Fotonow have released their social impact report for 2017-2018 with a feature on one of Rank’s Time to Shine Leaders Ryan (pictured), who started out as a volunteer. Have a read of Ryan’s feature here.

Plymouth Hope are gearing up for their 10th festival on the 15th June, a celebration of everything they do and the people they work with, check out the video from last year here.

Keep up to date with what’s happening in Plymouth through Twitter – follow Phil Davies (@PhilDav74575500)

Rank Memorial Award 2019

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Memorial Award 2019

Today we launch the Rank Memorial Award 2019, which was established in 2010 to commemorate our former Chairman, Mr. Fred Packard.

The aim of the Memorial Award is to create an opportunity to travel and explore a specific area of personal interest, relating to our work that will serve to inspire, educate or promote the interests, values or ethos of the Foundation.

The 2019 programme is open and available to anybody associated with the Rank Foundation and RankNet, through our range of initiatives and programmes. There will be one award of £8,000 which may be shared depending on circumstances. Applicants must be 18+ to apply with no upper age limit.

We are looking to support an individual who has designed their own programme of learning around one of the Foundation’s key areas of interest: leadership or enterprise in place.

For more information and application forms, please head to RankNet.

Meet some of the past Memorial Award winners…

Lydia
Award Winner, 2018

Lydia applied to travel to Detroit, USA. Her hometown is Belfast, where the city’s current social challenges have strong parallels with those present in Detroit. Both Belfast and Detroit suffered from their decline as industrial powerhouses and this resulted in city-wide rioting, tensions between ethnic or religious groups, extreme economic challenges and increased derelict spaces.

Lydia was interested in exploring these similarities further by visiting Detroit’s social enterprises and community led initiatives with the view to bring her learning back to Belfast and implement it.

Lydia is currently in Detroit, embarking on her Memorial Award adventure, and she recently gave us as update:

“I’m currently dividing my time between a few different social ventures from community art to seed funding to neighbourhood gardening. There is loads going on here and the city has experienced huge change in the last five years. I’m particularly enjoying listening to the experiences of people who have been part of and witnessed the change. I know I will go back to Belfast having learned a lot from this city and its citizen led initiatives”

Viccie
Award Winner, 2018

Viccie’s interest is in the integration and application of Mindful Practices within educational and clinical settings supporting young people’s sexual health and health and wellbeing.

Viccie applied for a Rank Memorial Award to support her travel to Kathmandu, Nepal, where she intended to visit the Kopan Monastery. She planned to attend a 5 day course there which provides an overview over Tibetan Buddhism, and introduces its fundamental principles. It introduces meditation and mindfulness techniques to improve life by enriching it with a greater sense of balance, compassion and freedom. Viccie then planned to spend 3 days within a community group exploring how this learning transpires into everyday life in Nepal.
The next stop on Viccie’s trip would be Emeryville, California, where she would visit the Mindful Schools organisation and would spend time learning from the course trainers how mindfulness techniques can be embedded into school curriculums across the world and what barriers people have faced and how they have overcome them. The final stop would be to visit the Carver Centre in Port Chester, New York who have completed a yearlong course with Mindful Schools. Viccie’s plan was to spend 3 days there, gaining tips on how similar can be implemented within the area and organisation she works.

Jenny
Award Winner, 2017

Jenny applied for the Rank Memorial Award just as she completed her Time to Shine internship year, to travel to India to learn more about human trafficking – why it happens, how it can be prevented in Northern Ireland and globally and how business can play a part in that. Upon looking into a few organisations, Jenny applied to visit Freeset for two months as fair trade business offering employment to women forced into Kolkata’s sex trade through human trafficking or poverty.

Jenny planned to travel to Kolkata for two months, learning from Freeset and taking part in a training programme in called “Freedom Encounter” followed by 4 weeks of “on the job”.

Michaela
Award Winner, 2017

Michaela applied for a Rank Memorial Award in the hope to gain a deeper insight into how a successful national organisation can combine all sectors together – private, public and voluntary to create a more playful thriving community for children and families. Michaela identified that kids in the UK are playing less than any previous generation. Because of this, children are increasingly unhappy, unhealthy and falling behind: one in three kids is obese or overweight and one in five kids has a mental illness. Moreover, kids are not developing critical 21st century skills such as collaboration, creativity, problem-solving, resilience and empathy that they will need to succeed as adults in the global economy.

Michaela travelled to the United States for six weeks, and planned to shadow a charity called KaBOOM!. To enable kids and families to play more, KaBOOM! aims to address structural barriers to play by continuing to lead Build it with KaBOOM! playgrounds and provide grants.

Memorial Award Winners 2017: Update

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Last Wednesday The Rank Foundation launched applications for the Rank Memorial Award 2018. This is open to all members of the network and opens up an opportunity to embark on an adventure exploring an area of personal interest relating to our ethos. You can read more about the award and how to apply here: RankNet Blog – Memorial Award 2018.

This presents a great opportunity to take a look at the progress and travels of the 2017 Memorial Award winners: Sian, Michaela and Jenny. The prize grant was split between three of the applicants, and each have been planning and embarking on their trips over the past 6 months.

Jenny Geddis

At the time of appling, Jenny was a Time to Shine Intern at Giving Northern Ireland.

Jenny applied to travel to Kolkata, India to visit and learn from a Freedom Business called Freeset, as a social issue she is interested in is human trafficking, why it happens and how it can be prevented in Northern Ireland and globally.

Freeset produces and exports clothing and fabric globally while using an “upside down” model that turns the normal principles of running a business on their head. At Freeset, women are employed on the basis of their need for freedom, rather than their qualifications – many have had little or no schooling. They are trained and then paid well above the going market rate. The women actively engage in running the business. All profits from Freeset in Kolkata benefit the women (salary, health insurance and retirement plan) and are used to grow the business. Meaning more women can be employed and experience freedom.

For the first three weeks of Jenny’s stay in Kolkata, she took part in a programme called “Freedom Encounter” which involved learning more about Kolkata’s culture, how to set up a business with the purpose of freedom and also with an ethical supply chain along with finding out more about all things fabric, bags and t-shirts including the processes behind cutting, weaving, sewing and printing.

Read More

Sian Howarth

Sian is employed by Blackpool Carers as a Fundraising Executive and travelled to South Africa this Spring.

Sian flew to Johannesburg to an organisation called Spark International, who also operate in Australia, Bangladesh and Kenya. Spark International recruits and supports local leaders with solutions to local problems in some of the world’s toughest communities. Spark runs 3 accelerator courses per year where entrepreneurs apply with their start-up business ideas.

Sian had initially planned to spend her time with the entrepreneurs, however it soon became evident that Spark South Africa were in desperate need of advice and help with their social media, and also with their funding proposals. Using her skills from Blackpool Carers, Sian decided to divert her attention to their needs.

By week 3, Sian was able to get more involved in the accelerator course and meet the delegates. This proved to be an eye opening experience.

Despite saying goodbye and returning home, Sian has agreed to continue supporting Spark with her grant writing skills.

In her time off, Sian told us some highlights for her was visiting a game reserve and seeing ‘the big 5’, and visiting Cape Town and seeing Table Mountain.

Read More

Michaela Collins

In a world where imagination and creativity is becoming more stagnated and with technology taking over every part of our lives – Michaela believes that we all need more Play!

Michaela will be going to visit Kaboom! an amazing charity based in Washington DC, U.S.A, who support communities all over America to design and build their own playgrounds and make their communities more playful. You can read more about Kaboom! here.