A part-time Accelerator – generating the next leaders
A charity has faced an excruciatingly difficult task in steadily scaling up its very part-time programme for helping young people to learn to be leaders

Next: nothing more while you are on holiday – till September 2, when I shall be writing about InnovateUK’s new mission statement and its implications.

‘Uprising’ was established in 2008 under the aegis of the Young Foundation and with government funding, with the aim of getting talented young people whose backgrounds make them under-represented in powerful places to take leadership roles in communities.

Undertaking the personal development of some 400 young people at a time, to help them in a role in which many people struggle, and which they might well not otherwise have sought, might be seen an overwhelming goal, not least for the limited resources and experience of a charity, itself a startup.

An award-winning leadership development programme with a role of Ambassadors that many charities would die for, it has 2,700 alumni, operates in seven cities, and has now reached the point where it manages without any government funding. Each cohort is of 45 young people; and there are currently nine cohorts running simultaneously. It generates in a very high proportion of its intake the confidence and belief that they have the power and skills to change issues that affect them and their local community.

The programme is designed to provide participants with the knowledge, networks, skills and confidence to take on leadership roles. Far from intensive, it is 9 months long and consists of a 3-hour meeting, once a week, with the first three months devoted to learning about leadership as such, and to enhancing leadership skills; and for the following 6 months participants work on a project [a format that is very similar to the Clore Programme for Leadership in the Arts] in small groups, often a social action campaign, for example to encourage young people to vote, to alleviate social exclusion caused by language barriers, or to support single parents.

In the first period, during which each participant will have a coach, they will hear from local councillors and MPs, and the likes of head teachers, police officers, social work leaders and business people – what they do and how to influence them; and sessions to help them develop their project management, fund-raising, communicating and networking skills – how to get to meet people and develop and retain relationships (‘all the stuff you don’t learn in school’!) After six weeks and for the duration of their project, each participant will have a mentor. Personal relationships are seen as of the essence in their journey.

Local managers now have the guidance of a manual to help them in running their programmes, which may nonetheless be adapted to local needs and local interests. With so many events and happenings to be organised and so many people involved, there is the constant worry that someone may not have been contacted, informed, booked or briefed; and the CEO feels that she is in constant ‘check-up’ mode, especially when there has been a high turn-over of staff. (And continuity of funding is an issue that is always with her.)

Connectivity is a current issue. Not only is it a part-time programme, but there are numerous occasional contributors, and semi-involved supporters – in all nearly 4,000 people – participants, mentors, coaches, speakers, alumni and staff, and most of them in different locations. A Customer Relations Management system is being installed that will include everyone, even suppliers, in order to facilitate communications – most of which must be by e-mail. And Twitter and Facebook constitute an important medium for maintaining a sense of coherence and the ethos of the organisation.

It is not just the alumni but what they then go on to achieve that is the full measure of this programme’s success.

John Whatmore
July 2015

See also below for three other examples of periodic programmes, two of them in social incubators/accelerators:

Innovators in education: The Young Foundation’s third education/incubation cohort
A programme of intensive learning sessions, the teams supported by staff, mentors and coaches and the Foundation’s network, with access to up to £150k of social investment – a model for non-residential Accelerators. May 2015 http://wp.me/p3beJt-aW

An Open Innovation Learning Network – for SMEs and others
I have just returned from a two-day workshop in Belgium called Plato, about mentoring small groups of senior managers in SMEs, who meet together regularly to draw on each other’s experience – a striking example of collaborative enterprise. May 2012. http://wp.me/p3beJt-H

A Social Enterprise Seed Camp
Bethnal Green Ventures [BGV] is a unique new venture of Social Innovation Camps, itself a commercial social enterprise started several years ago by two individuals, and now offering a variety of short accelerator-type programmes (of up to a week long) of social camps and in a number of different countries. BGV is now just starting a second round of 13-week accelerators – for technology-based social ventures in the UK. Feb
2012. http://wp.me/p3beJT-V