Around the world, mainstream challenges abound in every sector. Healthcare costs are increasing constantly by the day as even more people are left out in dire need of treatment for various conditions. Diseases like malaria are wiping out lives as cancer grows to become a non-bothering monster on the rampage. A lot of people are still homeless while billions more lack dignified housing. They are left to live in slum dwellings. The communities living near the seas and oceans are even more endangered today. As the rise in sea levels due to global warming threatens to wipe out entire cities.
Education is still yet to reach a lot of communities in large parts of Africa and Asia. Food and hunger challenges still cripple entire nations in many regions around the earth. Poverty, a manifesting problem as the income gap continues to widen between the rich and the poor in all continents across the globe. These are the most pressing issues facing humanity in the 21st century. Several entrepreneurs now known as social impact entrepreneurs are coming up with solutions to these world problems. U Solve through the Global Goals 4P Accelerator Programme wants to be at the centre of shaping innovation, growth and learning of the entrepreneurs working for the social good.
The Global Goals 4P Accelerator Programme arms micro-startups with the tools. The implemented expert support to create empathy-based solutions to global challenges and to initiate, design, negotiate and close Public-Private Partnerships for SDG impact.
This week we chat with the Founder of U Solve, Margaret Rose-Goddard, on the company’s initiative at The Global Goals 4P Accelerator Programme to discuss why the programme is important, why people should care, and what the impact of the programme will be as their next 3-day Global Challenges Retreat looms.
WHY THE GLOBAL GOALS 4P ACCELERATOR PROGRAMME?
The company’s aim is to create formal and credible avenues for anyone who has an innovation to create new kinds of partnerships. A 4P ecosystem around it, to measure, test and scale SDG impact.
“Our reason for doing this is to facilitate radical inclusion and innovation on SDG achievement,” says Margaret Rose-Goddard. She continues, “There are only 12 more years left to achieve Agenda 2030. Top-down players (national governments, billion-dollar corporations and donors) are not producing innovation fast enough to address the global challenges. We can only succeed as a global community if we create new ways to harness the collective intelligence on the planet. The Global Goals 4P Contracting Model is one such way governments (Public sector – P1). Private sector (P2) and Purpose sector (P3) can Partner (P4) to co-create a better future.”
A partnership is one of the key components of the 4P Model and as the global challenges continue to add even more stress to the people and animals who exist in the earth’s ecosystem, Margaret’s company wants not just the private and public sector to play a part, but the purpose sector as well – a creative name for the institutions and entrepreneurs with a sense of purpose who really want to change the world.
“Our product is a radical tool driving inclusion in solving global challenges and strengthening bottom-up innovation by enabling impact entrepreneurs and impact leaders to design, structure, negotiate and close public-private purpose partnerships (4P) for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Impact. We also enable impact entrepreneurs with the key tool of SDG readability thereby preparing them to attract the next generation of impact investment.”
CURRENT STAGE
Based in Bath, in the UK, the company did its first Global Challenges Retreat in August 2017.
“This will be the first cohort of the Global Goals 4P Accelerator Programme January – December 2019 with the 2nd Global Challenges 3-day retreat as, the kickstart and live face-to-face component of the programme,” Margaret remarks.
THE EVENT
The GCR bootcamp and ongoing support through the Global Goals 4P Contracting Programme creates a clear (not easy) path to social entrepreneurial success.
“At the end of the 3 days you leave with your customized roadmap/blueprint to implement the 4P Model,” the founder says.
Within one year participants in this programme will have developed the skills to :
- Gain a deep understanding of the problem they are solving at self, social and systemic levels; and the value they provide.
- Be able to articulate that value in a way. That key decision-makers in private and public spheres will come on board.
- Design a rigorous social business model for SDG Readability (i.e. sustainable development goals). To secure Congruent Capital (i.e. finance with shared values).
- Design, structure, pitch and negotiate their first Privately-Financed Social Initiative for public sector partnership. To fund ‘Proof of Concept’ or the next level of scale-up between 12- 36 months.
“At the retreat, we will be publishing our White Paper on the Global Goals 4P Contracting Model which, in summary, brings together a public sector commissioner, a private sector financier, and an impact entrepreneur all sharing the purpose of measurable progress in respect of the SDGs in micro pay-for-success partnerships, with little-to-no risk on the public sector.”
The 4P impact measurement model being developed with partners Social Value UK. Social Progress Imperative integrates established SROI principles and the SDG-calibrated Social Progress Index indicators. Enables entrepreneurs to measure their impact in terms of the SDG Goals, Targets and Indicators. This SDG-readability then serves as the foundation for the structuring and negotiation of Privately Financed Social Initiatives (PFSIs) undertaken in partnership with local authorities. These we call Public-Private Purpose Partnerships (4P) contracts which are initiated from the bottom-up.
TARGET AUDIENCE
“Our target audience includes professionals, start-ups, founders of NGOs and people working in international development. Who are interested in designing and strengthening impact-based business models, increasing access to finance and leading multi-stakeholder partnerships for social change.”
Entrepreneurs with big ideas to address some of the most pressing problems facing people and planet today but feeling stuck because of lack of confidence, technical skills, access to resources or networks need the Global Goals 4P Contracting Programme because it removes the key unknowns in social innovation by teaching a systematic approach that any social entrepreneur can implement to accelerate the rate at which they can produce the right innovations, articulate and communicate their unique value, attract congruent capital and scale their impact.
UNIQUENESS
Some of the biggest entrepreneurs emphasize the uniqueness of a product or in Margaret’s case, a programme, in standing out in the marketplace. While the programme is made to invite entrepreneurs and grow them, this programme is an entrepreneurship drive on its own. So being unique will be important.
“Our competition would be social entrepreneurial schools, incubators and universities. However, there are no programmes out there yet. Which enables impact entrepreneurs to measure their impact in alignment with the SDGs (i.e. SDG readability) in the manner and the level at which we are doing. Organizations are currently quoting and referencing the 17 Goals in their work. But there is no rigorous alignment of their internal KPIs and the 169 SDG Targets and 230 Indicators.”
She adds, “we are arming social entrepreneurs with insider-strategies (based on specialist knowledge of international public procurement best practice, the EU Public Procurement Directives relating to Social and Environmental Value (2014) and the UK Public Services Social Value Act 2012 which just this month has been strengthened to mandate public purchasers to explicitly evaluate social value) for the negotiation of public-private partnerships which make progress against the sustainable development goals. No other programme in this space – provides such a roadmap.”
Other programmes teach the law and principles and frameworks.
“We build your capacity to actually take action and with our team of experts in the public procurement, social value, social innovation and also legal fields we help participants to create the partnerships and attract the funding. We are results-driven and you learn about public-private partnerships strategy, design and negotiation. Closure by actively trying to create one, not just passively receiving information.”
WHAT NEXT?
As we come to the end of the discussion. The founder is quick to remind us that the 4P Model is a strategic and tactical response.
“Strategies and tactics without the right mindset seldom lead to sustainable change. In all of our programmes we therefore also focus on building the transformational mindset. So that entrepreneurs can implement innovation for sustainable impact. The mindset we also teach is the Empathic Mindset. So It helps you to create from a space of deep empathy for yourself. The people you are serving with your product/service or solution (social) and the planet as a living system.”
The next Global Challenges Retreat is happening from the 8th.10th December 2018 at Said Business School, Oxford University eGrove Park. Margaret Rose-Goddard, a TEDx speaker and her team are currently taking on applications for the 3-day boot camp. The 2019 cohort of this new model. APPLY NOW if you are ready to show up more powerfully. So to make even bigger strides as you look towards improving your idea to solve global challenges.