Handover notes from the SE OBN class of

2010-2011 to the class of 2011-2012

Mind the gap

This deck includes a variety of information from 2010/2011 SE-OBN to help this year’s SE OBN get starting

Purpose• Because of the one-year nature of the Oxford MBA, it is easy for information and

lesson loss (poor transition) from one year to the next. This deck is to minimize that gap in hope to enable more efficient leadership of the SE-OBN.

Key Points• This is not an exhaustive document

– Where there are gaps or clarification needed, please contact the appropriate alumni.

• The structure can change– For instance, in our year Social Finance was constituted as an independent OBN,

should that remain? – We developed a committee structure that worked pretty well, it does not have to

stay that way, though.

• The MBA is all about networking– So, hit the ground running and network with SE-OBN alumni who can provide

information to help you kick-start.

This document is divided in the planning stage and what we actually did

Planning stage

• Defines the Committee structure, roles and responsibilities

• Details our initial strategy and process

• Explains the rationale behind those

Reflections on what we did

• Basic info of what we did

• What went well, what did not?

• Thoughts for future improvement

Planning stage

• Defines the Committee structure, roles and responsibilities

• Details our initial strategy and process

• Explains the rationale behind those

Reflections on what we did

• Basic info of things we did in each front and responsible

• Reflections looking back

• Thoughts when planning forward

Planning stage

Social Entrepreneurship OBN- Business models

-For-profit-Non-profit-PPPs

Social Finance OBN- Financial models

-Bonds-Climate change funds-Private wealth philanthropy-Carbon markets-Microfinance

Social InnovationInnovative and sustainable ideas

to tackle global challenges

Economic, environmental and social value creation

Foster idea generation, project development and network building. Acquire knowledge. Learn from established and successful models. Facilitate careers

process.

Who?

Triple-bottom line

Main areas/target

entities

Mainly already established entities

Start-ups and already established ventures

OBNs’ Mission

Collaboration

“To foster innovative and sustainable business models to tackle global challenges.”

At the beginning of the year we defined the mission an main objectives of the SE OBN

a) Promote idea generation, project development and network building.b) Acquire knowledge (Learning from established and successful models).c) Connect innovative ideas with the Business School to make them happen.d) Facilitate careers process.

Mission

Main objectives

To define the year projects we did a survey to understand the group expectations

Bringin

g in sp

eake

rs/ Build

ing netw

orks

Finding E

P / SCP opportu

nities

Helping o

ut with

caree

rs

Collaborati

ng in th

e orga

nization of e

vents

(SWF,

Emerg

e, etc

.)

Promoting s

tart-u

ps by h

elping d

evelo

p business

plans

Interdisc

iplinary

colla

boration

Impro

ving S

E curri

culum

6054

45 42 38 3728

In order of importance, what do you think the SE OBN has to be focused on this year?

Source: SE OBN Survey 2010-2011NOTE: Numbers represent sum of weighted factors according to importance level. See breakdown

Want to learn how to achieve economic sustainability?

For-profit social business models Private Public Partnerships Non-profit social business models

66

51

31

What business models would you be more interested in learning from?

Source: SE OBN Survey 2010-2011NOTE: Numbers represent sum of weighted factors according to importance level. See breakdown.

Other ideas in the survey

• “Would love to take a closer look at successful case studies of successful implementation of for-profit impact business models. I'd also like to look at ways we can modify existing for-profit businesses so that they can start to make an impact.”

• “…create a marketplace for harvesting entrepreneurial ideas, adding social value to existing entrepreneurial ideas, taking an entrepreneurial idea and adding social value to it.”

• “I would like to capture the models of each guest speaker/entrepreneur and compile a document which helps understanding where the opportunities in SE are.”

After the survey and group discussions we defined the SE OBN expected outcomes for the year

• Learn from – and be inspired by - established, successful ventures.

• Promote start-ups by helping develop business plans.• Build our networks and skills.• Foster interdisciplinary collaboration (connect with the University

of Oxford community –reach out other groups-).• Work with the Skoll Centre to improve the SE curriculum.• Link colleagues for future ventures including the EP and SCP.• Create a contagious environment to learn about what we believe

is the future of business.• Look for innovative ideas within the University of Oxford and use

business skills to make them happen.

Therefore, we proposed a seven committee structure to carry out different activities

• IMPORTANT: We suggest a two co-chair structure to operate efficiently and deal with the OBN workload (apart from the MBA numerous activities and responsibilities)

• We split the responsibilities in seven Vice Chairs, which included: Inspiration, Events, Academics, Communications & Marketing, Careers, Projects and Fundraising (See diagram in next slide)

Erica Mackey

Ricardo Celaya

Inspiration

Academics

Events

Communications & Marketing

Projects

Careers

Fund Raising

Vice ChairsChairs VC Candidates/CommitteeA glance at

Responsibilities• Anima La Voy• Stephanie Engels• Tamsin Jones

• Nikhil Neelakatan• Tamsin Jones• Desiree Zhou• Stephanie Engels• Taylor Ahlgren

• Pranaiya Oulapathorn• Stephanie Engels• Jason Bell• Nikhil Neelakatan• Anima La Voy• Mele-Ane Havea

• Chris Roe• Desiree Zhou

• Abby Gray• Stephanie Engels• Nikhil Neelakatan• Anima La Voy

• Nick Tostenrude• Nigel Tunnacliffe• Taylor Ahlgren

• Chris Roe• Taylor Ahlgren

• Bringing in speakers, organizing Panels, Bag lunches, etc.

• More creative stuff...

• Helping coordinate the organization of events, such as Emerge, SWF, TEDx, etc.

• Organize Treks.

• Coordinating with the Skoll Centre to improve SE curriculum.

• Marketing and Communications within the University of Oxford and outside of it. (Alumni, other university clubs, Institutions, etc.)

• Website management. (Newsletter).

• Collaboration with Careers Centre to help find job opportunities.

• Help spotting SCP opportunities.

• Help in project incubation.• Help spotting EP opportunities.

• Build and maintain potential project-funding relationships.

• Fundraising for the operation of the SE OBN

*Chair assist these VCs but both Chairs will be aware of every VCs operation

*Chair assist these VCs but both Chairs will be aware of every VCs operation

Planning stage

• Define the Co-Chairs

• Identify SE-OBN members expectations (survey)

• Define the structure

• Define roles and commitments

Reflections on what we did

• Basic info of what we did

• What went well, what did not?

• Thoughts for future improvement

Reflections on what we did

Co-Chairs Basic information

CO-CHAIRSCo-Chairs:

• Erica Mackey (erica.mackey@gmail.com) • Ricardo Celaya (ricardocelayam@gmail.com)

Time commitment:• 8-12 hours of work per week as we oversee all OBN activities

Main responsibilities:• Ensure that activities suggested each term are aligned to overall mission and serve the needs of

the student population • Gather and plan the allocation and delegation of resources• Be creative about what more we can do each term to achieve our objectives • Ensure the cohesiveness and morale of the committee • Hold any necessary strategic meetings with faculty members, Skoll Centre, Careers Office, the

MBA Director, students, SE clubs from other schools, etc. • Manage the financial budget • Hold bi-weekly committee meetings

Co-Chairs Reflection back

15

Reflection on the structure:• When we elected the committee, participation was high. While the bonding was good, work

was not that equally distributed. The fundraising, academics and projects VCs were not very necessary for our operation.

• Keep it simple - Instead of a seven VC structure we would suggest a four VC structure. The academics role can be merged with the careers and projects and fundraising with events.

• We strongly advice the co-leader approach, especially for heavier roles (e.g. speakers, events, careers, chairs). No reason not to give people committee roles as long as one person is ultimately responsible to answer to the OBN chairs.

Reflection on the programmes roles:• Communications & Marketing VC is crucial to permeate into the non-SE community. It should

be carefully and strategically planned – a person with IT/design/creative background would be very helpful.

• Speakers / Inspiration VC has a fine balance to keep between speaker options: between push (what is given by the Skoll Centre, faculty, etc) and pull (what students want).

• Events as a separate role was not needed in our year. Events was helping out the rest in the end.

Co-Chairs Planning forward

16

Planning – Gauge Interest:• Avoid the discussion focused on defining SE (we had lots of this, but less than the year before). You will

never reach an agreement and there is no need to reach an agreement. This is annoying and confusing for the people that are not already in the SE world and not useful for those who are. This is a B-school, is better to focus on how entrepreneurs or companies are addressing market failures through innovative business solution. Focus on what they are doing, what is their business model?, why are they innovative?!

• People started with great interest at the start of school (over 90 SE OBN members), it may be genuine interest, it may not be. Inevitably towards the end of the year, it decreased. This was true for all OBN/extra activities as the workload started to increase throughout the year, but know that this is an issue and pick a few great events to focus on that use people’s time well.

• Have broad topics for speaker or panel events. Topics that are relevant to more people. It is a challenge to get that as SE speakers are often extremely passionate in their own niche areas of expertise. A debate/panel might solve that, or just a speaker who has an interesting, broader experience to share.

• Work together with SE lecturers to improve the classes and avoid overlapping among classes and the SE-OBN.

Involve the Wider Oxford University :• Involve the wider university, really. The marginal amount of effort to get that is negligible compared to the

multiplied benefit derived• Communications person has a big role to play here. Work with the Skoll Centre to identify the other

schools/departments/centres across Oxford who might be interested in our topics. Inform/invite them from the start. We developed strong relations with other groups: Oxford Hubs, Oxford Entrepreneurs, OxCEI, etc.

Communications and marketingGeneral information

Co-chair: Chris Roe and Desiree Zhou Email Ricardo for more info.

Approximate work hours per week: 3 hours/week

• Drafting newsletter, attending meetings, liaising with other OBNs, etc.

Key contacts: Oxford Hubs: Jan Matern, socialenterprise@oxfordhub.org Oxford Entrepreneurs: Ashvir Sanghaashvirsangha@gmail.com

Description of role and responsibilities:– Create overall communications strategy• To raise awareness on social

entrepreneurship within SBS and beyond to the wider Oxford community.

– Oversee all communications to members• Responsible for weekly newsletter• Facebook and Twitter account

managers • Gatekeeper of all communications (e.g.

anyone who wants to send something to the members must go through you)

– Brainstorm with various event leads on how to market event to audience • (e.g. liaising with other OBNs, Oxford

Hub, Skoll Centre etc.)

Communications and marketingReflection back

What worked?• Putting down ground rules about sending out announcements.

– We had such a large committee who all wanted to say something to the members, so it was important to restrict announcements to once a week on Sunday night.

• As the gatekeeper of information, it was helpful to be cc’ed on a lot of communication, though sometimes this could be overwhelming

• Partnerships with Oxford hubs, Oxford entrepreneurs, ISIS and other departments.

What didn’t work• The diversity of events and topics

– Many times the Skoll Centre would have speakers visiting and ask us incorporate them into an event. This was challenging from a communications perspective because there was a lack of coherence in the themes of the events, and afterwards everyone suffered from SE-event fatigue. That said, sticking to the once a week email helped deal with this issue.

Communications and marketingPlanning forward

Trends to be expected• Social entrepreneurship fatigue

– It became challenging communication-wise to increase audience attendance beyond core SE people

Recommendations for the next group• Establish early on a protocol for how to communicate with members and within

the committee• Establish a strategy to ensure inclusivity, especially of non SE members• Partner with other OBNs whenever possible. We worked closely with the

Entrepreneurship OBN, Social Finance OBN, Tech OBN and Finance OBN.• Get people to automatically load GroupSpaces calendars onto their individual

calendars: http://groupspaces.com/my/account/feeds/

Speakers / InspirationReflections Back

Well attended inspiration events throughout the year:

• Nigel Kershaw, Chairman and CEO of the Big Issue and Big Issue Invest• Ignite event: An opportunity for people that are looking to do an EP in HT.

The format consists in a 1-3 minute presentation done by people interested in putting an idea forward to the class.

• Grassroots Business Fund: Harold Rosen• Light Years IP: Ron Layton• EMERGE – This is the HIGHLIGHT of the year. Instead of focusing on getting

lots of small speaker event

There were many other speaker events, but the turnout was more like 5-15 people.

Speakers / Inspiration Planning forward

Recommendations on structure, activities and expectations for next year: • Book the MT speakers as soon as you arrive. • Book the HT speakers by November • Probably not a great idea to book TT speakers as there are evening classes and people

are actively looking for jobs. • The earlier your speakers are in the term, the better. Things get VERY busy by weeks 5-

8.

Be specific about speakers. Only invite people who you want to get to know or would like advice from. There are going to be a crazy amount of events throughout the year and inviting people to speak is an excellent way to get access to people, however, make sure it is worth your time and theirs.

If you are going to do speaker events, focus them in MT and host smaller sessions before or after with really interested students. It is also a useful opportunity to get people connected to EP ideas. A couple EP teams were formed around projects suggested by these speakers.

EventsCore Events

Focus on a few great core events.1. EMERGE – Promote this early and strongly. It is an EXCELLENT opportunity to have exposure

to A+ entrepreneurs that are here for the students. Be proactive - all you need to do is ask for their one-on-one time and they will give it to you. There is minimal return to having lots of small speaker events when this is already organized for you. (Skoll Centre)

2. The Bridge – Throw a gala/party that provides an opportunity to network outside of of SBS and outside of Oxford. MBAs from 8 top European business schools attended and 70 representatives came for the 2 day event. Ideally, this could also be combined with TEDxOxbridge although that will be at Cambridge next year. It was a great opportunity to partner with the Entrepreneurship OBN. Detailed handover notes with Kelly at the Alumni Office. (Ricardo)

3. TEDxOxbridge – This was a fantastic event and greatly supported by the school. Pamela and the Skoll Centre have all the handover notes for this event. It will be run at Cambridge next year, but get involved in organizing as it gives you unparalleled carte blanche to build relationships with innovative and inspirational leaders. Skoll has handover notes. (Erica)

4. Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition (SVCIC) – This event has huge potential to make Oxford the hub of European b-schools for Social Finance. Detailed handover notes are at the Skoll Centre. (Erica)

EventsNon-core events

1. Ignite Night – We hosted a happy hour ignite session in MT where people were given 3 minutes each to stand up in front of the group with one slide and talk about something they are passionate about or would like to learn more about. We had their email address posted on the slide as well and the crowd emailed comments and ideas to the person while they talked. We had over 60 people participate and 90+ came to the event. (Anima)

2. EP Weekend – Following this event we had an EP Weekend in MT where the idea was to have anyone with a baby idea pitch and then teams formed around the most popular ideas. These people went through a bootcamp weekend with workshops to develop a 10-minute pitch with executive summary to an external panel of VCs. This was a good opportunity to get people working towards forming EP groups. (Nigel and Nick)

3. Careers with Impact – As careers in SE are not necessarily the easiest for the Careers Centre to help support, we decided to draw on our class expertise to show other classmates what was possible. 15 students with extensive experience in various areas of entrepreneurship, international development and social finance were selected to talk for 3-5 minutes on their past lives. Attendees were then asked to write on post-its what areas they would like to learn more about or get involved in. Where possible, we tried to pair these people with mentors and the feedback with funnelled back to Careers and Skoll. (Abby)

Careers General Information

Vice chairs of Careers & Curriculum: Abby GrayE-mail addresses: abigailgrayusa@gmail.com

Description of role and responsibilities:• Most of the Careers-related work pursued 3 broader objectives:

– Infrastructure Building– Networking– Knowledge-sharing

• Alex Nicholls and Marc Ventresca are very open to class feedback. Do yourself a favour and give it to them.

Approximate work hours per week: <3 -- More in Michaelmas / Trinity

Key contacts: aside from previous co-Chairs, get to know Pamela Hartigan, Tim Jones, Derek Walker (and his staff such as Kate Dawson, Monica Wilson).

Key activities: Careers events were often rolled into general and inspirational events. See those slides and contact Abby Gray for more specifics.

CareersPlanning forward

What should be done for next year?• More emphasis on equipping MBAs to launch their own ventures because there are limited

career options for people working in the SE field post-MBA graduation, aside from traditional non-profits.

• Careers Handbook is something that needs to be organic and constantly improving, but students should be encouraged to use it and provide constructive feedback.

• Encouraging students to upload the Events calendar from GroupSpaces automatically into their calendars.

• Helping the Skoll Centre put in place a system for tracking Skoll Centre affiliates in future years – e.g. Skoll Associates, Skoll Scholars, SE-OBN alumnists, etc.

• Meet with Careers Centre early on in the year, to keep channels of communication open, and possibly to review the number/diversity of SE Sector Consultants available.

Final Thoughts

• Keep it simple.• Use the Oxford University.• Partner whenever you can. The Skoll Centre, Social Finance

and Entrepreneurship OBNs are your best alliances.• Use all your $$$ - provide beer at events when possible or do

fun things during happy hour.

Backup

Q1

Not important Important Very important Extremely Important

0

5

8

13

3

1011

2

0

13

76

4

17

4

10

6

12

8

2

10 10

44

11

7

4

Q1 breakdownBringing in speakers/ Building networks Promoting start-ups by helping develop business plansHelping out with careers Improving SE curriculumFinding EP / SCP opportunities Collaborating in the organization of events (SWF, Emerge, etc.)Interdisciplinary collaboration

Q2

Not interested Interested Very interested Extremely interested

01

7

17

6

11

4 4

1

6

9 9

Q2 BreakdownFor-profit social business models Non-profit social business models Private Public Partnerships