Social Enterprise Community
Working with the Social Enterprise Unit in the Small Business Service, CNR helped set up an initial working group of Social Enterprise contacts from various organisations, in order to develop and facilitate an online community/network for Social Enterprise advisers.
The aim is that the community is used by those delivering Social Enterprise support, acting as a learning, best practice and knowledge sharing resource. The current audience for the network is primarily for those supporting Social Enterprises and relevant specialists or managers in BLO and RDAs so members can easily find resources, share information and ask for guidance/recommendations from their peers.
CNR’s role has been to set up the community including:
- finding and collating the contacts that should be registered
- liaising with regional teams/networks
- inviting and registering members
- day-to-day administration
As a result the community is growing rapidly, with the network being seen as a beneficial resource for Social Enterprise contacts.
Information Resource Management
During its support of a UK-wide network of specialist advisers, CNR recognised that individuals throughout the country were facing similar problems and challenges in helping their clients. The question was how to ensure that members of the network were able to share knowledge and experience quickly and efficiently.
CNR devised a process for network members to request advice from their peers. Their questions are monitored by an Information Resource Manager who collates all responses into a single item of content for a searchable database. This is augmented with material from other sources.
As a result the network now has a growing library of proven solutions that reflect the real, day-to-day needs of their clients. This model is being adopted to support other networks of geographically dispersed workers.
