TWO interesting developments in the Third Sector - the space between public and private organisations.
First, former Prime Minister Tony Blair hands out some advice to other Third Sector organisations as a result of his involvement in charity work.
Blair’s out-of-government office has now set up four separate organisations which all appear to loosely fit the term, Third Sector.
The four organisations, two of which are termed Foundations, have been set up to concentrate on climate change, sport, Africa and Faith.
Blair, who is also a Middle East peace envoy, concludes that partnership is the key to success for his and other Third Sector organisations.
Blair says: “comparing my old and new worlds, I’d say that in philanthropy, unlike politics most of the time, you can genuinely welcome others alongside you.”
Of course, post-Iraq, the difficult question for Blair now is whether organisations are willing to be associated with him in pursuit of their noble and good causes? Or whether the association damages the cause?
Secondly, an established and successful social enterprise, the ECT Group, has been taken over by the stock market listed private company, May Gurney.
The take-over of ECT which, like Sound Communication is a Community Interest Company, is interpreted by some as a major defeat for the new social enterprise CIC model.
Others see it as a step towards new partnership working between social enterprises and the private sector, without in any way compromising the values on which the social enterprise was originally based.
Again, partnership appears to mean different things to different people. But it might be useful to ask ourselves who does the partnership benefit and who is the partnership really between?