Amid all the talk surrounding the 'big society', and the idea of philanthropy currently sweeping the nation, comes Tides, which is set to send ripples through civil society in Britain. UK Tides, to be launched in April, is a philanthropy brand borrowed from the United States where Tides acts as an umbrella to nurture charities and social enterprises within local communities.
In the US, Tides provides fiscal sponsorship for over 230 social enterprises and charities every year and has an annual turnover of $100m (£62m). Canada, Australia and New Zealand also have branches. In the UK, the West Midlands-based Accord Housing Association is leading the early work with two other core partners, the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation and the Foundation for Social Improvement. They are also in talks with other groups such as the School for Social Entrepreneurs and Shepherds Bush Housing Association. The UK version will not be a franchise but will stand separately.
Chris Handy, Accord group chief executive says: "It's quite difficult and time-consuming to set up a charity or social enterprise in this country, especially for charities who must set themselves up as a corporate entity or trust and then get charitable status with the Charity Commission. Under Tides you can get going on your project straight away."
The UK version of Tides will be set up as a registered charity, using much of Accord's existing resources and infrastructure. The partnership will invest £40,000 seed money although Tides is bidding for funds to expand this. Enterprises will also be expected to contribute.
The idea is that fledgling community enterprises will piggyback on Tides' own charitable status until they are ready to break out as independent entities. Tides will provide shared back-office facilities such as administration, Criminal Records Bureau checks, IT and human resources. For using Tides, community groups agree to pay 5-8% of their profits.
Handy thinks housing associations are well placed to help regenerate their deprived local communities, making tenants more enterprising to help themselves. "We've got quite a dependent tenants group," he says of Accord's own community. "We have 11,000 tenancies across the West Midlands and around 70% of those are on benefits, in other words, are out of work. So what we're trying to do is train people up, so they're skilled to get jobs. We generate community enterprises and train our tenants up so they can be workers in those enterprises."
He adds: "Remember the Black Country has been decimated industrially over the last 20 years and is still reducing by the year, and the recession has hit it even further. So we're trying to skill people up."
Tides' target is to set up 20 projects each year until 2014 when it hopes to have helped 60 and, "some, we hope, will have landed on their own two feet". Accord, says Handy, is, "specifically targeting the children of our tenants … It's a big ambition of young people to set up their own businesses".
One plan is to recruit 15 young people to a white-goods service where recruits will learn to maintain fridges, washing machines, etc, with training to take place at local further education colleges. Their target market will be other tenants whose appliances break down.
There are three strands to Tides taken from the American model which the UK partners are hoping to replicate. The first is known in the US as the "charitable shield", or umbrella under which projects hang themselves as fledgling enterprises.
The second Tides strand is offering shared back-office services such as human resources, IT and financial support. The customers will be not only the tenants but interested spin-off organisations that will come from the public sector or primary care trusts.
The third area is fiscal sponsorship, where a philanthropist or donor channels money to projects facilitated by Tides but with conditions attached.
Matt Leach, previously on Accord's board and now associate director at thinktank ResPublica, initially imported Tides to the UK.
"When I first invited China Brotsky [senior vice-president of the US-based Tides Foundation] to speak at a conference of what was then known as the third sector a year ago, I hoped to get an insight into possible transferable approaches to supporting civil society organisations in the UK," he says. "But from the moment she stepped on stage, it was clear that this represented something desperately needed over here."
Leach says government reform of public service procurement and public finance cuts could create opportunities for both struggling and new organisations:
"A wave of new, UK-based fiscal sponsors could transform the way small to medium sized charities operate, reducing the burden of regulation, improving management capacity, slashing costs, reducing the disadvantages of scale faced by some smaller organisations, and dismantling barriers to setting things up and making them happen.
But he adds there will also need to be learning and adaptation, "not least to reflect the complexities of UK charitable law. But if those can be overcome, it could be an idea whose time has arrived".
Handy says one major challenge is securing seed funding for the projects. Tides has so far applied to the Big Lottery and Handy hopes the bigger spin off initiatives "will provide the backbone of income". Also, he believes it may be a challenge to interest tenants in the first place although they already have about 11 interested tenant projects.
One project that believes it has much to gain is Planning for Real, a community-based planning technique that helps people shape the communities in which they live. Accord took on its worker and trademark when it became insolvent 18 months ago.
That worker is Margaret Wilkinson, head of the Planning for Real unit. She says that while she benefits from the Accord staff network, she is looking forward to becoming independent again with help from Tides.
"Tides will let me have the time to re-establish Planning for Real because we were an entity before we went into administration," she says. Wilkinson hopes, under Tides, to decide if her organisation can become a social enterprise or adopt another model, and plans to employ around three more workers with administrative support to reach full strength.
"Tides will give me that support, space and opportunity without the pressures of going it alone to build up again."
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