Press

Article Church Times 22nd July 2011

Learn from others’ work 

Community franchising is a new approach for church social action projects which replicates good practice

Business Franchising has become commonplace: the High Street contains retail franchises such as Thortons, Subway and Boots Opticians. It involves duplicating success by providing an established brand, a product or service and training to those who want to run a business.

Now the Church is drawing on a similar idea, Community Franchising, as a way for churches to replicate successful social action projects in their own area rather than reinventing the wheel.

At times in history the Church has been pivotal in delivering our country’s social welfare system and, contrastingly, there are other periods when the Church has been woefully disconnected from the needs of our society. It is now increasingly in the former mode.

Recent research by The Cinnamon Network (which confirms the findings of a range of earlier studies) suggests that church volunteers are contributing 72 million hours every year in service to communities. This, with donations and gifts in kind, is valued at over £1 billion per annum.

The Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles said at a recent event about Community Franchising, “In the eyes of some, being religious is seen as being “weird”. They don’t want public discussion about faith, and don’t want faith to have a role in our communities. Everyone – whether religious or secular – loses out from that kind of attitude. We need to ensure that all our faith groups have every opportunity to make their mark."

Examples of Community Franchising projects that have been growing rapidly over the last decade include: Street Pastors, which started in Brixton and Street Angels, both of which address anti-social behaviour. Between them, they now mobilise teams of volunteers on Friday and Saturday nights to support people in vulnerable situations. These projects have now been replicated by churches in over 300 places in the UK.

Another example is the charity, Christians Against Poverty, which started in Bradford to help people free themselves from debt; it has now been replicated by over 160 churches.

The Community Franchising approach builds up churches to serve their communities. It has a number of advantages, offering:

• 'off the peg' projects which can be adapted to fit the local context without churches having to start from scratch;
• projects that have an established track record of working well in a range of situations;
• cost effectiveness, because research, identification of factors that lead to success and training have already been developed;
• ways of working which serve local churches without their having to raise significant costs for a central charity.

So far, Community Franchising has developed mostly by accident. When a local church pioneers a social action project that delivers positive outcomes, it is visited by activists from other communities who are interested in replicating its success. Soon there are ‘how to’ guides, franchise agreements and networks of practitioners to share best practice, professional training and support.

More recently Community Franchise charities, such as GB Job Clubs, have deliberately developed a nationwide network by following an Community Franchising strategy. GB Job Clubs was inspired by a man who was made redundant and started a small group for mutual support, to share skills and do some word of mouth job hunting. The first club in Edenbridge has helped 89 people find work over the last 2 years. Each person now in work is saving the state £8,500 per annum in benefit claims whuch adds up to over £750,000 annually. There are now more than 130 similar job clubs across the country reproducing this success. They are a powerful example of the ability of Community Franchising to deliver local change at national scale and to do so rapidly.

What has changed most recently is that there are an increasing number of charities beginning to follow an intentional Community Franchise approach from the start. There are, for instance, a cluster of initiatives focused on homelessness. One is Curry Union, which helps churches to invite rough sleepers to be guests at a regular curry club. Another is Hope into Action, which assists churches to buy accommodation to house homeless people.  

Thousands of churches are now addressing social breakdown including family fragmentation, educational failure, worklessness, addiction, debt, anti-social behaviour, homelessness, ill health and other crisis issues using Community Franchising. An online marketplace for projects www.communityfranchising.net has now been set up to help in such work.

It is time for the Church to do for social action what Alpha has done for evangelism. Community Franchising is just that: replicating the best the Church has to offer; and not reinventing the wheel,  but taking existing projects that have a track record. This approach enables churches to move quickly to address the most pressing needs in their communities; 72 million hours a year is just the start!

Matt Bird is the Chair of The Cinnamon Network www.communityfranchising.net & Chief Executive of Make It* Happen www.makeithappenphilanthropy.co.uk