History of Common Purpose

A personal history of Common
Purpose and how it was founded
by Julia Middleton, Chief Executive

I first had the idea for Common Purpose on 29 July 1988.

At the time I was working for the Industrial Society, a Charity under Royal Charter, which was devoted to developing leadership skills in industry. On that day a woman called Jean Horstman - who worked for the then British American Arts Association came to see me. She was new to the UK and came to pick my brains on the links between arts and business in the UK. I remember being fascinated by her broad and deep knowledge of her home town of Pittsburg and asked her how she had gained it. She told me about the Pittsburg Community leadership programme that she had attended.

I resigned from my job the next day because I was determined to develop the idea in the UK.

It felt right to me because I was educated at French Lycees around the world and grew up with a deep belief in education as a way to change things in society. As a child in New York I had also been immersed in difference. Everyone was different in New York, and that was its energy and strength.

I had relocated to the UK and felt that there was something to be done here to realise this strength and that the community leadership programmes, by getting many different communities together, might help achieve this.

Sources of funding

I worked nights during my notice period at the Industrial Society to develop ideas and then started to raise the funding, which I knew had to come from many sources to safeguard our independence.

Our independence was always crucial if we were going to attract people from all sectors, beliefs and backgrounds as participants because they would spot if Common Purpose had an agenda other than leadership development a mile away. Independence has to be in the culture, governance, people and curriculum and one thing that undermines independence is if one funding source dominates and gets to set the agenda.

Along with independence, the funding sources needed to reinforce that Common Purpose would draw support from across the sectors. I therefore hoped to get backing from many companies - that were increasingly committed to corporate social responsibility - and the public sector, with many government departments interested in community capacity building.

In September 1989, I met potential sponsors at Nat West and the Department of Trade and Industry. Both were encouraging meetings. The latter suggested that I go for funding from a number of government ministries, which - though tough - would again help maintain the organisation's independence. I then met with BP and the Home Office.

In October 1989 I visited the USA and met the people who ran the National Association of Community Leadership Organizations (NACLO). They were friendly and generous with their knowledge, but not enthusiastic with my suggestion that they should become WACLO (Worldwide  Association for Community Leadership Organizations), so I came back better informed but alone.

The brand

On the weekend of 10 September I got away from the children, worked up a proper plan and decided on the name Common Purpose. It was a phrase often used by the Director of the Industrial Society, John Garnett.

It was a great name, now we needed a logo. I met the designer on 10 January. She came up with a logo that I loved, it was colourful (everything then about cities was black and white and grim), it built on the idea of the molecular nature of cities but the shapes were all different and bursting out of their box. I loved it, others came to think of it as a logo more appropriate for a plumber and about 10 years later it changed - to my great sadness.

The launch

When we started to look at where to pilot Common Purpose, I met Jeremy Beecham, who was then the Leader of Newcastle City Council.

Jeremy liked the idea and said that we should try it on some people in Newcastle. His enthusiasm was wonderful, but as ever we had to watch our independence, so started meeting everyone who would see us in Newcastle.

On 30 January I left the Industrial Society, who had been very tolerant during my notice period. From then on we were simply flat out. We knew that having raised half a million pounds from six companies and four government departments we could concentrate on delivery, but that even with this much money we had to move fast.

This was so that in a couple of years when the early funds ran out, we would have proved the idea.

The financial model was built on tuition fees, while still making sure that no one was excluded from participating because they could not pay the fee. Common Purpose was one of the earliest organisations in the UK to be rooted in a charitable objective and ethos but to fund itself through charging the people who could pay for its work. The expression 'social enterprise' did not yet really exist. It has served us well and become the key to our sustainability and also again it has reinforced our independence.

On 1 February 1989, Anita chaired the first trustees meeting. On 6 and 13 February, the second and third employees joined Common Purpose. In February the CEO of Peugeot Talbot in Coventry met us and persuaded us to start the second pilot in Coventry.