User:Coolnrg/Sandbox

Nic Frances is a prominent social entrepreneur, author and founder of environmental social enterprises Easy Being Green and Cool nrg International. He has lead a number of energy reduction campaigns in the UK and Australia aimed at reducing energy usage and carbon emissions, and initiated Clean Development Mechanism programs in China and Mexico.

Biography
An active advocate in the fight against poverty and global climate change, Nic Frances began an early career as a social entrepreneur in the 1980’s starting The Furniture Resource Centre in Liverpool, UK, aimed at providing the poor with access to furniture and local employment opportunities, in which he was later awarded an MBE for his services. In 1991 Frances worked as a fund-raiser for Christian Aid and later in 1996 was ordained as an Anglican priest. In 1998 he immigrated to Australia where he joined the Brotherhood of St Laurence to further his aims in the fight against poverty. He has since been an active environmental social entrepreneur co-founding Easy Being Green in 2004, and starting Cool nrg International in 2007. Frances has written (two?)books on is experiences working in charity and social enterprises and has been invited to speak at the Council of Schwab Social Entrepreneurs in 2006 and the World Economic Forum in 2007 and 2008. Today, as founder and Chairman of Cool nrg International in Melbourne, Australia, he works to combat global climate change through international large-scale energy efficiency and Clean Development Mechanism campaigns.

Early life
Frances was born in (year), in (city), UK, and spent his early years (living / working in the family / hotel business?). In 1982 Frances graduated from Portsmouth Polytechnic with an HND is Business Studies and went on to achieve an certificate in Advanced Studies in Religious and Theological Education at the University of Liverpool in 1995. Frances’s early careers during the 1980’s included sales, marketing and management roles in a number of UK hotel and leisure companies before becoming a stockbroker in 1986. In 1988, having grown dissatisfied with a career in stockbroking, Frances began to develop an interest in Christian socialism, particularly in the work of a Liverpudlian Priest by the name of Neville Black, and deiced to move to Liverpool to assist Black in his work. Working in a range of early voluntary activities, Frances began visiting people in need of assistance in their homes and was shocked to find that many of them lacked basic household items such as stoves, refrigerators, washing machines, tables, chairs, heating or beds. Soon after, Frances began to set-up a large furniture resource centre where homeless and disadvantaged people could get the household items they needed quickly and with efficient and professional service.

The Furniture Resource Centre
In starting the FRC, Frances believed that he could not only meet people’s immediate needs but also assist people out of poverty and disadvantage, and create a business model that could be replicated and expanded across the UK. He wanted to differ to other local secondhand furniture charitable organizations by doing more then simply delivering something to the poor. In his research, Frances had found that those organizations that were selling their products were better at providing cheap, reliable recycled furniture whilst providing real jobs to unemployed locals. He decided that instead of starting a charity to help the poor he would incorporate real business practices within his social entrepreneurial ideas and sell secondhand furniture in an efficient and cost-effective manner that he hoped would also attract philanthropic and government support. By using the market to achieve social change and not acting purely as a charitable organization, Frances was able to expand and develop partners and relationships, which allowed the FRC to grow each year. After starting the FRC as a small community business in Liverpool in 1988, Frances had managed to develop the FRC into a large social business by 1991. The FRC was able to meet the needs for jobs whilst expanding to act as a furnishing and removal business, a retail business and a waste management and recycling service. Today the FRC services stretch from London to Glasgow and takes in an annual turnover in the millions of pounds.

Frances was later awarded an MBE for his services to the FRC and charity in Liverpool, in 1998.

Immigration to Australia
Frances migrated to Melbourne, Australia in 1998 and joined Australia’s largest charity organization the Brotherhood of St Laurence as Executive Director. Over the next four years Frances strived to promote his ideas in Value-Centered Market Economics. The concept aimed to explore opportunities to use the market to help the Brotherhood move towards an economic system that recognized a broader range of values then it had traditionally embraced. He believed this would allow a wider discussion within the organization about the role of the market delivering change and achieving the needs that he believed society saw as crucial to the community. However, after suggesting his concept to the Brotherhood he encountered strong resistance and a lack of willingness to change, which, would ultimately end with Frances leaving the organization in 2003.

Environmental social entrepreneurship
After his experiences working in charity and the FRC Frances, believed that value-centered economics was key to a successful for-profit social enterprise. In 2004 Frances, together with select partners, co-founded the company Easy Being Green based in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. He believed that the environmental social enterprise could respond to an emerging consumer interest of becoming more environmentally sustainable within our homes. He felt that a significant number of people wanted to reduce their carbon footprint, which was enough to create a sufficient customer base big enough to support the new business.

Easy Being Green
Frances’s strategy within Easy Being Green (EBG) was to provide a retro-fitting service to help people make their homes more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable. EBG would assess each household’s current energy efficiency and suggest ways to improve it. Also, the company could implement measures such as insulation, solar panels, solar hot-water systems and the supplying of compact fluorescent light bulbs. By doing so they would guarantee that the household would recoup any financial outlay within ten years through reduced energy costs. However, in trying to develop a market response to a perceived consumer demand Frances, found that whilst many people when asked claimed they would take the opportunity and pay to make their homes more environmentally sustainable, only a handful of customers actually would come forward. He found that many individuals would express a willingness to spend money to change for a good cause, but then fail to actually follow through when the opportunity was offered to them. Within two years of start-up the company faced low sales and the possibility of going out of business.

(In 2005?) the NSW state Government created a target for energy retailers to create energy-efficiency and reduce their sales by 3% a year. This effectively put a value on carbon emissions reduction, which would in turn influence the way EBG created sales.

In establishing a new system whereby organizations could become accredited to deliver emissions savings, the state government had created an new opportunity allowing organizations to sell on the savings to energy retailers as seen in carbon trading schemes.

Under the new scheme Frances became aware that some companies were giving away energy-efficient light bulbs and in exchange people were asked to assign their carbon savings over to the company, thus generating income. The companies giving away those light bulbs were then able to trade the savings to energy retailers. By the end of 2005 EBG had started to operate under this new strategy in NSW.

By September 2006 EBG had offered free light bulbs and AAA water-saving showerheads to 500,000 households out of 2 million (70%) in NSW. This allowed the company to make profit and enabled people in NSW to save energy, lower their carbon footprint and save money on their energy bills. At this time, the government adjusted the rules of the scheme which made it financially less rewarding for EBG to give away their products and that phase of the company came to an end. In six months, EBG, together with their competitors, had managed to reach 60% of the market, distribute 3.5 million light bulbs to over half a million households, reduce carbon emissions by 3.2 million tones, and save 6 gigalitires of water a year.

Cool nrg International
Whilst Frances and his partners in Easy Being Green had the same goals of reducing carbon emissions, after the government’s change of the scheme, they were split on how best to achieve it. This ultimately resulted in Frances selling his share of the business to his partners and with part of the Easy Being Green team, decided to set-up a new company. Frances aimed to build on his experiences in NSW to launch a global social enterprise to reduce carbon emissions and diversify into other areas such as voluntary carbon trading and other energy-efficient products. In January 2007, Frances attended the World Economic Forum (WEF) and on his return to Australia he began discussing with friends and potential partners his ideas for starting a new company. In March 2007 Frances and his new team of colleagues, partners and investors launched Cool nrg International.

Over the next year, Cool nrg was able to engage in a number of large-scale energy-efficiency and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) campaigns around the world in their pursuit to combat global climate change. By giving away free energy-efficient light bulbs to the public, Frances and his team aimed to reduce carbon emissions and save consumers money on their energy bills.

Cool nrg engaged in five major campaigns based in the UK and Australia over the next 12 months. These included the Great British Light Switch (UK), Change the Globe (Victoria, Australia), Mecca and Gala Bingo Energy Saving Giveaway (UK), and the Big Light Switch (Queensland, Australia). In turn this allowed Frances to run his new environmental social enterprise and in total:

-	distribute 11 million energy-saving light bulbs in one year -	save 207,700 tonnes of C02 during 2008 equivalent to taking 71,550 cars off the road -	cut emissions in homes by 35,504 tonnes -	save consumers £46.5 million off their energy bills

The Great British Light Switch (UK, 2008), and the Big Light Switch (Queensland, Australia, 2008) were both named the largest energy-efficiency campaigns of their kind in the UK and Australia by (source of record here), with the Great British Light Switch campaign creating a Guinness World Record for the most energy-efficient light bulbs distributed.

Achievements
A list of Nic Frances’s honors, awards and achievements between (year-to-year here) include:

- Schwab Entrepreneur - Leading Social Entrepreneur – identified by World Economic Forum - Advisory Board Member of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2006 – (from who?) - Visiting Fellow – Institute of Social Research and Policy Unit - MBE – for services to the Furniture Resource Centre and charity in Liverpool - Australian Centenary Medal – for contribution to Australian Society - The Guardian Jerwood Award – for individual excellence in a new small-medium sized charity in the field of social welfare

Books
(*To be confirmed) The End of Charity, (year, published by) Dear Bishop, (year, published by) (other?)

Video resources
(*To be confirmed….)