Social Enterprise
What is social enterprise?
The idea behind social enterprise is quite simple. Social enterprises are businesses first and foremost but they trade with a social or environmental purpose – they put their aims above the need to maximise profits and they employ ethical business practices. They benefit society by re-investing profits, supporting their aim of addressing specific social issues. A successful social enterprise will combine a public service ethos with the entrepreneurial drive of a business approach.What kind of business?
The type of business will depend on the organisation and could involve selling services or products, or providing public services under contract, examples are; food cooperatives, recycling projects, training services, village halls.
Examples include development trusts, co-operatives, charities, employee owned businesses, community interest companies, sports trusts, and social firms.
Many voluntary and community organisations are also social enterprises. There are also organisations whose labels suggest that they are social enterprises, although they are essentially set up for purpose of making a profit for private individuals.
Social Enterprise comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from the high profile ventures of the Big Issue and the Eden Project to other smaller projects which simply benefit the local community.
There are at least 55,000 social enterprises operating in the UK, with a combined turnover of £27bn per year so they are a very important section of our economy.
On the Isle of Wight there is evidence of established social enterprises as well as a number of social enterprises who are either unacknowledged or have the potential to work in more business like ways to achieve their social goals.
Local Research
The Island Infrastructure Group recently commissioned via public tender, consultancy support to deliver a research and support project focusing on local social enterprise opportunities.
This had 2 phases, firstly a general consideration of the potential for social enterprise development locally and secondly the provision of development support for 3 of the opportunities identified in phase 1.
The phase one report can be dowloaded directly using the link below and phase 2 is in delivery