Cabinet Office

Some excellent opportunities here, and it's good to see that the government has correctly identified the key issues and problems around social enterprise development. I particularly appreciate that the interface between social enterprise and private business, and the interface with the public sector has been recognised - with a strong hint in Miliband's foreword that these are the key challenges. I also liked the emphasis on a cultural of social enterprise, which I think will require some innovative thinking to foster. However, I would like to see a more imaginatve approach to engaging the public sector in social enterprise. In particular, the lessons of corporate social responsibility have a lot to offer the public sector in terms of creating a postive culture for social enterprise development.

By Oliver Maxwell

I am a founder member of a communty farming co-operative based in the remote rural community of Inverasdale. the group has received substantial capital funding and is now a succesful group used as a model for others throughout Scotland. HOWEVER we are now in our second year of growing and are unable to access continued revenue funding for my admininstrative role.It would be great to see government support for revenue funding.This would include easier access, longer term support and increased choice of funders. Our group will never be completly self sustaining as one of our main aims is to sell to produce at an affordable price. By funding essential admin jobs, the volunteer and money generating operations can be adequatly supported.

By Mrs Chris Conniff

Social Enterprises are businesses. Businesses must generate enough funds from trading activity to make the business sustainable. In terms of the second comment I would have to challenge the view that the farmers co-operative is a social enterprise. If it is there to meet a social need but cannot generate enough income to become sustainable without grants then it is not a social enterprise. It is a community project. The grant or investment funding should be there to help the business develop, but not be used as the main source of funding.

By Mark Burton

I see tax issues as a crucial issue here. Start-ups are one thing, as is using social enterprise to deliver public services, but what about migrating existing private business models over to social enterprise? For this to happen, you need buy-in from the current owners and managers and that’s hard in many cases with those people used to the ability to extract dividends, attract investment and dispose of assets, so we need to make the model more attractive. That means cash, and I think a tax break that's only available to CICs (to give reliefs such as those for charities, or on investment in a CICs) as a really huge benefit. Unlike start-ups, in this way function follows form, as businesses convert and then enter the world of social enterprise. It might seem somewhat crude, but then tax instruments often are; they’re where government makes it’s priorities clear, where it tries to affect the market to push it towards the outcomes it wants.

By Dave Boyle

Echoing the concerns expressed by Mark and Dave above, my impression is that as in the US, Social Enterprise is a term being applied retropectively to grant dependent entities. My own organisation has been promoting sustainable social business models together with peer group based microloans for a decade and cannot establish dialogue with UK government at any level. To my mind, we need to network and brainstorm social purpose innovation rather than have it micromanaged by a collection of inpenetrable trusts and regional authorities. This creates entirely the wrong impression to many, who see social enterprise as some kind of stealth privatisation rather than the kind of public participation it should be. A case in point are the recent NHS SE trusts who seem to have no-one able to define how they will operate.

By Jeff Mowatt

Sustainable and effective funding and financing for social enterprises needs to become part of the mainstream financial advisory market and the institutional asset management market. Investing for Good spends 100% of its time targetting practitioners in these markets to persuade them of the benefits of investing in social enterprises..interest, awareness and engagement is growing. But the action groups that have been set up yet again seem to only reflect the demand side; more representation from retail and institutional investors is essential if we are to understand and overcome the financing barriers that exist. Please, please...can we see some new names!

By Caroline Mason

I don't believe that the government has any interest in developing social enterprise. In the North West, the NWDA has been an exemplar of failure and it has been aided and abetted by the Government Office for the North West. In addition, organisations like Manchester Enterprises has strangled nascent social enterprises in Greater Manchester, because no politician is honest enough or brave enough to challenge the status quo and represent the communities that elected them. Also, the Big Issue is not a social enterprise, it's a social business. In fact, the fact that you name Jamie Oliver and The Big Issue underlines the government's penchant for spin and BIG organisations...if you wanna talk about social enterprise then talk about social enterprise. Otherwise, give us a break

By Anonymous

It's great to see this dialogue developing. I would like to add a perspective on 'social business'--in my own definition, businesses that are profit-seeking or even profit-maxmizing, but whose work is fundamentally aligned with social and/or environmental impact. This is quite different to traditional 'CSR' as it sees social impact as a tool for profit-making, and profit-making as a tool for social impact. This activity has the potential to fuel widespread social change. Because these businesses aim to be 'successful' using standard business metrics, they can attract more and different sources of capital, and also can begin encourage an infrastructure of professional services firms tailored to their needs. Social businesses, through their ability to generate significant profits and distribute them to equity holders, also do a significant service by 'proving' the profitability of ethical business and encouraging a more diverse group of entrants into the field.

By Jessica Shortall

I would like to comment that the new initiative does not incorporate information days for would be social benefitaries where they could find out more. If the goverment paid local grass roots community groups the opportunity to host these information sessions, more disadvantaged groups woud be engaged and lives would be changed. For the good of the whole community.

By kenyasue

I wish the government would stop calling social enterprises 'not for profit' as they consider them to be 'businesses'. No business can exist without making profit.Please change the term to 'not for external profit distribution'

By Irene Lindsay

Guys, gimme a break.To me your "Social enterprise" agenda is a mishmash - social services' PC jargon, funding swallowed up in jobsworths' salaries, patronizing attitudes, expensive conferences etc. The acid test? - turn off the Treasury money supply and most of this ramshackle gravy train will instantly disappear.Suggestion - reintroduce "enterprise" - cut out the jobsworth salaries - back innovative projects such as Jamie Olivers "15" - deliberately encourage communities to put forward similar projects - the incentive? - otherwise no money.Return your civil service "social enterprise" funds to mainsteam "enterprise" funding - if need be with Chinese Walls, but subject to the same scrutiny!A more coherent strategy could then be - supporting local enterprise - profit and non-profit at ALL levels in the community - and thus increasing the chances of attracting incoming investment to that community

By Anonymous

Some interesting comments. I am setting up a business to provide income for our charity. We have had support through a programme run by our local CVS. But to be honest it would be more helpful if the funding for these types of programmes were used instead to give start up grants. What has been difficult for us is finding the time to establish a business as well as do our charity work, particularly the work that needs doing before any income is generated. The training and consultancy days we had were useful extras; but we already know the basics of our business and staff time was our real need.

By Ruth

Some preliminary thoughts. I may add further comments when I have had time to read the actionplan in detail. Having worked in a social enterprise since 1989 some issues I would like to see addressed are:(1) Do not over-focus on opportunities for large scale social enterprises, the majority of enterprises fall withing the micro-business sector, i.e. neighbourhood-based community businesses, cooperatives and social-enterprise activities run by small/medium charities.(2) Continued recognition that creating employment opportunities is in itself a social aim.(3) While there are opportunities in service delivery, small social enterprises need help in gaining the capaicity to become providers.(4) Requirement of local/unitary authorities to have social enterprise targets (e.g.no of social enterprises, number employed by social enterprises, volume of turnover in the sector - also comparitive social enteprise labour market surveys. More comments when I have studied the report.

By Steve Belsey

Social enterprise is a spectrum from the highly profitable to the funding-supported. If all social enterprises are to be profit-making, then we will have to do without a great deal of very enterprising activity in our communities that works with challenging people, environments and market failings. Headlining with the Big Issue and Fifteen only continues the myth that you can think of a social need and then, with the mind of an entrepreneur, go out and make a profit. Social enterprises are about added value and value for money and if properly supported and invested in will give a fantastic social rate of return. So the message for the public sector in particular is: don't give handouts but invest in this sector.

By David Gray

It is welcoming to see such a plan been put in place. However my concerns are not that these programs exsist but what it can take to access them. As an individual who has recently sort grant funding for the fashion industry, I've found that these types of assistance seems to have a pre-determin aim such; technology. Also the language in which they are written are not the easiest for most applicants, therefore they simply do not apply for them. In short, will this be any better.

By C. Hill

What will be the role of these new 20 ambassadors be: –1. Are they going to push the requirements and needs of social enterprise (include in this charities, community programmes, CIC’s etc)? 2. Are they going to be market specific such as finance, marketing, procurement, etc a. or are they going to be geographical? b. or a mixture of the two?3. What are the time scales for recruiting?More questions than answers – or are we going to use this forum to write a job specification. What we do not want to see is’ a job for the boys’ - new names, new outlooks, new directions. Thoughts?

By Ashley Cooke

Everyone seems to have a different definition of social enterprise which is not helpful to start with, especially as the scope includes what are basically chariites at one end and traditional businesses at the other.I have a major problem with the government definition; it is very restrictive, basically describes the way 90% of charities operate already and does nothing to encourage entrepreneurs to set up a social business model instead of a traditional one.The important thing for a social enterprise is that it combines social aims with commercial aims - whether it is established as a charity, a CIC or a limited company is irrelevant, and whether the profit is re-invested in the community I think is more complex.If a business operates primarily commercially (e.g. a retailer), then in order to qualify as a "social" business, it would need to demonstrate that a significant percentage of its profits were re-invested in community/social activity to justify the term.

By Matt Haikin

I work for a charity based in the North East. We are a grass roots organisation and have developed over the past 13 years in direct response to needs identified by local young people. We have a strong idea for a Social Enterprise, however, we are finding it difficult to ascertain:a) who to turn to for information, advice and guidance on setting up and running a social enterprise? andb) who to apply to for funding?I keep reading about how 'Social Enterprise' is high on the Government's Agenda, however, there are no clear guideleines on how to move forward and get started. If such sources of help and support do exist - the third sector need to be made far more aware of them.

By Geri Rimmer

I was dismayed at the lack of knowledge that the report presents in terms of what is happening in schools. The case study given is of enterprise and not social enterprise:"Social enterprise is now a common feature ofenterprise education in schools (case study 13)."Case Study 13 being that of Enterprise Education. As a teacher at a Development Education Centre involved in two pathfinder projects and a social enterprise project funded by Co-op Action I cannot believe the logic of the statement that enterprise education equates with social enterprise education.Our projects, exploring multiple bottom lines and business decision making that includes the environment, the community, the workers etc is seen to be a part of developing active global citizens.The website www.case4us.biz has 14 case studies and free teacher materials on creating, running and evaluating social enterprises. Let us get our terms right so that teachers can value the difference between enterprise and social enterprise

By Michael Newman

I'd agree with others here, that there's a confusion in terminology. The goverment definition attempting to include many models including charitable, mutual and targetted social capitalism under one the one banner of Third Sector. All have their part to play, though I'd be inclined to regard the ideal social enterprise as the more than full cost recovery model that Mohammed Yunus describes. When profit generating social business invests in CDFIs to seed new initiatives, we may well see the tipping point for social business that has been so long awaited. What I'd really like to see is the mechanisms of goverment in this endeavour being more accessible to the general public. I have the strong impression that goverment both local and national isn't responsive to external advocates or perhaps even aware of their existence.

By Jeff Mowatt