Why a Social Enterprise?
Why indeed? How many times, as a community group, do you fill in those grant application forms – if you're lucky, possibly once or twice a year. How many times are you rejected? More times than you are successful!!
Then there are those occasions when you are coming to the end of the project, and have to start looking for more funding to keep the project running. If the project employs people, we're talking about jobs and possible redundancies. A lot can have happened since you last applied and there's always the possibility that the original funder won't fund the same project twice or their funding objectives – what they fund – will have changed, or their criteria has changed. Sounds familiar?
What if with a lot of advice and support, you were able to become less reliant on grant funding and become more sustainable. How? By becoming a business that trades goods in the market place or offers services to communities that are paid for. We're talking about Social Enterprises – businesses that have social aims, that trade and the profit made is ploughed back into those social aims and becomes sustainable.
Social Enterprise
www.socialenterprise.org.uk
Bank of England Financing Social Enterprise Report
www.bankofengland.co.uk
NWDA
www.nwda.co.uk
Communities
www.communities.gov.uk
Social Enterprise In Cumbria
www.socialenterpriseincumbria.org
The Hub
www.thehub.coop
Social Exclusion Unit
www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk
Barrow Borough Council
www.barrowbc.gov.uk