Social enterprises can be different sizes, from small community cafes to really big international organisations.
Are you looking to sell goods and services to tackle a social or environmental issue? Social enterprises create employment and reinvest their profits back into their business or the local community. This allows them to tackle social problems such as:
- Improving people’s life chances
- Providing training and employment opportunities for those who need support
- Support communities
- Help the environment
Social Enterprise UK has produced a guide to starting your social enterprise. The guide takes you through the essentials from finding investment and funding to deciding on the most suitable legal structure for your social enterprise. Throughout the guide they’ve provided some words of wisdom from social entrepreneurs – what they wish they’d known when they were starting out.
Social enterprises exist in nearly every sector from consumer goods to healthcare, community energy to creative agencies, restaurants to facilities management. Well known examples include The Big Issue, Divine Chocolate and the Eden Project but there are over 100,000 social enterprises throughout the country contributing £60 billion to the economy and employing two million people.
They’re creating jobs and opportunities for those most marginalised from the workforce, transforming the communities they work in and making the Sustainable Development Goals a reality. It’s business for good and when they profit, society profits. (Social Enterprise UK)
(Information and definitions taken from SEUK guidance)
