From the Office of the Regulator of Community Interest Companies
Sign up to our “All you need to know about submitting a successful application ” webinar taking place on 25th February 11am-12pm here
Preparing for my webinar!
‘This is your chance to get some tips on how to complete a successful application of incorporation or conversion to a community interest company, and to acquire further information on what the Regulator looks at when considering an application and solutions to the common errors that we see.’
The organisation, UN Women, has just published a new report arguing for economic development in a new era, the purpose of which is to ‘…support the survival and flourishing of life, in all its forms’.
The quotation above comes from a web article by Jayati Ghosh, on the web pages of Social Europe, in which Ghosh argues that the world economy needs to rotate 180 degrees and become focused away from the notion of market forces. Forces which can bring riches or disaster according to some unseen lottery of life.
If we live in an economic and deterministic world all we need, Ghosh argues, is the will to restructure institutional forms into better, more humane and democratic models.
The chapters in the report are challenging and an informative read, providing not only argument, but examples of how economic change can be restructured in the post-Covid landscape.
The report is not, in itself, a social enterprise driven map for the future.
Rather, we would argue, that social business and community enterprise can play their full part in re-modelling of local and national economic agendas, in the feminist mirror the UN paper holds up to us all.
Post-Covid, the illustrations and challenges of the report are already the common currency of ideas in the re-build agenda. Ideas and directions of travel that will already be familiar to the SocEnt community.
Economics that support the livelihoods of women.
Putting Care, note the capital C, at the heart of economic and community change.
Making the instruments of finance and economics gender-just.
Creating a new feminist global politics for the post-Covid era.
The future, post-Covid and all the economic and social change that lies ahead, will need to bring with it a commitment to both training and re-skill for many, but also a distinct, hardy and tenacious set of practical and soft skills for the enduring entrepreneur.
Looking to the future: Image by Benjamin Davies, Creative Commons, Unsplash
This is the message contained in a useful and perceptive series of articles to come from Pioneers Post. It is a landscape of compassion, certainly, given the context of the work, but also a landscape of uncertainty that will be managed through endurance, creativity and a survival ethos.
List of skills updated: 6th June 2021 – see below…
A heady cocktail of needs for the social entrepreneur looking to the future.
‘Experts have warned that half the world’s employees will need to be reskilled by 2025. But with which skills? In our new series, Emerald Works’ Kevin Dunne and Social Enterprise Academy’s Claire Wilson set out seven critical, “no regrets” skills that social enterprise leaders will need to flourish in the post-Covid-19 landscape.’
The seven key skills, promoted by the authors of this thinking are sound and relevant – especially if you are on the brink of leading your new SocEnt project up the enterprise foothills to sustainability.
We were worried, diving into the article, that this was a promotional pivot for a hardened, corporatist lean-into enterprise for good. We should not have worried. Vigorous commitment to the seven principles espoused can, we see, develop individuals with strong technical skills.
Skills that allied with the compassion that got them into the sector in the first place, may well be the key to all our survival.
This brief article provides information about a University of Derby free event for Social Enterprise organisations, which provides a detailed and reflective focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030.
SocEntEastMids is a proud supporter of the event, and we are completely aligned with the aims of the day – and in supporting participants and partners beyond the confines of this single event too.
Creating a more sustainable, compassionate world.
Date and time
Thursday, 17 June 2021
10.00 – 13.00
‘This free event is aimed at social enterprises, to engage them with the sustainable development goals (SDGs), the targets identified by the United Nations to achieve global peace and prosperity.
The event includes a series of talks from academics, policy experts and social enterprises in the field. It will also feature a learning activity, where social enterprises can learn about mapping their social impact and identifying untapped future potential using the SDGs, by reflecting on how these link to forms of wealth that a social enterprise can generate.’
Source: University of Derby
Some key web links to inform your decision to attend:
Anna Birley and The Co-operative Party have produced a really useful guide to what Community Wealth Building is, in terms of definition, ideas for local action and how to campaign for effective local policy change.
This CLES Summit is the UK’s only community wealth building event dedicated to celebrating successes, sharing ideas, exploring challenges and building the Community Wealth Building movement‘.
The event will also feature the launch of the Community Wealth Building Centre for Excellence – a place to think about ownership, surplus distribution and the local economic flow in an entirely new way.
Who is the event for?
‘The Summit is for anyone who wants to build an economy that works for all. Over the last ten years, Community Wealth Building ideas have been taken up and applied by an ever-growing number of socially minded businesses and social and public sector organisations across the regions and countries of the UK.
This event will bring together people from across these sectors and places, from local authorities and credit unions to community owned football clubs and hospitals’.
We will be there? Will you? Make a long weekend of it and support the local economy in the North West too!
The SocEntEastMids team:
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Taking place on May 21st, 2019 at Mary Ward House in London, the organisers aim to delve ‘…into different practical support that can allow all organisations to progress towards a healthy and sustainable future, while also making sure that we don’t forget about our own well-being and the human behind the social entrepreneur‘.
Early bird tickets are just now available and you can see the range of ticket types available for this significant SocEnt event here.
You can see the key themes of this year’s conference, and review the speakers of note from last year’s event on the BGB web pages. See more: https://beyondgoodbusiness.co.uk/
Perhaps we’ll see you there?
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Hatch, a South London charity, design their peer accelerator programme to ‘…facilitate learning experiences with successful social entrepreneurs (those who have come before), where they can share their wisdom, knowledge and network with those who need it next‘.
Designed for existing social enterprises, keen to grow, with a small number of staff, but who are aiming to seek social investment or crowdfunding resources in the next year or two.
Their programme of support centres around the following thematic deliveries…
Peer-to-peer learning environment
Pro-bono legal consulting
Procurement prospects
Financial coaching
Crowdfunding project
Funding opportunities
Here at SocEntEastMids we specialise in pro-bono support to the micro-enterprise or the nascent, yet to be connected, social entrepreneur.
However, we recognise that the Hatch Accelerator model offers professional and profound structural advancement for social entrepreneurs and social enterprises who are approaching critical mass.
Registration closes: 1 April 2019 – Programme starts: 12 April 2019
As places are limited to 15 delegates per annum, there is a short expression of interest questionnaire, helping Hatch advise you directly on your application to the programme.
See more here – and if you do, good luck with your application!
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The School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) have, this 2019 New Year, published details of new, free learning and development courses for the leaders of the community business sector in the UK.
This programme helps the leaders of community businesses in England. It focuses on growing income from trading, to improve impact and sustainability. It offers:
A learning programme: 12 days spread over nine months
A Match Trading grant of up to £10,000
A community of people running organisations like yours
Eurofound publications on the quality of life inside Europe, offer profound insights into the global ‘state of the nation’ on matters that affect the individual, society and economy.
Social Insecurities and Resilience, the latest policy brief to be published, highlights how insecure even those perceived as comfortable and secure can be, across Europe.
Whether being old and feeling exposed when out after dark, or in full employment but doubting that the employment will continue beyond six months hence, the report offers a defining argument for the deployment of economic and social initiatives that put people, their sense of well being and compassionate economic energy at the heart of government thinking.
It is interesting that even across international borders, within Europe, the similarities in unease and concerns are duplicated across communities, whatever their defining local language.
‘Most of the insecurities reviewed in this policy brief have an economic component but are influenced by other factors too. For instance, perceptions of housing insecurity are influenced by tenant protection law, perceptions of old-age income insecurity are influenced by long-term care provision, and perceptions of healthcare insecurity are influenced by the presence or absence of healthcare coverage’.
The significance of having a ‘secure’ life is widely recognised. The United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights tells us that everyone has the right to ‘security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his (or her) control’ (Article 25).
In the key findings of the report it is stressed that ‘…only 1% of the EU population enjoys the highest level of security in all five types of social insecurity studied in this brief: personal, housing, healthcare, employment and old-age income. If more types were added, there might be nobody in the EU who feels free of any form of social insecurity’.
The five key measures of insecurity that the report comparatively assesses are…
…personal insecurity – of being personally unsafe (from crime, for instance)
…housing insecurity – of losing one’s home
…healthcare insecurity – of being unable to afford healthcare
…employment insecurity (for those in employment) – of losing one’s job and
being unable to find a new one
…old-age income insecurity – of not having an adequate income in old age
In their policy summary the report authors point out that government and state actors in the provision of services ‘…should be careful not to underestimate how widespread feelings of social insecurity are, especially more moderate forms. These may be early indicators of problems, so preventative policy-making should try to detect better, more muted levels, as well as higher levels of insecurity’.
This report attempts a broad assay of community feelings across Europe. No small scoping exercise in itself, but when executed as here, then it provides a wealth of evidence and support for the argument that the social enterprise model should become the defining economic and civitas service provision model.
We would argue!
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A series of free events at your local Business & IP Centre, from the British Library and local authorities.
Book your free place in Nottingham here…
Not overtly dedicated to the Social Marketplace, but a day of free engagement, idea exploration and support-signposting from a variety of key players in the enterprise and tech market encouragement sectors.
DATE AND TIME: Thu 20 September 2018 09:00 – 16:30 BST
Explore all the details at SSE here
