This Saturday, 10th October 2015, is Social Saturday – spend your cash with a social enterprise and get some real ‘community multiplier effect‘ for your money!

‘In the UK alone, there are 70,000 social enterprises, contributing £18.5 billion to the UK economy and employing almost a million people. This exciting movement is growing fast all around the world and we’re seeing a boom in start-ups being launched that combine doing business with doing good’.  Source: Social Enterprise UK

At the Key Fund, research that shows that this confusion persists about what social enterprise is.  Although two thirds of us support the idea of social enterprise, only a fifth (21 per cent) knew what social enterprises were.

‘Simply, it’s about buying or using services from businesses that make a positive difference in our community or on the environment. Social enterprises reinvest their profits into furthering their social mission. They have to have good business models to be financially sustainable, so they don’t rely on grants or charity’. Source: The Key Fund

Key Fund is itself a social enterprise.  Matt Smith of the Key Fund, quoted in a recent article in The Guardian, speaking about the misconceptions about Social Enterprise in the UK stated ‘…what’s interesting is this misconception that social enterprise relies on grants or donations. We escaped a culture reliant on grants many years ago, and the main impetus of social enterprise is to ignite local economies, create jobs, and be profitable or at least sustainable in delivering their ethical aim.”

You can see this informative article from The Guardian in full here.

Invest in your community – buy from a Social Enterprise, not just this weekend, but every week if you can.