This 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‘.
Birkenhead Town Hall, Hamilton Street, Birkenhead, Merseyside, CH41 5BR
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
A date for the diary – Saturday 14th October 2017 – Social Saturday.
See more from Social Enterprise UK
‘Social Saturday is an annual campaign which inspires consumers to buy from social enterprises, businesses that put people and planet first. It is led by the national body for social enterprises, Social Enterprise UK (SEUK) and is supported by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.’
In 2016 over sixty events took pace across the UK, and this year there are lots of ways in which to get involved at home and work.
You might be a consumer looking for a social enterprise gift; work in a local authorityand keen to support social enterprises in your borough; or a businesslooking to buy from social enterprises to improve your supply chain.
Led by Social Enterprise UK in partnership with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Business in the Community, a number of forward-thinking corporate businesses are opening up their supply chains to the UK’s 70,000 social enterprises. The ambition is to collectively spend £1 billion with social enterprises by 2020. Why not join them.
Local Authorities
Within local authority settings social enterprises can play a number of key roles in your supply chain. As ethical social businesses thay can provide services to the public, fromhealth support to transport, or deliver environmental projects to protect green spaces and foster good community interaction and engagement.
Things you might do in the LA area…
Organising visits to local social enterprises for MPs and Councillors
Put on event bringing together social enterprises in your area. This could be a social enterprise marketplace or a networking event bringing together social enterprises with other key stakeholders in the area
Raising awareness of the Social Saturday through your Council’s communications channels
Lets make Social Saturday 2017 another fantastic day for your social enterprise.
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The Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 (’the 2016 Act’) introduces a new statutory power for charities to make social investments. This came into force on 31 July 2016.
The Charity Commission have released yesterday interim guidance to charities to cover this new development in financial matters. The interim information is due for review in 2017, but the Commission are keen to underscore, for trustees, the power trustees now have to make ‘social investments’.
Below are some useful definitions and links to more information on this theme for those involved in charty governance and finance.
What is a ‘social investment’?
‘In the legislation, a ‘social investment’ means a ‘relevant act’ of a charity which is carried out ‘with a view to both directly furthering the charity’s purposes and achieving a financial return for the charity’.
A ‘relevant act’ means one of two things:
an application or use of funds or other property by the charity; or
taking on a commitment in relation to a liability of another person which puts the charity’s funds or other property at risk of being applied or used, such as a guarantee’
‘A financial investment is an investment made solely for the purpose of achieving a financial return for the charity.
A programme related investment (PRI) will not be a social investment unless the financial return to the charity forms part of the motivation for the charity making the decision to carry out the relevant act.’
The guidance issued goes on to review trustees’ general duties, the statutory restriction imbued by the 2016 Act, as well as the use of a charity’s permanent endowment processes.
In conclusion there is a succinct section of caution on the giving of ‘guarantees’. The guidance does recognise, however…
‘If a charity is asked to give a guarantee, the trustees will need to consider carefully whether they have the power to give it. The power to make social investments includes a power to give guarantees if they meet the definition.’
The Finance Innovation Lab have just launched a short film that nicely encapsulates their work, featuring the collaborative, facilitative and encouragement of change aspects of their work.
The Finance Innovation Lab seeks to help create alternative business models in the the finance sector.
It is a movement for advocacy, promoting financial sectoral change to key actors.
They also work to effect ‘change from within’, campaigning for the re-alignment of finance professions to a more equitable and fair model.
The Lab web site has an inciteful article, written by Angela Clements, founder of Fair For You. It shows the journey that a finance sector principal can be driven to follow, when the inequity of access to mainstream credit, for example, makes even more difficult the life of an economically disenfranchised family.
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