At the end of another difficult year for many communities, hoping for a brighter, fruitful year in 2023 for all…being resilient, generous of spirit and offering support – beyond the Christmas break.
Happy seasonal holiday from the publishing team at MIning the SEEM
From the SmithMartin Partnership family of social businesses and community projects.
On the 11th October 2022 the Business and Industry pages, of Gov.uk, were updated with revised guidance and forms to help you start your new CIC.
”The revised content, linked to below, contains the following…
It includes links to the appropriate forms, model constitutions (including the memorandum of association and articles of association) and model special resolutions”.
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/community-interest-companies-business-activities
This is an invaluable guide to anyone thinking of starting a CIC to deliver community facing business activity – the whole designed to be for community benefit, rather than personal profit.
SocEntEastMIds offer a range of supportive services and supplies to help you achieve your community business aims. We deliver them at no charge.
See our support offer here: http://www.miningtheseem.org.uk/?page_id=918790
Office image: Christina Morillo, Creative Commons, Pexels.com
During this session, you will learn how social marketing techniques can help your organisation achieve consumer and employee support, whilst influencing behavioural change. You will also have an opportunity to share your communication or marketing challenge with our experts, who will apply their knowledge of social marketing and work with you to develop the best solution.” Source: University of Derby
City of Derby montage: source – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby
Matt Smith, CEO of the Key Fund, said: “With this fund we’re offering finance of up to £150k, but typical investments will be around £50k, with up to 20% of the amount available as grant. The Key Fund was one of the early pioneers in this space, and our original model was based on a grant and loan mix, so we’re really excited to be going back to that original model. It’s long been our belief that grants can play a very important role in helping new and smaller social enterprise become more robust.”
Source: The Key Fund web site – thekeyfund.co.uk Accessed 25.09.2016
A new blended grant and loan fund, the Key Fund package looks to secure sector deals in the £5,000 to £150,000 range. Applications are accepted from across the North and Midlands, with the Fund looking to realise 46 deals a year.
At a flat rate of 6.5% interest, the average loan term secured is expected to be three years.
Interested in business development on these terms, as a social/community enterprise. See the links below…
Find a full copy/Press Release about the new fund here…
Find a full grant/investment profile for the new Fund on-line here…
The Nottingham Social Impact Fund supports the development of new and existing social enterprises, jobs and growth, offering loans from £5,000 to £150,000.
The Fund believes community and social enterprises not only reignite local economies, but are best placed to tackle social problems, from community-owned pubs, social care services, high-tech renewable energy solutions and recycling schemes.
Dave Thornett, Business Development Manager at Key Fund, said “Nottingham has a strong social enterprise community with the creative arts, the universities and communities. We want to help these businesses grow and play our part in starting new ones in the city. There are great businesses such as Sneinton Market Traders and Food Freedom already growing and organisations such as The Creative Quarter and The Hive stimulating activity.”
If you are interested in Nottingham Social Impact Fund contact Andy Croft via:
Andy.croft@thekeyfund.co.uk or on 07814 832852
Investing in UK social business…
Now entering its second year, the awards highlight the innovation and dedication of world leading social investors and enterprises, celebrating both the achievements of teams and individuals alike.
The awards are supported by NatWest. In 1999 the bank set up its own charity, Social & Community Capital, to help fund social enterprises and community lenders that cannot access mainstream finance and to help them on their path to the financial mainstream.
The awards have six categories that applicants can enter, free of charge, by nominating their own businesses or social enterprises.
Institutional Social Investment Award
Institutional investment deal or product that has created demonstrable social impact at scale.
New Social Investors Award
Investment deal or product that has attracted new savers and investors into the social investment market.
Social Entrepreneurs Investment Award
Investment deal into an early stage social organisation to create demonstrable social impact.
International Social Investment Award
International investor who has invested through the UK market to create social impact anywhere in the world.
Market Building Award
Organisation that has demonstrated innovative and diverse ways to grow the social investment market in the UK.
Public Service Transformation Award
Social investment deal that has delivered improved public services.
Categories 1-3 and 5-6 are open to nominations from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Category 4 is open to individuals or organisations based anywhere in the world.
The awards close to applications on 18 March 2016. Short-listed nominees will be notified on 1 April 2016 and the awards ceremony will be held in London on 3 May 2016.
For more information see the Cabinet Office Social Investment Awards website.
Planning your new social enterprise in 2016?
You can find some simple and effective Key Fund toolkits below. Whether needing to survey and assess your income needs as an individual, or a family unit, or to calculate various loan interests.
You can also find a template for creating your Social Enterprise Business Plan. This will guide you methodically and clearly through the steps you need to plan your governance, your policies and your operational delivery – all focused on social enterprise creation and sustainability.
View, print or download your cashflow template here (MS Excel file).
View, print or download your Business Plan template here (pdf file).
View, print or download your Loan Illustrator here (MS Excel file).
View, print or download your personal survival budget template here (MS Docx file).
The Key Fund main web pages also have a more comprehensive and detailed set of resources available on the Fund Start-up Advice web centre (Courtesy of Start-up Donut). This offers you more insight and detailed resources for creating a new social business and has links to a variety of services and information that new groups or companies will find useful.
So, wherever you are on your social business journey in 2016, from first idea to seeking social investment, you can contact The Key Fund Team here.
A happy and enterprising 2016!
£32k prize fund shared by top performing social businesses…
The NatWest SE100 Index has announced the winners of its 2015 awards. Five winners were chosen from 1120 social ventures listed on the NatWest SE100 Index in the UK. This year’s awards build a clear picture of a thriving social enterprise sector that is supporting economic growth in the UK and delivering positive social impact.
The 2015 winners demonstrate best business practice within the social sector, working to address some of the UK’s most acute social issues. This year’s winners are helping to get people from disadvantaged backgrounds back into work, sustaining the environment and revolutionising healthcare services for disabled children.
These inspiring organisations now share over £32,000 in prize money awarded today at Critical Mass, the event for social enterprise, in recognition of their work.
Growth champion £10k prize: The EBP – East Midlands
The EBP is a non-profit dedicated to developing the skills of young people through development and employment programmes. The EBP works to ensure its services provide young people with the opportunity to develop the skills that employers are looking for, striving to engage young people in work and society.
Impact champions share £10k prize:
FRC Group runs three social businesses including furniture recycling and waste management projects. These produce financial profits and create a social dividend by giving people in poverty and unemployment the opportunity to change their lives.
Kelvin Valley Honey – Scotland
Kelvin Valley Honey works to sustain Scotland’s honey bee populations whilst contributing to the regeneration of disadvantaged communities through financing and supporting the development of beekeeping, creating employment for people housebound through disability and long term illnesses.
Trailblazing newcomer £5k prize: Andiamo – London
Andiamo works to meet the gap in demand and capacity that currently exists and is growing in the field of orthotics, printing 3D fully customised orthotics children with disabilities and long-term conditions.
Resilience award £5K prize: Five Lamps – North East
Five Lamps delivers an integrated range of inclusion services to transform the lives of individuals and their families from disadvantaged communities, by helping them to find work, start their own business, improve their finances and improve their aspirations.
Storyteller award £2.5k prize: Aduna – London
Aduna is an African-inspired health & beauty brand and social business working to create demand for under-utilised natural products from small-scale producers in Africa to create sustainable income – starting with the nutrient-dense superfoods Baobab and Moringa.
Marcelino Castrillo, Managing Director Business Banking, NatWest, who presented the Growth Champion Award, said: “I want to congratulate all this year’s winners, not just on their success in the awards, but on the profound social impact that they are having on our society. NatWest is proud to have supported the SE100 since the beginning and we are committed to unlocking and nurturing entrepreneurial talent through access to finance, markets and expertise.”
Rob Wilson, Minister for Civil Society who presented the Trailblazing Newcomer award said of the NatWest SE100: “Social enterprises occupy a crucial place in our society. These organisations help tackle social challenges while contributing to economic growth. The SE100 Index is an important benchmark for the sector and I would encourage all social enterprises to sign up so we can build a truly compassionate society.”
(If ever there was a great example of how diverse, dynamic and effective the social (enterprise) sector is in the UK, then look no further than these awards…Ed.)
You can see the SE100 web site in full here…
As part of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences – the Institute of Network Cultures have recently published another document in their innovative and ground breaking research and thought leadership programme.
The MoneyLab Reader – An intervention in Digital Economy, edited by Geert Lovink, Nathaniel Tkacz and Patricia de Vries, contains much that mainstream financiers may find provocative, but which takes positions which offer interesting new insights into the emerging digital economy.
View, print or download a copy of the book here.
This published work contains sections on new digital-economic forms, some subtle essays on how value can be driven and extracted from an open source, ‘Commons‘ based economy, as well as essays on Bitcoin and other complimentary currencies.
There is a strong section on the ‘Economies of the Imagination‘. This is mindful of one of the driving forces of the digital economy, which is the creation of art and artistic output through new mediums of distribution and payment.
Readers in the creative quarters across our region may find this section particularly energising.
‘MoneyLab, a network of artists, activists and researchers, founded in 2013 by the Amsterdam-based Institute of Network Cultures; its aim is to research, discuss, and experiment with (alternative) internet-related revenue models in the arts and beyond’.
In a powerful essay, The Long Game by Keith Hart, there is a telling argument that Georg Simmel’s prophesy of the withering of the physical substance of money and the emergence of revolutionary new social institutions supporting new, fiscally adroit communities of interest may already be upon us. (The Philosophy of Money: 1907).
Whilst this may not be new to mainstream bankers, the shift in fiscal power from lender to borrower, which this implies, will be a difficult concept for many.
However, in the newly emergent social finance sector we can see that new paradigms of fiscal effectiveness, lending tolerance and social outcome entwined in community values, are all currently abroad.
We commend this lengthy pamphlet to our readers…perhaps we are all living in a ‘Simmelcast’ world now?
We are holding the Social Finance Dragons Den style event at Waterstones in the city on May 14th, 2015. From 6pm to 9pm you can pitch to secure a five hundred pound cash prize, and a nomination for the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, The RSA.
Discover the ‘Den’ on-line here.
‘The Social Business Dragons’ Den is part of the Building Enterprise project managed by Community Partnerships at the University of Nottingham and led by Roger Moors, CEO of SEEM and Jeanne Booth, Chair of the East Midlands Fellowship of the RSA’.
Have you got an idea for a social business to pitch to the Dragons? Here’s the rules:
See full details and all booking links on the event web pages here…
Nottingham Writer’s Studio
25 Hockley
NG1 1FP Nottingham
This workshop will take you through the steps for preparing your pitch and equip you to present your ideas to different audiences. It will be invaluable for anyone who wants to practice their pitch and improve their chances of winning a prize at the Social Business ‘Dragon’s Den’ on 14th May.
If you get to Pitch Perfect, then get the chance to broach the lair of the Dragons, we wish you all the luck you need! The SEEM Team.