Bursting with business ideas, but want to use your entrepreneurial spirit to do better things than just lining your own pockets? Maybe you should think about starting a social enterprise.
A type of business that reinvests its profits into society to make big changes, nearly half a million businesses around the UK (and almost one in 10 small firms) are social enterprises. And they’re becoming more and more popular: according to Social Enterprise UK’s State of Social Enterprise report, 25% of all social enterprises are under three years old, and nearly four in 10 have been set up in the past five years.
These ethically-minded companies are also more representative of UK diversity than traditional businesses: 41% are led by women, and 12% are led by people from ethnic minorities (who make up 12.9% of the UK population).They’re not just small businesses, either: The Big Issue, Divine Chocolate and Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurants all started life as social enterprises.
But how can you kickstart your own social enterprise? We asked the people behind three successful businesses to share their secrets.
Sophie Andre – Elysia
“I started Elysia, which is a food startup offering high-quality breakfasts and canapés using surplus food, about 18 months ago. I’m 27, and worked for a few startups but I’ve never started my own company before. To be honest, I didn’t start with the idea of having a food social enterprise. But I knew that I wanted to start something, a new project. I found that good quality food in London was very expensive, so I wanted to understand why. I found out about excess food when I visited producers: for instance, cheesemakers have to taste their product during the maturing process, but can’t then sell that wheel of cheese. I would buy this bit of cheese and use it.”
"I didn’t start with the idea of having a food social enterprise. But I knew that I wanted to start something, a new project. I found that good quality food in London was very expensive, so I wanted to understand why."
The first few months were difficult financially. I knew I had a supply, but I had to find clients. Eventually I did, and now we cater for around 1,000 people per month. We’re also working on a new project to sell surplus food to restaurants and caterers.
If I had to give one bit of advice, it’d be to have a plan so that you can see if it works or not, and adjust the company. For instance, I started delivering individual breakfasts in a bag. It was very time consuming, very difficult to deliver in terms of logistics... I could see quickly that it didn’t work. So I changed to catering for events.”
Alex Sergent – Catch Creative
“A group of students at the University of Hull, led by myself, wanted to get young people involved in their communities through filmmaking, shows and events. We managed to get a grant off Joseph Rowntree to help us run events, and the idea was we would become self-sustainable. That was the foundation of the charity: encouraging 25-year-olds to get involved in their community, talking to them, community leaders, acting as a forum. I was 21 when we first came up with the idea. I was quite fortunate, because my degree only had three hours a week so I didn’t have to do too much work for it!
Since 2005, we’ve grown a lot – from a charity back then with no source of income other than grants, to now relying entirely on the profits of our subsidiary, Catch Creative, which offers full-scale video production services, to fund Catch21, which trains young people to make films about their communities.
“The word ‘mistake’ doesn’t really exist in my language: you just keep going.”
We picked the social enterprise structure because it was never about making money. It was based on an idea of getting young people, people who were jobless, to get their views heard.
Now it attracts other clients, who like to work with us because of our social remit. When you set out, expect that there will be lots of trial and error and be prepared for it. There’s no right or wrong; you just keep going, and never take no for an answer. The word ‘mistake’ doesn’t really exist in my language: you just keep going.”
Cristina Orsini – Thraedable
"Threaedable, our ethical fashion social enterprise, was an idea that came to myself and [co-founder] Aghiles Ourad, and was born from the frustration we had looking at media stories and seeing that – many times – the protagonists didn’t have a space or a voice to tell stories in their own way. I was working in an NGO and Aghiles was working in the private sector, and we could see the pros and cons of both worlds, and thought a social enterprise would be the perfect format because it’d give us the independence to do what we wanted and not depend on donors like NGOs do.
“It’s always a work in progress: even established companies are trying to make people understand better what they do.”
There are difficulties at every stage. We partner with charities, giving 50% of the gross profits of each item of clothing to the charity that inspired it. One of the issues was finding charities. And when you find them, at the start you have nothing to show.
Convincing the charity we could bring some benefits and a positive impact was a challenge, but the partner we ended up working with believed in us and liked the idea because we were creative. But you have to help people understand what you do, what the value of your product is – really formulating the message in a way that is clear and easy to understand for everybody. That’s a challenge. It’s always a work in progress: even established companies are trying to make people understand better what they do.
The first success we had was a crowdfunding campaign this summer to launch our organic t-shirts. Our goal was raising £10,000 in 30 days from pre-sales, and we went over the target. We also launched a pop-up shop in London to sell our t-shirts. It’s very exciting, because the big difference between online and offline is that it’s very nice having a shop around you, looking around and thinking: ‘This comes from a project I had the idea of making.’ It’s a great feeling."
