There have been loads of great articles and interesting reads this week, there is a lot for you to get stuck into. If you see anything that you think others would benefit from, send me a link on Twitter and I’ll try and include it next week.
Photo Credit: Public Places via Compfight cc
If I had a pound for every time someone asked me about which legal structure was right for their organisation, this email would be coming from the Bahamas. Sadly I don’t and it isn’t, but I do have a great new resource to point people in the direction of- this updated summary of common forms for social enterprises from law firm Stone King. As clear a guide as you could possibly want!
SSE Fellow and founder of Enabling Enterprise Tom Ravenscroft has written an excellent piece for the Guardian: Start-up success: 6 lessons for social entrepreneurs. Anyone thinking of starting a social enterprise should read it.
If you are in London, SSE Fellow Craig Blake is offering two free marketing surgeries to social enterprises, charities and community groups on the 15th and 17th July – details here.
Missed out on Glastonbury? Don’t worry! Cubit Arts is curating the Festival of Blackboards 2014, a programme of free public events in Islington exploring the arts, education and social change. Events run through July.
In less London-centric news, the RSA are running a free webinar on crowdfunding on Tuesday 8th July from 6pm – 7.30pm, you can sign up here.
The Guardian Charity Awards are open for applications. If your organisation has a turnover of less than £1.5m, you can enter them here. Also open are the Social Enterprise 2014 Awards, which you can apply for here.
An interesting article on the BBC website ‘Brazil’s social firms aim to craft a brighter future‘. Lots of similarities with the UK, particularly around the importance of marketing a product correctly.
Congratulations to SSE Fellow Ellen Petts, who has been accepted onto the Deloitte Pioneers programme with her organisation Greenstream Flooring.
‘If the ecosystem of social change were an orchestra, social enterprise would be an amped-up brass section drowning out all the other instruments and any semblance of nuance.’ Michael Zakaras argues that if you want to scale your impact, you need to give away your ‘trade secrets’. Other views are available.
Detroit’s plight has been widely documented in recent years, but where big business and government have moved out, social enterprise has moved in. Some great case studies here (I love the final line in the article- ‘Perhaps soon, Detroit’s greatest export won’t be cars, but social entrepreneurship’).
Finally…our next workshop at SSE London is ‘Writing Successful Bids‘ on August 6th. If you want to learn how you can improve your bid success rate, this is the course for you.
Have a good week!
Want this in your inbox every Friday? Sign up to our newsletter
