Social Enterprises more resilient

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New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) have just published an interesting article based on the research and evaluation it carried out on SSE's impact. It found that:

"organisations in the sample were 20% more likely to survive for five years than the average UK business, had very high average growth rates (17% annually) and reported continuous growth even during the recession. This is similar to previous studies, including the 2009 Social Enterprise Coalition study that showed that 56% of social enterprises reported an increase in turnover during the recession compared to 62% of charities who reported reductions in funding" 

Lord Young would be proud…and so would Lord Sugar

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SSE launches its new impact evaluation report this evening (watch out for the press release and a further post here tomorrow to see and download the report). New Philanthropy Capital, who SSE commissioned to undertake the evaluation, have a blog post up today which looks at one of the SSE Fellow case studies, Steve Garrett:

“Steve had a bunch of problems he wanted to solve. The Riverside estate he lived on in Cardiff struggled to attract businesses and lacked jobs. A number of people in the area were eating a bad diet, and as a result their health was suffering. And on top of that lots of the food local people were buying came from the other side of the world, which meant their weekly shop had a big carbon footprint. Twelve years ago he came up with an idea that would address all these problems—run a farmers market, using it to generate jobs and encourage people to eat healthy, local produce. The Riverside Community Market Association (RCMA) was born.”

Heartily recommended: read on here at the NPC blog

School for Social Entrepreneurs makes TV debut…

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It has often been the subject of conversation at SSE about how what the organisation does, and what the effect is on social entrepreneurs, is best communicated through their stories, their journeys and their words. Fortunately, with thanks to a great Media Trust initiative and the amazing production skills and efforts of the team at Project Monster, we were able to make a new promotional video which goes some way to doing just that; via Andre, Junior, Tom, Charles and more.

The video will be shown on the Community Channel tonight (April 12th) at 6.30pm; or you can watch it now below :0)

 

A week is a long time in social enterprise

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Businessconnectivity
For the social entrepreneur and social enterprise aficionado, there are two main event seasons: the cluster around October / November (Good Deals, Social Business, Global Entrepreneurship Week etc), and the end of March extravaganza of the Skoll World Forum, its fringe Oxford Jam and (this year), Voice 11. A few reflections on the events of last week, then… Continue reading →

Radio 4’s Peter Day congratulates SSE London Fellows

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Just a quick note to say that the SSE London graduation is today for the Block and Weekly Groups, with around 40 social entrepreneurs joining the ever-growing SSE Fellowship. You can see the formal press release here, along with links to the relevant social entrepreneurs.

Or, for the glossy full print experience, download the pdf of the graduation booklet:

Stories of Change 2010-11 (large pdf)

Arguably the most exciting news is that the entrepreneurs today will be congratulated by Peter Day, Radio 4 and podcasting legend who many consider one of the wisest and most insightful commentators on business in all its aspects.