Sustainable – Enterprise – Strategies

SES has over 28 years of practical business experience in supporting and developing social and community enterprise as well as the growth of self-employment in North East England. The development of enterprise skills, the growth of self-employment and successful social enterprises all offer people alternative routes out of inequality and poverty.

SES' VISION:

“To use enterprise in all its forms as a vehicle for the creation of a fairer society through the alleviation of inequality and poverty and to underpin our work by taking an evidence-based approach”.

SES has successfully facilitated a model of enterprise development that, in our view, targets, captures the imagination of, and meets the needs of those most disadvantaged. It is a pro-active, holistic and integrated approach and it engages people often missed by mainstream agencies which may be geographically remote or psychologically daunting to newcomers to enterprise and social enterprise.

What makes SES special and separates SES from the generic business support services is our intensive support mechanism at the pre start and aftercare stage. This is vital to boost the chances of business start up (including social enterprise) especially in deprived areas. Our approach illustrates a ‘more hands on’ process, where ‘face to face’ contact meetings with clients give reassurance to the support SES offers.
Services are delivered in the local community through working with a partnership of organisations having shared values, including:

• A belief in a more equitable and inclusive society
• Respecting all people as individuals and recognising their worth
• A belief that co-operation, self-help and entrepreneurialism are creative forces for change
• Being honest, accessible, approachable and accountable

Evidence from ten years of conducting intensive SA and SROI exercises has demonstrated quite clearly that the only effective way of nurturing sustainable social enterprises, women entrepreneurs, workless and BAME entrepreneurs, is through hands-on, can-do, face-to-face sup port.  
SES fosters all kinds of enterprise, including both traditional small business starts as well as social and community enterprise. Achievements in during 2009-10 via our Verified Social Accounts included the following:

• Creation of 249 new traditional businesses, with a collective projected turnover of £7.348 million and raising loan average investment worth £1093 for each.
• Of the 249 traditional business starts 32% were owned by women this is compared to a national rate of women enterprise formation of 14%.
• A survival rate for assisted businesses of 80% for those trading 12 months, 64% for those trading 18 months and 63% for those trading 24 months – this is above the national average.
• Creation of 22 new social enterprises.
• Direct provision of support for 141 SES social enterprises that have raised £3.9 million in investment and made 38 successful tender applications worth over £8.7million.
• Of the 141 Social Enterprises 52% were women Director/ownership compared to a national rate of 26% for social enterprise
• Working with 57 voluntary and community sector organisations across Newcastle exploring the possible transition to social enterprise.
• Delivering, in partnership, support to 95 organisations, in order to improve their business skills. Ten of these are pursuing the possibility of creating new trading arms.
• Collectively, SES Social Enterprise combined turnover is  £26,305,000  for the year 2009-20, whilst employing 1373 staff and having 528 volunteers – most of which come from hard-pressed communities
• Been commended by our investors/partners for;
• Being approachable, always willing to get involved in broader issues
• Being one of a few social enterprise support organisations in the North East
• Being reliable, professional and consistent.....working to budget and to spec
• Having a track record for working with Hard pressed communities
• Having definitive ‘community roots’ and ‘championed the social enterprise sector’

In total, SES-supported social enterprises and voluntary and community organisations now have a turnover in excess of £26.3 million; they employ 1,373 staff and 528 volunteers.

SES uses Social Audit and Social Return on Investment to measure its impact, and provide evidence of its performance. All stakeholders and staff are closely involved in this process. And clients are consulted. A calculation of the Social Return on Investment for last year suggested a financial impact involving an £7.64 return for every £1 invested. This also represents excellent value for money.

SES targets clients from the most deprived areas. In the last year, 67% of clients lived in Super Output Areas, where the IMD rating was below 30%; and 78% were workless before engagement with SES. Experience has shown that new enterprise can be nurtured, and can flourish, even in the least auspicious of circumstances.  

SES recognises that community anchors are a critical vehicle for all forms of enterprise engagement. These often already exist at the heart of the community and, through a process of dedicated development and support delivered through these organisations, alienated individuals and groups can become economically active and socially included.  

Community-based organisations have the contacts, capacity and commitment to access local people that other external, more conventional and reactive approaches have always failed to reach. These organisations clearly provide a major opportunity to deliver all kinds of social enterprise coaching and mentoring to a significant number of people, for example because they:

• Are often enterprising organisations in their own right struggling to survive, and operating successfully in areas eschewed by the market and / or the public sector.
• Often provide services that help remove barriers to enterprise, e.g. childcare, workshops, common services, marketing and design, access to ICT, and so on.
• Can support opportunities for vocational training, work placements, Intermediate Labour Market schemes and similar activities.
• Can support the provision of welfare benefits and other advice – delivered in a sympathetic way that is seen to be not part of the ‘system’.
• Are local, accessible and trusted – and can provide a base for formal and informal mentoring and other forms of support to be delivered.
• Can be a local hub and/or be networked into a wide range of local organisations that work with diverse groups and individuals.
• Can be places where ethnic minorities, other under-represented groups and, particularly, women, feel more at ease and involved.
• May already be integral to other complementary regeneration initiatives.

Community-based organisations are more likely to be rooted in, and proactive in, areas where market failure is greatest. They are more likely to attract those groups not highly represented in the SME community or indeed the wider labour market. As a result, they represent a context in which enterprise support can be responsive and tailored to individual needs rather than simply a reactive response to enquiries.