|
Social enterprise is about being adventurous, creating wealth but benefiting society in a positive and measurable way, says Uday Thakkar. The managing director of Red Ochre talks about the challenges of working in the social enterprise sector. These are heady times to be a social entrepreneur. Word is out that this is an “in” career. “Social enterprise is the business model of the future,” read newspaper stories. This year’s Business Start Up Show even had a special section dedicated to social enterprise. Though the term is popular what it means remains a mystery to most. Many social entrepreneurs endlessly discuss legal structures and community ownership as if this alone defines us. Ethical business To me social enterprise is about being adventurous, creating wealth but at the same time benefiting society or a defined community in a positive and measurable way. More and more businesses are behaving in this way and calling themselves ethical businesses or value-driven businesses. Surprisingly, not a day goes by when I don’t end up discussing the whys and whats of social enterprise. I explain the concept to new or potential clients, audiences at workshops and conferences, the media, to funders and even to friends and relatives. Living values I manage a social enterprise, Red Ochre, which is a training and consultancy organisation that specialises in helping other social enterprises. Every day I meet organisations that are choosing to explore social enterprise as a way forward either through choice or by force of circumstance. Many commercial entrepreneurs want to have businesses that minimise their impact on the environment, want to source ethically produced goods and purchase goods at fair trade prices. They live their values. Many organisations from within the voluntary and community sector are considering trading as a means of supplementing or replacing grant income so that they can continue delivering social benefits. Increasingly Primary Care Trusts and local authorities are spinning out units to more effectively and efficiently deliver a service using the social enterprise model. We see a fair share of all of these in any given week. Funding complexities Though the opportunities are growing and there are a lot of people pursuing them with bright ideas and passion, the lack of planning and funding are a tremendous barrier to success. For many the challenge of finding start up, or growth funding for a high risk project drives them towards grant funding. That’s even if their ethos remains to becoming financially self sustaining. Lots of people have great ideas but they are never going to generate an income or are too short-term to becoming viable. There is also the constant tension of balancing making money and delivering social benefits. Too many from the voluntary and community sector can’t get their heads around the “making money” bit. Balancing our time For us too there are daily challenges. We offer support and advice for free to really great people and projects because they can’t afford to pay us. But we have to balance the time we spend on this because we have to generate an income by finding fee paying clients. That work allows us to deliver our free support. We have to work harder than other organisations as we are constantly facing competition for our services from commercial organisations or state supported entities. But we believe that our commitment and quality usually allow us to keep winning work, improve our quality of support and to keep growing. Rewarding passion Every day is fun, every day brings new challenges and different problems to solve and new things to learn. Most of my friends envy the fact that I love my work; their compensation is that they earn more. But I really think they would rather work somewhere where passion is rewarded and every day you feel that you have made a positive impact on the world, however small. I have pursued many other careers but none has been as challenging, satisfying and emotionally rewarding as this one.
Red Ochre
© Copyright ngo.media ltd. |
