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se2 partnership - social enterprise south east

About these pages

The Social Enterprise Portal on SECO is aimed at social entrepreneurs who want to work with local government or with other public sector organisations, and at local authority officers who can see the benefits of working with social enterprises to deliver services. These pages focus on cultural services, but the principles and benefits are the same for all services that social enterprise can deliver.

What is social enterprise anyway?

We don't get hung up on the definition of social enterprise. Sometimes definitions don't help because they can box an organisation in to a corner. But we think that if an organisation or a group of people or an individual have something of each of the following, then they are likely to be a social enterprise:

  • social aims
  • enterprising activity e.g. trading on the open market
  • social ownership
  • elements of profits directed towards social aims

Many social enterprises don't even know that they are one!