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se2 partnership - social enterprise south east

Social Enteprise - the regional picture

What's happening in the South East

In 2005 a group of organisations including SEEDA, RAISE, and SEERA  put together a strategy to support the growth of social enterprise in the region. You can read it here  (warning! large document!) but please read on for a summary:

The vision for this framework is

"To create a region where social enterprise can grow and thrive and play its full part in contributing to the sustainable development of the South East."

The objectives, and priority areas for each objective, are:

1.     Greater understanding of the role and value of social enterprise, so stimulating the market for their products and services. Click here for priorities

1.Training and education of the realistic potential of social enterprise to the public,private and voluntary and community sectors, including specific training for those responsible for procurement.

2. Developing networks for promoting local information and understanding, working through county social enterprise partnerships.

3. Developing a regional approach to the delivery of advice and support to public sector agencies considering service transfer or development through social enterprise models, and to voluntary organisations considering social enterprises a potential succession strategy.

4. Providing training for individual social enterprises on how to build an evidence base of their wider individual impact, and how to market their unique selling points.

5. Securing and publishing reliable, regularly updated information into the nature and scope of the activities undertaken by social enterprises regionally, building on the national mapping project.

2.     Develop an integrated, easily accessible, business support infrastructure to encourage the creation and sustainability of new enterprises, from a diverse range of sources, and to support the development and growth of existing enterprises. Click here for priorites

Business Support

1. Undertake an audit of existing services and identify gaps in provision.

2. Encourage local collaboration between advisors from all sectors to create clear referral networks and pricing agreements that can be locally advertised.

3. Facilitate regional network coverage through building on county based social enterprise partnerships with representation from key stakeholder groups.

4. Standardise the brokerage of support to social enterprise through providing training to brokers in a suite of diagnostic tools.

5. Encouraging Business Link to develop an independent broker role with social enterprise specialists.

6. Build the sustainability of social enterprise advice agencies through encouraging contractual relationships with Business Link and other business advice brokers.

7. Encourage social enterprise advice agencies to market their services across the region andfill in gaps in support provision in other areas.

8. Ensure social enterprises are aware of, and have access to, free social enterprise business planning and support in the set up phases.

9. Enable social enterprises to access pre-start up and feasibility support.

10. Increase the number of enterprise advisors able to advise social enterprise through rolling out social enterprise quality standards training, including SFEDI accreditation.

11. Provide regional expertise and training in the specific advice and support needs of rural social enterprise models through collaboration with the Countryside Agency.

12. Identify a regional network of mentors from across the public, private and voluntary and community sectors that can support social enterprises.

Finance

13. Creating a single point of access for financial information, accessible to support brokers and social enterprises.

14. Development of equity investment mechanisms, including social investment business angel networks.

15. Rationalise the regional social investment delivery infrastructure, making social investment mechanisms more sustainable through greater economies of scale.

16. Identify gaps in financial product provision and work with banks and funders to create new equity, loan and grant funds.

17. Work with grant givers to develop flexible exit policies from Government finance initiatives.

18. Capacity building organisations to use financial products through intensive support echanisms.

19. Raise the profile of mainstream usiness grants and loan options that may be appropriate to some social enterprises.

3.     Enable social enterprises to work together more effectively, opening up new markets through collaboration and innovation.Click here for priorites

1. Development of regional, sector specific market data in order to identify growth opportunities.

2. Provide sectorally based networking opportunities and social enterprise development partnerships.

3. Facilitate meet the buyer opportunities

4. Scale up the capacity of individual social enterprises to win and deliver contracts through partnership and consortium based approaches.

5. Learn from other regions, enabling the franchising of good ideas.

 

se2 Partnership  

The lead regional body for social enterprise in the South East is the se2 Partnership. This is a partnership of organisations and networks supporting the development of social enterprise in England’s South East. Its aim is to develop a regional infrastructure to help support a growing social enterprise sector in the South East.

Its three main goals are to:

  • encourage collaboration within the sector
  • communicate as a voice for the sector
  • be the strategic lead for social enterprise in the region

The partnership is made up of sub-regional networks and specialists and is facilitated by Dave Ahlquist (Manager) and Jason Mollring (Networks Co-ordinator), working at UnLtd under contract from SEEDA.

More information

Contact Dave at Dave@se2partnership.co.uk,

Contact Jason at Jason@se2partnership.co.uk