Let's start with the short introduction, your organisation's profile.
Social Enterprise UK was founded back in 2002. We are the voice for social enterprise in the UK, we represent social enterprises, we are a membership body at the heart of what we do. We want to see more people setting up social enterprises, investing in social enterprises, trading with social enterprises, buying from them. Research is also a big piece of what we do, so whenever people see data about the UK social enterprise sector, that often comes from our research team. Another thing we do is policy engagement, we're very proud of helping to shape the legislative landscape for social enterprise.
We also run campaigns, for example the BuySocial campaign which started with encouraging social enterprises to buy from other social enterprises, and with pushing consumers to buy from social enterprises, and now is more and more about the B2B space.
We run a programme called Social Enterprise Places. Wherever there's a region in the UK or a city or a town or even a village which is a hotbed of social enterprise activity, then they can apply to us for Social Enterprise Place status and join our growing network.
Our membership at the moment is about 3,500 and it's growing strongly. The vast majority of our members are Social Enterprises and once we admit them to our membership theycan refer to themselves as a certified member of Social Enterprise UK. But we also have hundreds of supporter members, such as private sector organisations or public sector bodies or universities or other organisations which want to be part of our movement. Membership is really the core of what we do.
What does the social entrepreneurship sector look like?
Our research estimates 131,000 organisations across the UK. Social enterprises work in a wide range of different sectors, such as health, education, transport, retail, manufacturing, and there are also lots in the facilities management space, office management, office supplies, washroom supplies, food and drink, hospitality, catering. Marketing, events, creative industry in general is also a big sector, and there are a lot around human resources, well-being, recruitment.
One frustration is that we have a lot of social enterprises in the lowish value chain and we'd love to see more high-tech, high-skill, high-value social enterprises coming through. We think we can see a little bit of progress in that area. There is also a healthy degree of competition emerging within the sector. If you’d asked me 5 years ago: “Can you recommend an office supplies company?”, I would say: “Yes there's one”. But now there are at least 3, so it's growing.
Do you think social enterprises share common strengths and also common challenges as a sector?
There are 2 things that spring to mind. The first one is about juggling the social mission with money. If your mission is all around training and employing people with barriers to the job market, that's brilliant and valuable to society, but it might mean extra support and extra money. This is the model where sometimes there are extra challenges, but there are fantastic benefits as well.
The other thing we often hear about is the difficulties around accessing investment, especially when you are neither a small or a big enterprise, but somewhere in the middle.
And on top of all of that you've got certain inequalities in the market depending on the background of the leader, so if they're from an ethnic minority background the challenges are even greater sometimes.
Talking about social procurement, the UK seems quite developed in comparison to other European countries. And what's your feeling? Is it widespread?
It's grown a lot over the years but of course we want it to be bigger. We always want more. There's so many things that companies have to do, lots of regulations these days, lots of directives coming through, it's a crowded market, but I think it's going in the right direction.
When Buy Social was in its very early stages, there were just a couple of big businesses and social enterprises buying from social enterprises, consumers buying from social enterprises. Then we had the idea of launching a corporate challenge, and that's where the Buy Social Corporate Challenge came from. It was mostly about getting businesses excited about social enterprise but without getting them too committed to specific targets and numbers. The challenge model worked quite well. We targeted almost all industries, and companies could compare knowledge, share best practice and challenges, and learn from each other. Now we have over 30 partners within this challenge.
Then we launched another service called Social Procurement Connect for medium-sized businesses and other sectors. Any organisation that buys things can join. We hope that it's going to help hit other parts of the market.
How did the whole thing start? Did you start reaching out to corporates, getting them excited about social procurement, or are there some pioneers that started reaching out to you and then you saw that there's a market opportunity?
In the early days there were 2 companies: Johnson & Johnson and Wates, the UK construction company. They were both really interested and excited about this.
And then the Social Value Act has helped. It was really unusual that it became law. At first it was a Private Members Bill, introduced by a Member of Parliament. Very often such bills don't become law, but this one did. It all boils down to one sentence saying that public sector buyers have to consider social and environmental value alongside economic value when they're spending public money. In the early days it didn't really change things as much as we would have liked, but now private sector businesses that want to sell to the government have to show social value in their operations and their supply chains. A lot of businesses are now coming to us saying: “We've been told we need to do social value, what is it? How do we do it?” The good news is that social enterprises are experts in social value, they're great on sustainability, they're great on diversity. They're more innovative than other businesses.
What are the benefits for businesses in working with social enterprises?
One thing I hear most of all is employee engagement. A lot of people say that their teams are really engaged and motivated to work because companies work with social enterprises. So it really makes a difference and that's really important for those who want their work values to align with their personal values. So it's clients, reputation, employee engagement.
What are the benefits of social enterprises to trade with corporations?
It can be quite a sustainable, strong income stream. If you get a nice size contract with a big business, it's much better than having to write bids every 6 months to different foundations and grant givers. But again you have to help people understand what they're walking into, that you don't contact PwC and then 2 weeks later you get a contract with them, right? You have to speak to lots of different people before you meet the right decision maker and then it might take a while to go through all of the contracting and onboarding. It can be a challenge to get on.
What advice would you give to a social enterprise that is starting their procurement journey with businesses right now?
Focus on being competitive enough in terms of pricing and quality. That's what I've heard many times. You just need to be competitive. You need to be delivering. Just focus on your product or service, make it better than anyone else's. And then networking, networking, networking. You need to meet as many people as you can, that's super important. So get away from the desk, go to events, and build your network.
What would you advise other intermediaries around Europe that wanna further develop the social procurement movement in their countries?
I think it's about finding social enterprises that can deliver in the market and then profiling them. You start with 1 or 2 companies, build it bit by bit with other pioneers by your side, enlarging your network, getting to know more companies. And then you start to talk about your social enterprises and tell their stories. The stories will resonate with some people and they'll jump in and just start doing it.
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