Standing still? It’s not an option

For businesses to grow, there is not an option to stand still. Of course, this is also true in the Social Enterprise world. The social mission may remain the same, but the strategy and tactics to reach the goal must change and evolve over time to reflect the customer’s needs, changing markets and the dynamism of the communities that they serve.

One of the big challenges for the social enterprise sector, has been the huge changes in the political, social and economic environment over the last 10 years. The tides have turned and we can no longer be reliant on the old established sources of support and revenue.

We set up the Social Enterprise Mark as a project at the end of 2007, little realising what huge global changes there would be (never mind the wisdom of launching a business at the beginning of a recession!) We have changed markedly over that time.

We started out as an ‘identifier’ for those businesses that saw themselves as social enterprises. It was relatively straightforward – our assessment looked at the legal and financial details of whether you met the legal definition of social enterprise. A yes or no answer.

Interestingly, the European Parliament is now looking to set up a ‘label’ for social enterprises, 10 years after we originally launched ours! It might be pertinent for them to find out what we have learned before embarking on such a project as we have firmly moved away from being just a ‘label’ and definitional identifier.

Following the Social Value Act, social value and impact demonstration became a focus for us all – how are social enterprises really making a difference? The Social Enterprise Mark therefore changed its approach to assessment to bring in a more demanding process, which helps social enterprises to articulate this more effectively.

The launch of our Social Enterprise Gold Mark (the Mark of social enterprise excellence), has been very successful with a number of markets, in particular the university sector. However, our latest stakeholder consultation has shown that there is much more of an appetite for new accreditation options that sit between the Social Enterprise Mark and the Social Enterprise Gold Mark, i.e. higher levels of scrutiny of what it means to be a ‘good’ social enterprise. We will therefore be moving in this direction, as well as making a few minor tweaks to the Social Enterprise Gold Mark criteria and assessment process.

We are also currently working on a bespoke product for Supported Businesses, in partnership with the Supported Business sector and DWP, which we hope to launch later in the year.

We have come a long way over the 10 years, and I put a lot of this down to the need to respond to customer need and to adjust the business to become more financially sustainable.  We cannot stand still and try to be all things to all people – focus is key.