Thinking bigger… ten years on (part 2)

This is a follow-up to my previous blog from September 2018

Last month I shared my reflections from the Social Enterprise World Forum, which I had recently attended, ten years after attending the inaugural event.

This prompted me to think about how much has changed in the social enterprise sector since then, which led me to reflect on our own development in that time. Ten years ago, we had just developed the Social Enterprise Mark and were piloting it with organisations in the South West. From what was a small regional project, we are now widely recognised as the authority and standard bearer of accredited social enterprise, both in the UK and overseas. All our income is self-generated through the direct delivery of the accreditation, or associated services.

I am a believer in practicing what you preach… last month I said the sector needs to be more ambitious and think bigger. This of course also applies to our own organisation; we can’t stand still… we continually adapt our services to changing market needs, which has included developing an international assessment process that can now be applied anywhere in the world.

The Social Enterprise Mark now has a presence in 11 different countries. But we don’t want to stop there – we are thinking bigger and want to be internationally recognised as the global champion of social enterprise standards, alongside others who share our principles and values.

To this end, we are excited to have been invited to speak at a large social innovation summit in Sweden later this month, and I have also been approached to speak at an international social enterprise conference in Sri Lanka in early 2019. I am also participating in a Russian peer exchange, where I hope to build valuable partnerships with international counterparts.

As I said last month, we all need to acknowledge that collectively we are part of the bigger answer and be pro-active in finding ways to achieve this. We would love to hear your ideas about how we go about this!