Chris Allwood: May 2008 Archives
This was the question posed by a group of business people at an event by Business in the Community last week.
Well it was nice to be asked, but it got me thinking. What do social entrepreneurs want from our Corporate big brothers? Pro-bono (latin for freebie) support has certainly been crucial to the the start-up of Auction My Stuff, but even more importantly I reckon, is when we've been given the opportunity to bid for work, and show just how proffesional a social enterprise can be.
At the moment I'm looking around to see whether we should start a new social enterprise. There are lots of tempting distractions from the fundamental question 'can I sell something to make the world a bit better?'. Not least the Department of Health's £100m Social Enterprise Fund. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, in fact I think that social enterprises really need some simple sources of start-up finance. Just that it's so easy to let the grants skew you off course into creating something that isn't really sustainable.
So to go back to the question 'what do we want?' - well I think it's the chance to bid for work that we can create innovative and proffessional social enterprises around. I am more than aware that this isn't as simple as it sounds. Social enterprises tend to be small, young and poorly resorced - not exaclty you ideal supplier. However if big businesses and government is serious about supporting social enterprise, they need to identify some contracts that they feel can be better served by social enterprises and invite them to tender.
Well it was nice to be asked, but it got me thinking. What do social entrepreneurs want from our Corporate big brothers? Pro-bono (latin for freebie) support has certainly been crucial to the the start-up of Auction My Stuff, but even more importantly I reckon, is when we've been given the opportunity to bid for work, and show just how proffesional a social enterprise can be.
At the moment I'm looking around to see whether we should start a new social enterprise. There are lots of tempting distractions from the fundamental question 'can I sell something to make the world a bit better?'. Not least the Department of Health's £100m Social Enterprise Fund. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, in fact I think that social enterprises really need some simple sources of start-up finance. Just that it's so easy to let the grants skew you off course into creating something that isn't really sustainable.
So to go back to the question 'what do we want?' - well I think it's the chance to bid for work that we can create innovative and proffessional social enterprises around. I am more than aware that this isn't as simple as it sounds. Social enterprises tend to be small, young and poorly resorced - not exaclty you ideal supplier. However if big businesses and government is serious about supporting social enterprise, they need to identify some contracts that they feel can be better served by social enterprises and invite them to tender.
