Since the Government's
strong recent interest in the "third sector", the social
enterprise world is moving and changing rapidly. SENS aims to
key you updated on relevant information for those social enterprises
in Suffolk... and, if you've got any news or meetings to promote,
let us know (Contact Us)...
NB. Most of
our local members news is carried in the regular monthly SENS
e-Bulletins. Become a SENS member by clicking here.
JUNE,
2009
- 1.New Font of all Funding Opportunities!
Check out this new FREE
website, funded by the Cabinet Office for the Third Sector. It
provides access to over 4,000 funding and finance opportunities,
plus resources to help Suffolk social enterprises develop!
www.fundingcentral.org.uk
-
Funding to help you increase your impact in Suffolk and become
more resilient
Could
you work more closely with other organisations to increase your
impact and extend your reach? With a £1,000 bursary from
Capacitybuilders Modernisation Fund Grants Programme, you could
buy at least two days of professional advice to explore how you
can become more resilient and work more closely with others, including
through collaboration or merger. This is potentially for you if
you are you a Suffolk social enterprise with a turnover between
£150,000 and £750,000 and provide services in any
of the following areas to help meet the needs of communities affected
by the recession?
-
advice, information
and guidance
-
loss of income, training
and skills
This
first phase of the Modernisation Fund Grants Programme is aimed
at helping organisations like yours to understand your needs better.
From Monday 1 June to Friday 17 July you are invited to apply
for £1,000 bursaries to pay for initial advice to explore
how you can become more resilient and increase your impact by
working more closely with others.
From
September, grants of up to £10,000 will be available to
help organisations (that have gone through the bursary phase of
the programme) to take the next steps towards collaboration or
merger.
To
find out more about the programme and access a range of useful
resources to help you explore your organisational needs, please
visit www.modernisationfund.org.uk
.
The
local delivery agent is the Suffolk Association of Voluntary Organisations
(SAVO) for Suffolk.. Please call Tom Bright for further details
on Tel: 01473-275193 or email tom.bright@savo.co.uk
MAY, 2009
As
the 4th anniversary of the Community Interest Company (CIC) approaches,
the Regulator has decided the time is now right for a review of
the limits on the dividends CICs can pay to their investors -
for those CIC's limited by shares.The review aims to ensure the
limits strike the right balance between promoting opportunities
for investment and growth, and maximising benefits for local communities.
CICs
were introduced in July 2005 as a bespoke legal form for social
enterprise, combining the flexibility of a limited company with
a community purpose. The business model enables social enterprises
to attract investment by issuing shares and paying returns to
investors, while a limit is set on those returns to guarantee
the majority of profits are put back into the community.
There
are now more than 2,600 CICs in the UK - around 10% of them in
Suffolk - offering a wide range of goods and services and making
a real difference to the lives and wellbeing of people across
the country.
The review will run for 12 weeks, closing on 19 June 2009. Full
details of the consultation and how to respond can be found on
www.cicregulator.gov.uk
APRIL, 2009
- Big Lottery
Fund - Sustainability Conference (Cambridge)
Suffolk social enterprise,
PASTEL, supported The Big Lottery Fund (East of England) who put
together a a one day workshop to help enterprises, who are coming
to the end of their Lottery funding, plan for their long-term
funding future and the sustainability of their projects and organisation.
The day covered such
topics as business planning for organisations, social enterprise
in practice and commissioning and contracts.
Don Tricker, PASTEL
CEO, led the workshop on "Becoming a Community Interest Company
(CIC)."
The event took place
on April 2nd (9.30am- 3.30pm) in Cambridge, and was attended by
around 80 delegates.
For more information
and news about PASTEL,
please click here.
MARCH, 2009
Big Lottery
Fund - Sustainability Event (Cambridge)
The Big Lottery Fund
have put together a a one day series of workshops to help enterprises,
who are coming to the end of their Lottery funding, plan for their
long-term funding future and the sustainability of their projects
and organisation.
The day wll cver such
topics as becoming a Community Interest Company (CIC), business
planning for your organisation, social enterprise in practice
and commissioning and contracts.
The event will take
place on April 2nd (9.30am- 3.30pm) in Cambridge. For further
details, please click here.
FEBRUARY, 2009
- Social enterprises
will be at the heart of the new economy
Liam Byrne, Minister
for the Cabinet Office, has predicted a new era of influence for
social enterprises as he announced steps to harness the sector
to help Britain get through the economic downturn.
In a speech to the Voice
09 social enterprise conference in Birmingham, Liam Byrne said
the British public would be more open to the ideas and ethos of
social enterprise given the anger with banking leaders.
Measures designed to
aid aggressive growth in the social enterprise sector will be
drawn up at a Social Enterprise Summit co-hosted with Business
Secretary Lord Mandelson. The summit will identify how Government
can support social enterprises to grow and play an even bigger
part of the new British economy.
There will be a drive
to create 25,000 jobs in social enterprises by expanding their
role in providing public services. To support this, Liam Byrne
revealed that he will personally review the pipeline of public
service contracts together with others, to get deal blockers out
of the way.
And a new online capital
market will bring together in one place all the advice, funding
and contract opportunities available to social enterprises.
- More
social Enterprises can apply for Grassroots Grants
Social
enterprises with annual incomes of up to £30,000 will now
be eligible to bid for grants of between £250 and £5,000
to fund community activities. Previously it was limited to those
with annual incomes of up to £20,000.
JANUARY, 2009
Two
new business support schemes for Suffolk social enterprises coming
in the New Year!
- Regional
Business Support Voucher
The
first is a
new one-to-one business support Voucher, called the Regional Business
Support Voucher and this has a value of £500. It will be
launched early in the New Year.
With
the current downturn in the economy, thought has been given to
how Business Link East can flex resources to support social enterprisethrough
the current recession. New businesses in particular are more vulnerable
in their first 3 years of trading and in an economic downturn
the dangers are exacerbated through tougher competition, more
restrictive payment terms and supply chain pressures generally.
Consequently this voucher will be available to all businesses
employing less than 250 that have been trading for more than a
year.
The
social enterprise will need to work with a Business Link Adviser
and will have had a “health check” and an action plan created
to move the business forward. These vouchers can be used for advice
and delivery of services where a need has been determined.The
administration processes in respect of dealing with both of these
new vouchers is identical to the existing arrangements.
- Social
Enterprise Business Support Grant
The
‘Social Enterprise Business Support Grant' is replacing the existing
Business Link ‘Social Enterprise Voucher Scheme'. The new
programme provides greater funding to those in need of business
support and claims to be easier to access than the previous scheme.
The grant is for up to £1,500 and covers the cost of business
support consultancy and training (up to 100% of the cost).
The grant must be used to pay for business support and cannot
be used for:
- Capital
expenditure
- Salaries
of staff
- Cost
of legal action
Who
can apply?
- Social
enterprises based in the East of England
- Social
enterprises that are already trading - to enable them to improve
business efficiency and grow.
What
is the process?
All
applicants will need to have a diagnostic session with a Business
Link Adviser. As part of this diagnostic session the client
and the Business Link Adviser will agree an action plan, where
the action plan identifies the need for business support consultancy
or training the client may apply for the grant to cover the cost
(up to £1,500).
The
Business Link Adviser will assist the client in completing a simple
application form and if approved the client will be able to reclaim
the cost of the required consultancy (up to £1,500). Costs
can be reclaimed in up to three stages to reduce client outlay.
Only
consultants or training providers registered on the Business Link
‘Supplier Brokerage Service' may be used under this scheme.
For
further information, please visit Business Link East - clisck
here
and/or
Tel: 08457 -171615
ARCHIVE
OF KEY 2008 NEWS ITEMS
- Get
paid to check out other social enterprises!
Only Connect
is a visit scheme which enables organisations to visit other
voluntary and community organisations to learn about their experiences.
The scheme pays £150 for time and travel to visit another
organisation to learn how they have diversified their income through
trading, public service delivery or by using loan finance. The
scheme also pays the host organisation £200 as a consultation
fee.
For
more information and application form, click here.
The
next round closes on Wednesday 10 December 2008.
-
Free Training for "Managing Voluntary and Community Organisations"
for Social Enterprises
The
Suffolk Association of Voluntary Organisations (SAV0) are offering
a free course with studentaccreditation (NOCN Level 2 accredited).
SAVO are able to offer this popular course free again, but this
time as individual topics and modules. The Managing Voluntary
and Community Organisations Course is an Open College Network
(NOCN) Level 2 (equal to a NVQ level 2) qualification and develops
the
skills
and competencies of people:
•
who are or intending to become managers or committee members/trustees
of
voluntary
and / or community organisation
•
who would like to develop professionally within their current
role
•
who work or volunteer in the voluntary and community sector but
not
necessarily
in a management role
•
who work with the voluntary sector
•
who would like to start up a community or voluntary group.
You
can undertake individual modules from the course even if you do
not want to go
forward
for accreditation. Many of the exercises and worksheets you complete
during
the course however will help in developing your accreditation
portfolio.
The
courses starts end November. For further information, a full list
of the modules, their content andwhen they will be running and
a booking form, please contact Tracy Ray at SAVO: Tel:01473 275198
or E-mail
tracy.ray@savo.co.uk
- SENS Response
to the Baseline Research on Social Enterprises in Suffolk
SENS will be putting
together a response and recommendations to the recent social enterprise
"state of the nation" research in Suffolk. The research
was presented to an invited audience at Endeavour House in Ipwich
in late September. Initial feedback comments. For participants'
feedback comments of the event, please click
here.
- Is the concept
of Social Enterprise very confused?
A comprehensive research
project covering secondary and primary research among different
social enterprise stakeholders has concluded that:there was wide-spread
confusion over the definition, awareness and understanding of
the concept - It struggles to differentiate itself from the rest
of the third sector.There is also scepticism over government claims
of numbers of social enterprises and their value.The suggestion
is, that in reality, this sector is in its very early days as
a slowly emerging market - and a lot of work needs to be done
to use the findings to accelerate change.
For the full report:,
pleasse click here.
If you're a start-up
or trading micro social enterprise (up to 10 full-time paid staff)
in Suffolk, you can apply for FREE SENS Membership. This will
entitle you to receive our special monthly Suffolk newsletter
giving up-to-the latest alerts and local news on such matters
as events promoting local members,collaboration, funding, training,
member support workshops for the smaller enterprise etc..
Please click
here.
- 2008 SENS
Management Report
Please
click here.
The
2008 Social Enterprise Network Suffolk SENS) AGM
is to be held at 4pm on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008, at:
Wood
N Stuff
2
The Drift
Nacton Rd,
Ipswich,
IP3
9QR
followed
by a tour of the WNS premises and a presentation of the
work undertaken at their Ipswich Centre.
NB.
As social enterprise in Suffolk is still an emerging sector
and there are still relatively so few of us, please
do make the effort to come and meet with fellow social entrepreneurs
and support the volunteer SENS trade association committee
members - themselves active social entrepreneurs,- who with
no current funding are making steady but slow progress!
Come and talk to us...
- Free Local
SENS Workshops
Funded by SEEE, the
first of a series of SENS workshops got off to a flying start
despite the weather.
These workshops are
in response to the call for smaller, more local and regular business
workshops that also have a social element and allow for more group
interaction.
The SENS workshops recognise
that smaller social enterprises (typically with less than twenty
employees, and often less than ten) do not have spare people to
send off on long journeys where the cost, and opportunity, cost
are high. So SENS is setting about planning a series of free half-day
workshops, with a buffet lunch, for up to around twelve attendees.
The workshops are semi-structured to allow attendees to really
contribute, on an equal basis, and get involved in shaping the
workshop in order to get the most out of it. There are no "networking
opportunities during refreshment breaks" where individuals
are left to wander about. Instead the whole session is a get-to-know
you, your enterprise, achievements and challenges. The idea is
to provide more of a self-help forum and information exchange.
At the first event on
April 30th, in Felixstowe, eight Suffolk representatives of smaller
social enterprise based in not only Felixstowe (venue site) but
also Ringshall, Ipwich, Felistowe, Saxmundham & Diss, started
to get the ball rolling.The event was a success with a unanimous
vote to continue in the same vein and schedlule a six-month cycle
to return to each venue to review and discuss progress. Several
were keen to go to the next venue which looks like in the latter
half of June in the Stowmarket area...
Because these events
are run by unpaid volunteers on the SENS management committee
there will only be summary reports, detailing any SENS action
points. Please make sure you attend these meetings - on a first
come first served basis - to make sure your enterprise gets the
full benefit!
Check the Events page
for the latest information on the next event.
- SENS
Strategy to Promote Social Enterprise in Suffolk
After
an extensive consultation period and inputs from large and small
social enterprises and infrastructure/support enterprises, please
find attached the final SENS Strategy for Promoting Social Enterprise
in Suffolk . Many thanks to all those who responded.
In
the coming weeks and months the SENS management committee will
seek opportunities to hold meetings with social enterprises in
Suffolk to flesh out some action plans with measurable objectives.
Meanwhile,
you can
read the
final document by clicking here.
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