04 July 2009
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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?

  • well being and health
  • 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

  • CIC Consultation

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.

 

  • Free SENS Membership!

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..

 

  • Minutes of 2008 SENS AGM

Please click here.

 

  • 2008 SENS Management Report

Please click here.

 

  • SENS AGM 2008

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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