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Community enterprise
Ventures that a place owns, runs or pays into for its own sake.
7 pieces, 2010–2026
The largest section. Its first piece, from 2010, looks at village shops kept open by residents after the last private owner gave up, and at why a shop can matter more to a rural community than its turnover suggests. The voluntary code for social enterprise sets out the tests that separated a social enterprise from an ordinary firm, among them an asset lock and the reinvestment of any surplus. A 2018 piece explains community shares and bonds, the usual ways residents put capital into a local venture, and what they stand to lose.
Three pieces from 2019 describe the sector at work: food enterprises such as cafés, food co-ops and growing projects; examples sorted by type, from trading charities to community-owned buildings; and the ways community ventures support health through social prescribing, peer groups, sport and green space.
A piece from 2026 compares two older forms of lending among neighbours, Scotland’s credit unions and Romania’s mutual aid houses, and asks what each costs a member and who is allowed to join.
2026 1 piece
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Lending to neighbours: credit unions and Romania's mutual aid housesTwo old forms of community finance, one Scottish and one Romanian, both built on lending only to people who already share something. Their prices show what that shared ground is worth.
2019 3 pieces
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Social enterprise and wellbeing in communitiesPublic health reform says health is made in communities. Much of that work is already done by small local enterprises.
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Social enterprise case studiesScotland has about 5,600 social enterprises. Most are small and local, and they come in more shapes than the word suggests. A few examples, grouped by the way they work.
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Community food enterprisesFood is one of the fastest growing fields of social enterprise in Scotland. Much of it began as a response to hunger, and the best of it is trying to become something more lasting than a food bank.
2018 1 piece
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Community bonds and share offersA new £100,000 bond for small social enterprise loans is a good moment to set out how community finance works, and what it does not protect.
2012 1 piece
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The Code of Social Enterprise in ScotlandA definition that everyone can use ends up meaning very little. In 2012 Scotland's social enterprises wrote down, in a page and a half, the test they apply to each other.
2010 1 piece
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Shops axed...so we're locals' lifelineWhen the last shop in a neighbourhood shuts, the people who live there can wait for the market to come back or open one themselves. In the East End of Glasgow this autumn, they did not wait.