Publications

The idea of a toolkit is to allow social enterprises to consider their services, reflect on their vision, aims and direction and help identify the impact that they have on the health and wellbeing of their staff, their service users/clients and on the communities where they operate from, and into.

Over the last couple of years Senscot has been working to develop a legal structure that fits with the ethos of the Social Enterprise Networks. This work has been undertaken with the involvment of Networks themselves a result of the Network Reps feeding back on the Blueprint document that Senscot produced on the basis of our work on faciliating the devleopment of the Networks.

Drafted by Stephen Philips (Burness) with the support of Co-operative Development Scotland, the Model Rules are designed to support an ethos of mutually beneficial clusters of social enterprises working collaboratively.

This article from Start Ups website is a good guide to the legal issues facing anyone interested in getting into social enterprise. It highlights some of the issues and also some of the reasons for choosing different kinds of legal models.

"Social enterprise is more of a political definition than a legal one. But for your own peace of mind and in the long-term interest of your organisation, it’s worth looking at the legalities surrounding the sector before starting up your business.

The general definition for social enterprise is a company which reinvests its profits for a social purpose as opposed to redistributing them. And for all the legal weight behind the term, the law sees it no differently. As far as the tax man is concerned, a standard social enterprise is not much more than an ordinary commercial business"

The third sector continues to attract attention in the UK as an integral driver of economic and social progress. Its organisations are the primary voices of social, economic and environmental justice, deliverers and sources of innovation in services to vulnerable people and vital contributors to the modernisation of public services in the UK. The sector is characterised not only by distinct legal formations, but by an ethos that puts social and environmental interests above economic imperatives. It is a sector that has historically addressed double ‘market’ failures, where both the state and the private sector fail to produce or deliver much needed and valued goods and services, or do so in a way that is unjust or unfair.

 

 The RBS SE100 Index is run in partnership with Social Enterprise magazine. The Community Banking team at RBS, (long time funders of the annual Social Enterprise Conference & Ceilidh at New Lanark) focuses on adding value to the social enterprise sector and making enterprise happen for social businesses that may struggle to access mainstream financial services.

The development of this strategy is identified in the Edinburgh Compact as one of the key actions contributing to improving the planning and delivery of services.

In March 2008, Senscot published a set of 15 case studies to demonstrate to public health officials, including policy-makers, politicians and procurement officials, as well as the wider general public, the ability of social enterprises to deliver health services effectively and efficiently. 

These 5 case studies have been commissioned by Senscot with support from the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives to provide a snapshot of the involvement of social enterprises in the Healthy Working Lives (HWL) initiative. They demonstrate that there are considerable benefits for social enterprises in participating in the HWL initiative.

Senscot and the Scottish Social Enterprise Coalition commissioned the Pool – DTA Scotland’s consultancy service – to review the Single Outcome Agreements for 2008 and 2009 to assess how far social enterprise was reflected in them. 

This paper seeks to give an overview of the ethos of LSENs and possible structures. It has been produced as a result of the Network Reps meeting on 14th March 2008, when Senscot was asked to produce a draft ‘Blueprint’ for the Local Social Enterprise Networks (LSENs). The draft was presented at the subsequent Reps meeting in Alloa on 12th June 2008 and the paper was then adapted.