Working with Housing Associations to Stimulate Social Enterprise
Wessex Partnerships is working with Impact for Life and the housing association sector to inspire local social enterprise development through application of best practice in local areas.
We have all seen the social enterprise sector fast becoming a legitimate and growing business model for the 21st century. The delivery of a high quality service, with all the profit being invested back into the community, is a model that will become increasingly impossible to ignore.
From our work to date with various Housing Associations, we have identied areas where we feel the sector can help more:
- To contribute to the sustainability of communities
- To achieve long-term sustainable outcomes - grant funding is finite and initiatives may have a limited life
- To reduce the incidence of crime in neighbourhoods
- To enhance residents’ skills
- To alleviate social and financial exclusion
The Challenge
A key challenge for social enterprises is the strategy of their own organisation and their approach to both Private and Public Sector organisations. Other key issues include:
- Funding shortfalls, which affect the ability for social enterprises to overcome the initial hurdles associated with business start-up
- The need for existing social enterprises to identifying and developing income generating products and services
- Lack of knowledge to conduct feasibility studies into new projects and developments, proposed enterprise ideas and specific product development ideas.
- Lack of in-house professional skills, such as strategic planning and forecasting, which restrict the ability to meet the growing demand for services
- The need for more efficient internal systems in areas such as finance, marketing, operations and HR
- Clarifying and demonstrating a triple bottom line impact which can be the difference between securing or losing funding
- Insufficient capacity to devote to the development of funding applications for new business opportunities.
Our Joint Aim
WP and Impact for Life aim to accelerate the success of social enterprises through the application of best practice, involving excellent people and worthwhile resources.
A key aspect of our client service is our support of social enterprises to enable them to move from voluntary activity to business activity, providing the much needed specialist knowledge and skills in this field that would not be available through mainstream business support.
Developing Community Social Entrepreneurs
We have developed a programme specifically targeted at tenants who have an interest in starting a small business, social enterprise or becoming self employed. The aim of our Enterprise Coaching project is to raise overall enterprise and an entrepreneurial culture in deprived and under-represented communities by finding and targeting people with the potential to start a business. These individuals will receive hands-on help to develop their confidence, skills and success in accessing mainstream business support or other suitable progression routes into economic activity.
Our Offer to Housing Associations
We would be pleased to discuss with you the potential role housing associations can play and how collectively we can inspire collaboration to take forward key initiatives. Our proposed collaboration with you will aim to:
- Research the most effective ways in which your Housing Association can support its residents to establish a social enterprise as a means of entering or returning to the labour market;
- Establish or develop first step information, advice and guidance services provided by a housing association for social enterprise start-up;
- Build a portfolio of social enterprises at different stages in their development;
- Use our tried and tested toolkit as a selection mechanism for client groups and social enterprises that can best be supported;
- Adding value by giving guidance and brokerage to a wider range of support from a suite of services;
- Offer market testing opportunities by working with local authorities and existing networks to help shape the social enterprise offer and establish whether or not there is a demand for a new service.
For more information on how we can work together to provide specialist advice and guidance for social and community enterprises moving into sustainable commercial markets, contact us today.
