About

Have you ever bought the Big Issue? Read it over a bar of Divine chocolate? Watched Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen? Visited the Eden Project? Shopped at the Co-op? 

Well, then you already know a bit about social enterprises: businesses that are changing the world for the better.  

Social enterprises are businesses that trade to tackle social problems, improve communities, people’s life chances, or the environment.  They makes their money from selling goods and services in the open market, but they reinvest their profits back into the business or the local community.  And so when they profit, society profits.   Social enterprises do not make profits for shareholders (because they don't have any) or exist to make their owners very wealthy.

Social enterprises are in our communities and on our high streets – from coffee shops and cinemas, to pubs and leisure centres, banks and bus companies.

What makes a social enterprise a social enterprise?

The term ‘social enterprise’ came about from recognition that in the UK and across the world, there were organisations using the power of business to bring about social and environmental change without a single term to unite them.

Since the term started being more widely used in the mid 1990s, there has been a lot of discussion and sometimes confusion about what social enterprise is.

At Social Enterprise UK we feel we must be clear but pragmatic when it comes to defining social enterprise.  Here are what we believe are the characteristics of a social enterprise.

Social enterprises should: 

• Have a clear social and/or environmental mission set out in their governing documents
• Generate the majority of their income through trade
• Reinvest the majority of their profits
• Be autonomous of state
• Be majority controlled in the interests of the social mission
• Be accountable and transparent

More detail about these points can be found in the short paper:  What makes a social enterprise a social enterprise?

Want to know more?

Read Social Enterprise Explained - a quick, easy to read guide for people interested in knowing more

Read Fightback Britain - this report details the findings of the national survey on the social enterprise sector