London Early Years Foundation awarded King’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development

Academic research shows how power dynamics between social investors and social enterprises can shift in the face of major economic and social shocks, such as COVID. Dr Julia Morley from the London School of Economics explains the key findings of her recent paper Talking Across Purposes. Social investing has become a transformative force, directing private capital towards social enterprises to achieve financial returns and social good. In the UK alone, the sector saw investments totalling £830 million in 2021, highlighting its significant growth and impact. However, the diverse backgrounds of stakeholders, including investors, social enterprises, and policymakers, often lead to communication challenges, particularly regarding the terminology used within the sector. Language and misunderstandings: The ambiguous nature of key terms is at the core of many misunderstandings in social investing. For instance, the definition of "social impact" can vary widely among stakeholders. For some, it might mean quantifiable outcomes like employment rates, while for others, it refers to more nebulous benefits, such as improvements in well-being. While initially beneficial in allowing varied parties to find common ground, this ambiguity can also lead to significant challenges as projects develop. Can ambiguity be useful? Ambiguity does have its advantages. It enables a broad range of stakeholders to engage with the idea of social impact without being bogged down by rigid definitions. This can foster collaboration across different sectors and viewpoints, facilitating initial agreements and partnerships that might not otherwise be possible. The Downside: Over time, however, the benefits of this ambiguity diminish. Different interpretations of the same terms can lead to misunderstandings and misalignments between investors and social enterprises. These miscommunications can create friction and inefficiencies, hindering the sector's overall effectiveness. Push for Precision: In response to these challenges, there has been a move towards standardisation and clarity in the language used in social investing. Investors, often holding greater power in these discussions, have led the push for defining terms and setting standards. This has included the creation of glossaries and training programs aimed at aligning the sector's language with investor expectations. Shifting Power Dynamics: The COVID-19 pandemic shifted power dynamics within the social investment sector. The crisis underscored the importance of knowledge of the operational realities of delivering services to beneficiaries and shifted the balance of authority over knowledge to social enterprises. During this period of instability and change, their local knowledge of beneficiaries’ needs and frontline operational issues gave their views more weight relative to the traditional financial expertise that investors had previously leveraged. This shift in the balance of power was short-lived, however. As the status quo returned, so did the perceived relevance and value of investors’ financial expertise in social investing. Conclusion: The experiences during the pandemic have provided valuable insights into the importance of language in social investing and how significant disruptions can shift the authority of knowledge, alter power dynamics, and shape how the meanings of terms – and hence practices within the sector - evolve. As the sector continues to grow, both investors and social enterprises must remain aware of these dynamics to foster an inclusive and effective social investing environment. Key Takeaways: While initially helpful, the ambiguity in social investing terminology can lead to challenges as misunderstandings become apparent. Standardisation efforts are crucial but do not reflect all stakeholders’ interests equally. Significant destabilising events, like the pandemic, can reshape power structures, offering lessons on how to manage and negotiate terms in social investing more equitably. The full paper which this piece summarises can be found here.  This article is part of SEUK’s Social Enterprise Knowledge Centre University Network – to find out more please contact research@socialenterprise.org.uk

Articles and publications covering evidence on social enterprise in the UK and globally. If you’d like your publication to feature, please contact jess.lomax@socialenterprise.org.uk Social enterprise growth by design: using design to incubate and accelerate social enterprises - 2024 Authors/publication: Kwon, H., Choi, Y. and Hazenberg, R. Social Enterprise Journal Aims to understand the impact of design on social enterprise ecosystems and on improving outcomes for social entrepreneurs. The Purpose Dividend - 2023 Authors/publication: Demos Explores how shifting towards a purpose-led economy with better business at its centre would boost GDP, generate more capital investment, and increase wages for the lowest paid in society. Understanding the Contribution of Social Enterprise to the Social Care Sector: An Exploratory Study - 2023 Authors/publication: Dr Kelly Hall, Dr Philip Kinghorn, Dr Chloe Alexander, Kelly Hayward, Dr Janelle Kerlin, Meng Ye Explores the role of social enterprises in the social care sector, and how they compare to for-profit and not-for-profit providers. Do Social Enterprises Fulfil their Social Promise? Quality of Social Care CICs and Other Legal Forms - 2023 Authors/publication: Janelle Kerlin, Meng Ye, Kelly Hall Examines why social care social enterprises consistently outperform for-profit social care providers on all social care quality measures. Public service mutuals: Transforming how services are delivered through social enterprise and democratic governance - 2022 Authors/publication: Vickers, I., Lyon, F., Sepulveda Ramirez, L. and Brennan, G Demonstrates the effectiveness of the mutual model and how it has been adapted in diverse contexts to deliver public and community services. Financing Social Enterprise in the UK: Responding to New Challenges in Competitive Markets Authors/publication: Mswaka, W., Aluko, O., Hussein, S., Armindo dos Santos de Sousa, T. and Cai, H Scrutinises the operations of social entrepreneurs in resource-constrained environments, highlighting how opportunity spotting and innovation in financing strategies are central to effectively financing social enterprise. The Ecosystem of UK Social Entrepreneurship: A Meta-Analysis of Contemporary Studies Authors/publication: Gareth R. T. White, Robert Allen, Anthony Samuel, Dan Taylor, Robert Thomas, Paul Jones Examines social enterprises as both an alternative and addition to traditional enterprise ecosystems, and identifies constraints on the development and success of social enterprise ecosystems in areas of economic deprivation. Gender Empowerment in Social Enterprises in the UK Authors/publication: Maria Granados, Lilian Miles, Anastasia Alexeeva A gender empowerment guide for use by social enterprises, to empower the women they employ. Social Enterprise Places: A Place-Based Initiative Facilitating Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Constructions of Legitimacy - 2021 Authors/publication: Anthony Samuel , Gareth R.T. White, Kenneth Peattie, Robert Thomas, Aston University Examines how the Social Enterprise Place programme has legitimised social enterprises by enabling the identification of common social goals and the mobilisation of resources towards their resolution. Social Enterprise in the UK: Models and Trajectories - 2021 Authors/publication: Mike Aiken, Roger Spear, Fergus Lyon, Simon Teasdale, Richard Hazenberg, Mike Bull, Anna Kopec Massey Examines the landscape of social enterprises operating in the UK, including their models, fields of operation, and trajectories. Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship: Developing the Evidence Base Using the UK Small Business Survey - 2020 Authors/publication: Catherine Robinson This review considers the developments amongst social enterprises in the UK. Using the Small Business Survey, it compares those small firms in the UK that declare themselves to be social enterprises with traditional for-profit firms.  The Contribution of the Social Enterprise Sector to the UK Economy - 2019 Authors/publication: Kah, S. European Journal of Business and Management Presents the development, scale, and scope of social enterprises, and examines their social, economic, and environmental contributions to the UK. Social Enterprises and their Ecosystems in Europe - 2019 Authors/publication: Stumbitz, B., Vickers, I. and Lyon, F Explores the growth of the social enterprise sector, and how public policy has supported the growth of social enterprise ecosystems in Europe. The Emergence of Social Innovation within the Social Economy: The Case of Social Enterprises in England -2019 Authors/publication: Irurita, M Examines how social entrepreneurs develop innovative ideas to solve important societal problems. The Evaluation of CSR and Social Value Practices Among UK Commercial and Social Enterprises - 2018 Authors/publication: Paul Agu Igwe, Afam Icha-Ituma, Nnamdi O. Madichie Evaluates the scope of CSR initiatives among corporations and social enterprises, finding that social enterprises embed social value initiatives during the enterprise creation stage. Progressive Business Models: Creating Sustainable and Pro-Social Enterprise - 2018 Authors/publication: O'Higgins, Eleanor and Zsolnai, László, eds An analysis of progressive businesses operating across the world. The Age of the Social Entrepreneur - 2017 Authors/publication: Mhairi Tordoff, Demos Argues that although it is early days, social enterprises are a dynamic and ambitious section of our economy that contribute billions to the economy and employs millions of people. Social Enterprises, Social Inclusion, and Positive Social Change - 2017 Authors/publication: Ute Stephan, Aston University Demonstrates how social enterprise can be a force for social inclusion and social change. The Place of Social Enterprise in UK Contemporary Policy - 2016 Authors/publication: Ian Buchanan Examines the role of the third sector in addressing perceived failures in state welfare provision. Social Enterprise as Hybrid Organisations: A Review and Research Agenda - 2014 Author/publication: Bob Doherty Assesses the influence of the dual mission (financial sustainability and social purpose) on social enterprise management. Measuring social impact in social enterprise: the state of thought and practice in the UK - 2013 Author/publication: Jim Clifford Kate Markey and Natasha Malpani Explores the common threads between impact measurement tools and approaches, and how measurement varies to meet differing commissioning areas for social enterprises working in public service markets.

A pioneering social enterprise in northern England offers a vision of what the NHS could be like if it took prevention seriously Why would a healthcare provider fund a cafe in a primary school? Or support a confidence-building youth club? And why on earth would the same organisation provide cash to help its employees repair their car, fix a leak, even set up their own tattoo business. From the perspective of conventional healthcare, this is all very puzzling. Until that is you understand the ethos animating FCMS - a social enterprise operating across northern England. The idea is simple: keeping and making people happy and healthy not simply delivering healthcare. In practice, that does mean providing some demanding healthcare services: urgent treatment centres, emergency dental care, the 111 helpline, diagnostic services, and many others.  But what makes FCMS different is its determination to set this work in a much wider context of health inequalities and the social conditions that lead to either good or bad health and well-being. Put simply, FCMS doesn’t think it’s enough to just patch people up who come through their doors - they also aim to stop people coming through their doors in the first place. And that means intervening elsewhere. Tea and cake The school cafe is a case in point. Based in Flakefleet Primary School in Fleetwood and set-up with funding from FCMS, the Strive cafe serves a number of purposes. It creates a very pleasant place for human connection in an area facing deep poverty and isolation. It acts as a welcoming hub where people can come to seek help from local public services and the voluntary sector. It gives pupils and their families a relaxing space to speak to school staff about challenges they may be facing. And, of course, it also serves excellent but affordable coffee, tea and cake. Is Strive a health intervention? In the conventional healthcare world, it most certainly is not. Getting a ‘business case’ to fund Strive approved within an NHS Trust would be a challenge to say the least. But from the point of view of FCMS, Strive is very much an investment in health. It is a direct way of providing the things that create good health and well-being: human connection, living in a friendly and supportive place, having easy access to local services and sources of help. And when such an intervention occurs in a place like Flakefleet, it is a direct response to the inequalities that damage health and well-being. The same can be said of FCMS’s other activities such as backing The Boat House Youth - a voluntary organisation designed to develop young people’s confidence, funding free breakfasts and holiday activities for school children, helping adults develop basic maths skills, and supporting Flakefest - a summer festival for the Flakefleet community. These and many other similar investments now total over £1 million into communities, largely, but not exclusively, across the Blackpool and Fylde coast. Oompf! Importantly, this spirit of using resource to address the underlying and holistic causes of good and bad health also informs FCMS’s own services. In recent years, the organisation has focused heavily on making sure healthcare can get to some of the most marginalised communities. Taking a highly flexible approach to how, when and where their services are delivered, FCMS has made it a goal through its Complex Lives programme to take healthcare to homeless people, asylum seekers and those removed from GP registration. But this holistic approach doesn’t stop at patients and service users. It is also committed to the health and well-being of its own team. An approach that includes a fund called Staff Wishes which offers hard cash to make the lives of team members a little bit better, or sometimes a lot better. That might mean helping repair a broken down car or troublesome plumbing but, in one case, it meant helping a staff member follow their dream of setting up their own business by funding the purchase of tattoo equipment. Not many organisations would pay to lose a valued member of staff but it simply displays FCMS’s commitment to placing health and well-being ahead of everything else. If the NHS is to become truly focused on prevention of ill-health rather than just its treatment, as the Government claims to want, then it has much to learn from an organisation like FCMS: working closely with the voluntary and wider public sector; developing highly flexible services designed around the reality of people’s lives; investing in community-based solutions to local challenges. These are all important but perhaps there is one lesson that overrides them all: doing whatever it takes to keep everyone as happy and healthy as possible. Staying true to such a principle means thinking and working well outside the boundaries of conventional acute healthcare. It also means always being ready to ask tough questions of one’s own organisation about whether it is using its resource in the most effective way to address the things that make people ill and unhappy. Such self-reflection, if done honestly, would certainly upend many of the practices across an NHS that seems unable to break out of its acute focus, overcome its aversion to frontline innovation, and respond adequately to a pressurised and unhappy workforce. A good place to start that learning is by looking at FCMS’s core values. The language, simplicity and the values themselves say something about the fundamentally different culture nurtured at the social enterprise: being awesome, having fun, remaining humble, having the courage to challenge norms, being go-getting, and my personal favourite, displaying natural, infectious “oompf”! These are values that speak to a culture that esteems creativity, collaboration and sheer damn impact above everything else. It’s an ethos of oompf we desperately need to spread rapidly across the NHS and whole public sector. By Adam Lent This case study forms part of a series we are producing together with the healthcare consultancy Baxendale and think tank King’s Fund, to demonstrate the innovation shown by social enterprises delivering health and social care.