Social enterprise: "An emerging global movement"
Social entrepreneurs at this year's Social Enterprise World Forum can learn from the UK's experiences with supportive government and take inspiration from China's first steps into social investment. Peter Holbrook, this year's forum chair and CEO of Social Enterprise UK, talks to Pioneers Post about what he's looking to learn in Calgary
How do you think social enterprise is taking shape globally, and where should the focus be to take it forward?
What we’re seeing is an emerging global movement. Although we often see a focus on parts of the world, like the UK, with reasonably well-developed social enterprise movements, there is a genuine sense that this is becoming of interest right across the globe. Learning and sharing is critical to progress, and continuing to build that sense of a global movement.
Lots of countries are looking to the UK to understand how the social enterprise sector has developed quite so rapidly with the support of successive governments, but, equally, innovation and new ideas are being developed around the world.
In the UK we’ve seen a supportive policy environment, with a number of successive policies that have created a more fertile environment. We’ve also seen one of the world’s greatest financial crises, which has helped switch the focus to imperatives that feed the needs of the many rather than the few.
What are you looking to take back to the UK from the Social Enterprise World Forum?
When we turn to other parts of the world we see very exciting things happening, from Italy to Canada, to South Korea and South America. There’s the development of Canada’s Community Contribution Companies (CCCs), the growth of social investment in China, and new social enterprise models being developed in South America.
At this year’s forum I’m particularly interested in the different legal models around social enterprise being developed in Canada, for example, and on diverse areas of progress. I’m looking to take inspiration and build the understanding of what social enterprise means across the globe.
What are the key challenges facing social enterprises in the UK that practitioners and policy makers need to find solutions for?
In the UK there are still a lot of big problems: access to finance is well documented. There is a lack of access to unsecured loans for social enterprises and still many barriers to procurement.
When we look at the overall picture of finance in the sector, 90 per cent of all investment goes to asset-backed ventures. Newly established social enterprises find it hard to access finance, and procurement seems to be becoming an increasingly hostile environment for social enterprises.
With contracts getting bigger and bigger, winning business in the public sector market is a huge challenge.
That said, the consumer market and business-to-business market is going well for social enterprise, which is good news.
One recent policy milestone is Social Investment Tax Relief, do you think this will be a game-changer for social investment in the UK?
SE UK played a key role in the consultation around this tax relief with the Treasury. But we’ll have to reserve judgement until we know what it looks like, and make sure it benefits all types of social enterprises in all types of legal forms. It’s all to play for.
But, for me the real excitement at the moment is around community shares and crowd-funding, and actually getting communities and investors to move towards ethical investment portfolios that include a significant number of social ventures and enterprises.
What is the most exciting aspect of social enterprise in the UK at the moment?
Social enterprise has traditionally worked very closely with the public sector, Whitehall, civil servants, and policy makers. Now I think we’re getting closer to consumers – everyday consumers, everyday savers who want to see their money used in different ways and want to create value with what they purchase. I think there is a genuine consumer and investor revolution, which is more exciting than anything that is coming out of government.
The symbiotic relationships between social enterprise and the corporate sector is something that really does interest me. I think that businesses are beginning to understand shared value and wanting to collaborate with social enterprise. That’s going to be a massive growth area here in the UK and right around the globe.
There's more to come from Peter Holbrook at the Social Enterprise World Forum - keep an eye out for an update on PPTV
