The UK Government recognises Social Enterprise as a key growth area with abundant potential for:

+ Helping to drive up productivity and competitiveness.
+ Contributing to socially inclusive wealth creation.
+ Enabling individuals and communities to work towards regenerating their local neighbourhoods.
+ Showing new ways to deliver public services.

The DTI report Social Enterprise: a Strategy for Success (July 2002) describes Social Enterprise in the following way:

A Social Enterprise is a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.

Social Enterprises tackle a wide range of social and environmental issues and operate in all parts of the economy. By using business solutions to achieve public good, the Government believes that Social Enterprises have a distinct and valuable role to play in helping create a strong, sustainable and socially inclusive economy.

Grouping according to mission and values

Four broad groupings of Social Enterprise can be drawn from analysis of their primary mission and values:

Trading arms of voluntary/charity sector enterprises are the clearest group, with characteristics nearest to mainstream business. These include the ‘not-for profits’, the US model Social Enterprises promoted by champions such as Jerr Boschee, and the type of enterprise supported by Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFI’s). The Dti document ‘Strategy for Success’ concentrates on this type of organisation.

Socially inclusive enterprises are those whose primary mission and social value lies in their commitment to a disadvantaged workforce e.g. Social Firms (employ disabled people) and enterprises with a strong skills training element. Trading is a by-product of these enterprises.

Democratically managed enterprises include the co-operatives, and Development Trusts. These are the types of enterprise with the longest history. Rural regions have the highest representation of co-operatives. They are committed to sustainability through trading and to democratic management in roughly equal measure.

Area based community enterprises have often grown from European funding regimes and build on community capacity building initiatives in a local area e.g. Regen 2000 (agency that develops community enterprise in a small area of Bradford) and the enterprises that have developed from SRB programmes. Their trading orientation is incidental and marginal to their community capacity building motivation.

Legal Forms of Social Enterprise

Co-operatives – associations of persons united to meet common economic and social needs through jointly owned enterprises.
Development Trusts – community based and owned they engage in the regeneration of a defined area.
Social Firms – small businesses created to provide integrated employment and training to people with disabilities and disadvantages.
Community Businesses – a non profit business that serves a geographical community or a community of interest (e.g. asylum seekers).
Credit Unions – a financial co-operative, owned and controlled by its members providing access to finance.
Intermediate Labour Market Companies – provide training and work experience for the long-term unemployed.
Employee-owned Businesses – create jobs and preserve jobs as part of economic development strategies.
Charities Trading Arms – trading companies owned by the charity, set up to enable them to meet their objectives in innovative ways (Source: SEL, 2001. Pearce, 2003)

Social Enterprise Monitor for the United Kingdom 2004 (GEM UK 2004)

Joseph Rowntree Fund data from 2002, suggests that Yorkshire and the Humber voluntary and community organisations, - a category that includes Social Enterprises as organisations that create their own income, provide over 90,000 jobs, based on an estimated regional workforce of 2.3million.

Despite the pitfalls of comparing figures from different studies, the trend is clearly upwards for the number of jobs created by Social Enterprises. From 1995 to 2002 the increase in figures from the study quoted above, from 36,500 to 90,000 reflects a near threefold increase.
London has the highest level of social entrepreneurial start-ups (11%). There are four regions apart from London with above average levels of social entrepreneurial activity: the East Midlands (7%), Scotland (7%), the South West (7.2%) and Yorkshire and the Humber (6.9%).

From the report Mapping the contribution of the voluntary and community sector in Yorkshire and the Humber (Y&H Regional Forum, 2001), there are an estimated 80,000 voluntary and community organisations, again this figure will include, but not equate to, the number of Social Enterprises in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Sub-regional studies are presently mapping the numbers of Social Enterprises in each of the four sub-regions.