Research into business support provision for social enterprise
The Office for the Third Sector (OTS) and the nine English Regional
Development Agencies (RDAs) commissioned a mapping exercise of the business
support services available to social enterprises across England. The final
report by research agency Rocket Science highlights some excellent examples
across the RDAs and some key recommendations for the sector.
The report highlights lessons from existing practice about how business
support for social enterprises can be improved, for example:
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There is an acknowledgement that some specialist support will still be
required but this should be fully connected with Business Link's
Information, Diagnostic and Brokerage (IDB) mainstreamed service.
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Mainstream business support should be sensitive to social enterprise
needs, context and motivation.
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Promoting and sustaining social enterprise activity requires proactive
specialist support for pre-start social enterprises.
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The capacity of the business support infrastructure to disaggregate the
sector is vital to providing effective support.
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Finance for social enterprises – in particular, the role of business
support providers in assisting social enterprises to understand and use
financial products to full advantage.
The report finds the success of the social enterprise agenda is reliant
upon social enterprises not just meeting needs, but doing this while
thriving in sustainable markets and successfully generating income through
trading. Some key issues to ensure this success would be:
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to have clarity within each region about which agencies are providing
what support at each stage of development
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to achieve consistency of service within and across regions
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to empower social enterprises to choose between support offerings
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to take forward the development of business support for social
enterprise, which should focus on building on what already works
The report recommends better organised learning and exchange around good
practice among all the RDAs at a national and regional level to ensure that
social enterprises across the country receive a high quality service
relevant to their needs.
The report findings will help to inform RDAs' development of proposals
on how best to utilise the additional business support funding for social
enterprise announced by OTS in the social enterprise action plan last
November.
