Social Saturday 2015 continues to inspire people to BUY Social!

By Sana Amos

Social Saturday marked another huge success on 10 October, with well over 50 events nationwide showcasing the contribution of over 70,000 social enterprises to the UK.

The momentum of the awareness day campaign received widespread coverage across local and national press, as well as on social media. With high profile twitter support including the Prime Minister and Jamie Oliver it was no surprise that #SocialSaturday2015 was trending across social media platforms.

Today is #SocialSaturday2015, the day to celebrate social enterprises. Use your spending power and #buysocial today! pic.twitter.com/M6w7L7Rrik

— UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) October 10, 2015

Today @SocialEnt_UK & @cabinetofficeuk celebrate #SocialSaturday2015 small changes make a big difference #buysocial http://t.co/KopBb6TuBy

— Jamie Oliver (@jamieoliver) October 10, 2015

Enterprises across the UK got in the spirit of Social Saturday by running events to showcase and promote their services to the public and highlight how every day they make a positive social and environmental impact.

One good example that truly demonstrated how social organisations can bring the community together was Divine Chocolate, the award winning chocolatier and social enterprise. They celebrated the day in style by hosting a free fair, that brought London’s social businesses in fashion, food and drinks sector together at the Lexi Cinema, itself a social enterprise.

Speaking of the significance of the day Peter Holbrook CBE and CEO of Social Enterprise UK, said: “Social enterprises are redefining how business gets done. When you buy from them, society profits. Social Saturday is all about celebrating and raising awareness about our growing movement. This year we want to really put social enterprise on the map through a range of events across the country.”

At Poached Creative we are proud to be working with Social Enterprise UK to produce the branding and campaign materials for the Buy Social campaign, that helps to support and promote social enterprises like ourselves across the UK.

Social Saturday: celebrating social enterprises

By Yousif Farah 
Saturday 13^th September is Social Saturday, the first ever nationwide day dedicated to promoting social enterprises that trade with the public. It’s being launched by Social Enterprise UK, to encourage people to buy products and services from social enterprises.

For those new to the concept, a social enterprise is a business model that prioritises its social mission over financial gain. Investing in people, most of its profits are usually reinvested in the business and the local community. When a new social enterprise emerges, entire communities reap the benefits. Varying in size, purpose and industry, the range from small social enterprises like us to nation-wide enterprises like the Big Issue.

Today there are more than 70,000 social enterprises nationwide, contributing £18.5 million to the UK economy, and employing almost a million people.

When you buy from a social enterprise, you buy social. Buying social means you provide an unemployed person with a career opportunity, or provide a homeless person with a bed for the night, or help the environment, as well as saving money and challenging only profit-driven businesses through competition.

Over the years we have had many partnerships with Social Enterprises across the country, including the Big Issue and Social Enterprise UK – who we proudly created the Social Saturday marketing materials for. We buy social whenever we can. Here are some of our favourite social enterprises:

Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

By Craig Temperly

This beautiful community garden and events space was built on derelict land in Dalston, East London, by architectural collective EXYZT in 2010. Since then it has become a vibrant community hub for holding workshops and events, as well as place for locals to relax and take in the peaceful garden greenery. It's good for the community and the environment, with local residents growing their own food and herbs in parts of the garden. We liked it so much we had our 5th birthday there.

Clarity and The Soap Co
Surely one of the oldest social enterprises in the UK, Clarity has been employing blind and disabled people since 1854 to create and sell beautifully scented hand-soaps and other toiletries. Clarity is also responsible for The Soap Co, which has a local shop in Keswick and a national online brand launching this year. With a 30% employment gap for disabled people in the UK, they create important employment opportunities for blind and disabled people, which make up over 70% of their workforce. 

Access Print

Access Print sells print, copy and design services. They are part of the Working Well Trust, a charity that helps support and train people who have experienced mental health problems get back into employment. All of the income from Access Print is reinvested into the charity which allows the trust to provide training and opportunities.

Access Print provides employment for two people in the shop who are ex-trainees and training opportunities for up to 24 others. Trainees are also given opportunities to move into employment or further education through another part of the charity called Rework, with high success rates. We buy from them and we always find their staff so helpful, polite and willing to accommodate our needs, as well as providing a great service. 

Main article by Yousif Farah, profiles by Grant Kingsnorth and Catriona Kinney.

Why measure social impact?

Photo by Steve Harris

The majority (68%) of social enterprises now measure their social impact, according to Social Enterprise UK's State of Social Enterprise 2013 Survey.

Social enterprises Poached Creative and Iridescent Ideas recently teamed up to find out why:

“As a social enterprise providing communications services to the social enterprise sector, we wanted to understand the motivations for social impact reporting and identify the barriers for those social enterprises not already doing it.” said Jessica Smith, Director of Poached Creative.

Together they decided to run a campaign to discover the answers to these questions. They produced a white paper on social impact reporting - Why impact? – and ran a twitter social debate using the hashtag #whyimpact.

As part of the debate, social entrepreneur Liam Black shared his top two reasons for social impact reporting on twitter: first, you owe it to the taxpayers who subsidise you, and second, you find out vital data about your business.

Social impact reporting can also help prove your business is making an impact, define the need and market for your services, motivate your team, help publicise your work and secure future business.

But with all these benefits, why are over a third (32%) of social enterprises still not measuring their impact?

The Why Impact white paper identifies that social enterprises can find social impact reporting time-consuming, expensive and confusing.

One of the confusing aspects is that there is no single social impact measurement, but a variety available. The main two are social auditing or accounting and social return oninvestment (SROI), with other methods usually a variation on these approaches.

As for being time-consuming and expensive, proportionality is key (according to think tank Demos) –the amount of work needed for evaluation should be in line with and not outweigh the size of the organisation. Larger social enterprises may have the capacity to take on a fuller SROI type of assessment, whereas smaller enterprises may need a simpler approach.   

Social enterprise Iridescent Ideas has addressed this issue, by offering their ‘simple’ social impact report service:

“Monitoring and evaluation methods to prove impact need to be simple, commensurate with the outcomes expected and, critically, make it easy to collect meaningful data. This takes planning, of course, but thinking it through at the start will mean that what is valued gets measured and what is measured gets valued.” said Gareth Hart of Iridescent Ideas.

To find out more visit www.iridescentideas.com/impact

Buy Social showcased to PR industry

The City of London Guild of Public Relations Practitioners and the PRCA held their first ever “Buy Social” forum, on 10 June, which aimed to persuade agencies and in-house teams to buy from social enterprises.

The event, hosted by Lloyds Banking Group, was attended by members from across the PR spectrum and featured a panel discussion and a showcase of social enterprises and networking.

Jonathan Chandler, Master of PR Guild delivered the opening speech and moderated the debate, which focused on identifying actionable next steps and addressing any concerns or issues arising from them.

Among the speakers were Matt Cartmel, Communication Director of PRCA; Suzanne Jones, Business and Support Director of City of London Corporation and  Celia Richardson, Director of Communications and Policy at Social Enterprise UK.

The Director of Poached Creative Jessica Smith also spoke to share her experience of working with the PR sector. She said:

"We work to put creative communications jobs within reach for disadvantaged people. You want to diversify your industry and we can help with that. Social entrepreneurs come from a range of backgrounds with experience in the media, corporate and charity sectors and we're keen to work in partnership with you on issues like this."

"Take a look at the directory and you'll see that there are social enterprises for almost anything you would want to buy. The most powerful way you can support the social enterprise sector is to trade with us."

The Buy Social Directory was launched on 4 June at the Guildhall by the Minister of Civil Society, Nick Hurd MP. To find out more visit http://www.buysocialdirectory.org.uk/ .

Poached Creative - celebrating five years

It’s Monday. Deputy director Angela is putting the finishing touches on a quote for a client and our designer Khaleeda is advising a young illustrator about a job application. Our writer, Catriona, is interviewing someone from an NHS trust while our writing mentor, Grant, is penning a letter on behalf of someone at his hostel. Press office volunteer Billy is tweeting about our upcoming party. All this sounds like a normal, productive office.

Looking back five years, I’m amazed that we have an office at all. Then, we were squatting in someone else’s building with a couple of computers and a dictionary. I was the only person you could call ‘staff’ and I was unpaid. We had two trainees, one of whom was Angela.

Poached Creative was born out of my desire to put communications jobs within reach for long-term unemployed and disadvantaged people. As Editor at Shelter and the NHS Confederation I had hired many people into our editorial team but none of them had experienced homelessness or serious health conditions. This was what I wanted to change.

In five years we’ve built a solid client base of about 30 clients, more than 75 per cent of whom have come back to work with us again. We’ve settled into a permanent office in Hackney and opened a satellite office in the South West. We employ eight staff.

We’ve created an international campaign for Social Enteprise UK and partnered with The Big Issue and BBC Learning to deliver journalism training. Charity clients include Peabody and Plan UK and we continue to work with a range of smaller charities and social enterprises at discounted rates.

The RBS SE100 ranks us as No 1 marketing and communications social enterprise and among the top 10 in London. This year we’ve also become an accredited London Living Wage employer.

Many of our past trainees and volunteers still work with us and it’s this two-way street, of both learning with and contributing to Poached Creative, that I’m most proud of.

The people we’ve worked with over the last five years have not only benefitted from our work but shaped our future. Take a look at their case studies.

Surviving the first five years

If there's one thing we've learnt about surviving the first five years of social enterprise it's that we wouldn't be here without our friends.

Our partnership with Lucy Ferguson from Mediorite (formerly YH World) has been the difference between success and failure for Poached. Without our shared office space, staff, clients, ideas and plans, Poached Creative would not be here today.

Thanks to:

• All our dedicated staff, freelancers, trainees and volunteers who've contributed so much to our development.
• Our brilliant clients, who've supported us and with their business, enthusiasm and feedback.
• Funders/in-kind supporters: Careers Development Group (CDG), UnLtd, arc/BITC, Future Jobs Fund, Social Enterprise UK, Cranfield Trust, Mediabox, Hackney Council, Hackney Libraries, Lighthouse (Poole).
• Partners: Mediorite, MCR Print, Agile Collective, Pixel Parlour, Hackney Citizen, The Big Issue, St Giles Trust, Art Against Knives, Off Centre.

We’ve come a long way in five years and we couldn’t have done it without your support.

Special thanks to Dominic Rose and Michael Quinn for their unfailing support and superb catering skills.

Social Enterprise Day 2013

The contribution of social enterprises was recognised in Parliament today with a special event held in the Commons by the APPG on Social Enterprise to mark Social Enterprise Day 2013. 

Highlights of the day included: a new supply chain guide for businesses by Social Enterprise UK, a new Buy Social animation narrated by John Bird, founder of The Big Issue, and Social Enterprise Belu Water won a contract with the Houses of Parliament.

MPs and business leaders attended the event at the House of Commons, hosted by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Social Enterprise, to learn more about including Social Enterprises in their supply chains. They heard from speakers including Karen Lynch, CEO of Social Enterprise Belu water, Hazel Blears MP, and Jo Swinson, Minister for Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs.

Poached Creative's work was a key part of Social Enterprise Day 2013. We designed and produced the new materials to support the second phase of the Buy Social campaign - encouraging corporate businesses to buy from social enterprises. This included new display boards featuring Edwin from Give Me Tap, a We Buy Social badge for commercial organisations to show their commitment to social enterprise and Buy Social postcards to promote social enterprise to the public.

A new supply chain guide to help businesses learn about including social enterprises in their supply chains was designed by Poached Creative and we featured alongside several case studies for our work designing the first Social Impact Report for Landmarc, the UK’s 3rd biggest Land Manager.

Jo Swinson encouraged the businesses in attendance to 'buy social':

“Customers and investors are increasingly thinking beyond simply the prices they are paying and the returns they are seeing. They rightly want to know what steps a business is taking which will have a positive effect on the environment, society, their local community and the employees, before making their decision. In order to build a stronger economy and fairer society we need more diverse businesses - social enterprises very much fit the bill.”

Social Enterprise Day marks the one year anniversary since the Buy Social campaign, conceived and created by Poached for Social Enterprise UK, was first launched. Peter Holbrook, Chief Executive of Social Enterprise UK, said:

“Just like having a carbon footprint, every business has a social footprint and this can be strengthened by the purchasing of goods and services from social enterprises. Lots of social enterprises are small to medium sized businesses that operate locally and so what might be a relatively modest spend for a corporate can make a very big difference to a social enterprise and their impact on a local community.”

Find out more on Social Enterprise UK's  Buy Social page  and join the conversation on Twitter using #buysocial

The People's Business is our business

The People’s Business Social Enterprise UK’s State of Social Enterprise Survey published this week reveals a thriving sector full of promise, optimism and innovative ideas. In short: the social enterprise sector is thriving. 

It’s important to us here at Poached Creative for two reasons. 

1. It shows the sector in action

We designed and proofread the report, commissioned the photography and worked with Social Enterprise UK to ensure it stood out from the crowd. 

The project enabled us to provide work experience opportunities for two young photographers. It also provided paid work for our former trainees, proofreader Emma, and project assistant Tobias, who co-ordinated the photoshoot with five featured social enterprises.  

Cardine Martin and Joel Witter gained valuable experience assisting the photographer, Agenda from Visual Marvelry, on the professional photoshoots.

Behind the scenes with Agenda at the Jamie's
Italian photoshoot.  Photo by Cardine Martin

Cardine describes her role on the shoots for Belu Water at Jamie's Italian and Elvis and Kresse:

“I was a photographer’s assistant. I prepared the equipment by setting up the tripod and checking the lighting and memory card. I also helped to choose the location and I put the clients at ease.”

She says she now understands what's involved in ‘doing a photoshoot’ and has gained confidence in her own work through the process. 

2. We're leading a global movement

The second reason is to do with being part of an exciting, global social enterprise movement, with social enterprises in the UK leading the way.
 

Social enterprises represent a new and effective blueprint for doing business. In the UK the sector is growing rapidly, with an annual contribution to the economy valued at over £24 billion. In our current ‘doom and gloom filled’ economic climate, this is encouraging news.

Social enterprises are flourishing precisely because they are creative, innovative, confident and diverse. You are just as likely to see women and people from different ethnic backgrounds in the boardroom as you are unlikely to see them in more traditional set ups. It is also common to find dynamic groups of passionate young people who are creating solutions to self-identified problems - the award-winning Oii My Size project is a good example.

 

Social enterprise could just be the answer that the nation needs. Instead of demonising people who are unemployed, marginalised and overlooked, the sector sees people as part of the solution. 

Take a look at the innovative work from featured organisations Elvis and Kresse, Connection Crew, Belu Water and Bounce Back. 
 

Download the full report from the Social Enterprise UK website and join the conversation at #peoplesbusiness

Doing a great deal more - why we buy social

Poached Creative is a writing and communications company that builds social value into everything we do. We're proud to have provided the campaign creative for Social Enterprise UK's new year-long campaign: Do a great deal - BUY social.

As well as ensuring our communications services and training programmes create genuine opportunities for unemployed and disadvantaged people, we look beyond our own activities to see how our business can have a social impact elsewhere.

To run effectively, we need training for our staff, CRB checks for our volunteers, environmentally responsible printing services and ethical banking. Buying these services from other social enterprises means we can make an even greater impact across communities. Over the last three years we’ve found a few brilliant organisations to work with and we’re always on the hunt for more.

Who do we buy social from?

A youth media agency that develops young disadvantaged people into careers in the creative industries, Mediorite is our delivery partner of choice for youth and media projects. Together we have worked on the BBC Radio One Hackney Academy, Peabody’s Staying Safe campaign, Social Enterprise UK’s Buy Social campaign, Discover Young Hackney festival materials and communicaitons support for local charity Off Centre.

Print co-operative Calverts provides high quality, environmentally sustainable printing services and has supported us with poster campaigns, art exhibitions, marketing materials and more.

A bank that puts social change, social benefit and community involvement at the heart of its business, Unity Trust Bank provides our day-to-day banking services.

Youth charity SkyWay provides a place to go and positive activities for Hackney’s young people as a real alternative to gang culture. Its enterprise arm provides super-fast, no fuss CRB checking services for our volunteers and new recruits.

Training and development for volunteers and staff are a big part of our commitment to the people who make up Poached Creative. Social enterprises Striding Out and Social Spider are two training providers we’ve recently used to build skills within our team. Supporting Striding Out means we’re also empowering young people to achieve their potential, while Social Spider’s work on mental health issues and community journalism is close to our hearts.

Who does a great deal more with us?

Social Enterprise UK used us for the design and messaging for its new year-long Buy Social campaign.

Business in the Community and arc buy our web content, report writing and photography services.

Westway Development Trust used our writing and editing services for its 40^th anniversary book.

Seamless supports people who are sight impaired, have disabilities and who care for others. We developed their website and marketing materials and support them with events and PR.

LKMco works across across the education, youth and policy sectors to ensure all young people receive the support they need to make a fulfilling transition to adulthood. We designed their latest report into teachers and their unions.

Transitions supports highly skilled refugees through their transition to full-time professional work in the UK. We’re supporting them with their communications strategy and messages for employers.

Healthy Planet benefits from our blogging and PR support.

London Centre for Social Impact helps grassroots organisations make a lasting difference to their communities and used us for their print marketing materials.

Camden Calling refers people to our training programmes.

We also work for charities, housing associations and local government. See our online portfolio.

Join the campaign - blog, tweet (#buysocial) or write about your social buying habits and let Social Enterprise UK know. Download campaign materials and find out more on the Buy Social campaign web page. 

Find out how our sister social enterprise Mediorite gets social enterprises into its supply chain. Read Lucy's blog.

Putting the enterprise into social enterprise

“Not limited by the resources currently in hand” is how J Gregory Dees, known as the father of social entrepreneurship education, describes one of the characteristics of social entrepreneurship.

He goes on to explain that social entrepreneurs are skilled at doing more with less and at attracting resources from elsewhere – drawing in partners and collaborating with others.

There are, of course, other more common characteristics: a mission to create and sustain social value goes to the very core of social entrepreneurship. This is what defines the growing number of social enterprises in the UK – estimated at more than 68,000. According to Social Enterprise UK, the national membership body for social enterprise, a substantial 39 per cent of them are concentrated in the most deprived communities (compared with 13 per cent of SMEs).

Social enterpreneurs are, as if by definition, social first.
It’s the entrepreneurship that proves evasive. For those with social values as their raison d’etre, it becomes a means to an end, part of the fight for survival in an economic climate where funding and compassion are fast drying up.

In time, it’s very likely that the difference between those social ventures that survive and those that fail will be the entrepreneurial element.

J Gregory Dees’ description above brought to mind a friend and colleague who, for me, embodies the collaborative, resource-mobilising characteristic so well. Lucy Ferguson runs a youth media agency, Mediorite, out of an office we share in Hackney, London.

Read the full article in ISBE's Enterprising Matters e-magazine.