Social Enterprise and Procurement

1
Social Enterprise and Procurement

• West London Pulse 11th July 2006
• Robert Foster

2
Agenda

• Notices
• Objectives
• Introduction
• Description of social enterprise
• Exploration of commissioners of service agenda
• Possible issues/interactions between
  commissioners of service and social enterprises
  (identification)
• Feedback to group (qualify)

3
Notices

• Mobiles
• Fire exits
• Toilets
• Breaks
• Exercises
• No mistakes only learning experiences

4
Objectives

• Learn about social enterprise
• Learn about procurement
• Consider issues/barriers to entry
• Develop strategies to address those issues

5
Social Enterprise

• Social enterprise is a catch-all not a legal
  structure
• Many definitions
• Basically, trading organisations with a social
  aim
• Types and examples

6
Social Enterprise - features

• Assets stay in community
• Operators make no financial gain
  (non-distribution of profit)
• Social aim
• Community / social cohesion / sustainability /
  empowerment
• Employability/training/opportunity
• Environmental etc.
• Financially sustainable
• No grants (except start-up)
• Earned revenue (SLAs, commercial trading)

7
Social Enterprise - features

• Customer centric
• Stakeholder representation
• Highly motivated staff
• No profit taking
• So 100 of contract goes on service delivery!

8
Social Enterprise Before starting

• Think first
• What do I want to do?
• Can I earn revenue?
• Are grants more appropriate?
• Be realistic
• Easier to charge for new services, rather than
  existing services
• Governance issues
• Only now think about legal structures

9
Procurement What and Who?

• Used to be called purchasing
• Also called commissioning
• In the case of public services
• Local Authorities e.g. DAT, Regeneration
  Departments
• Other statutory funders e.g. PCTS, LEA, NDPB,
  Probation Service etc.

10
Procurement Funders Perspective

• Legal requirements of commissioning bodies
• look after public money according to the public
  accounting rules (regularity)
• Other factors
• Government encouragement (Best Value, Compact,
  Compact)
• Make my life easy

11
Breakout sessions

• In groups (social enterprises or commissioners or
  vol orgs )
• Identify issues with social enterprises or vol
  orgs or Identify issues with commissioners (10-15
  minutes)
• Responses to those issues (10-15 minutes)
• It is better to have enough ideas for some of
  them to be wrong, than to be always right by
  having no ideas at all.
• Edward de Bono

12
Conclusion

• Social Enterprise
• Procurement agenda
• Issues
• Possible responses

13
Thank you

• Red Ochre
• www.redochre.org.uk
• 020-7785-6295
• robert_at_redochre.org.uk