[Menai-LUG] [Northwales] Social Enterprise

[Richard Smedley]

On Wed, 2009-03-11 at 23:00 +0000, Oli wrote:
> A totally honest question - why is this a third sector enterprise
> rather than a proper for profit project?

> The only advantage I see with going down the NGO route is to do with
> tax and funding

Hello Oli,

I think you have a misconception about Social Enterprise.
Social enterprises are profit-making businesses that
exist for the good of community and return a triple
bottom line of financial, social & ecological accounts.

*All" businesses should be like this - and if you have read
The Companies Act (2006), then you'll know that limited
companies are gradually being pushed this way ;-)

Successful businesses have huge power for good or bad.
While Nestlé has killed many thousands of babies in
S America, and been consistantly censured in the UN,
others show a different path...

The Eden project built unfeasibly large domes in the
middle of nowhere (something the government-backed
projects failed to do at Doncaster, and struggled to
keep open at Wales Botanic Garden), and brought 
£800 million intot he N Cornwall economy in its
first 10 years - more than all the EU regional
funding to help the entire South East in that period.

>  - surely, if you set the company up correctly, you are
> going to make a profit and you can use that money in any way you wish.
>  With a good accountant, you wouldn't be paying tax anyway!

Of course business *owners* can choose how to spend
the money - in private businesses. The shareholders of
Unilever don't seem too bothered, however.

The point is *accountability* - and a general culture
of going in to wok to make things better, not just 
to make more money.

> I ask because open source has such a strong business potential to it
> (Red Hat, Ubuntu, MySQL to name a few)

& IBM, HP, Canonical, ...

>  that I don't understand why it
> needs to be hidden in the charity basket.

It's nothing to do with charity. SEs are about *enterprise*
not handouts. They have to be sustainable businesses.

> Its something that has been bugging me for a while!

Clearly ;-)

In summary SEs are not "not-for-profit", they're
"more-than-just-profit".

Regards,

 - Richard

-- 
Richard Smedley                              PRINCE2 Project Management
                                              Sustainable 3rd Sector IT
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