Welcome to our Social Enterprise Page

Upcoming events:

5.30pm, Thu 26th Aug - One Planet Meeting

6.00pm, Thu 2nd Sep - Business Training 'Managing People'

6.00pm, Thu 16th Sep - Business Training 'Costs & Pricing'

6.00pm, Thu 30th Sep - Business Training 'Diversifying Income'

6.00pm, Thu 14th Oct - Business Training 'Monitoring & Evaluation'

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About the Programme

This page covers the PROSPECTS Foundation's Social Enterprise Development Initiative.  This programme is funded by the Fair Share Trust and runs until the end of June 2011.

The aim of the programme is for our Social Enterprise Development Officer (Mike Stapleford) to work with residents, groups and service providers within the 5 Fair Share wards of Accrington (namely Central, Church, Spring Hill, Barnfield and Peel) to identify and setup 4 environmentally-themed social enterprises.

What is a Social Enterprise?

Basically, a social enterprise is a business that like any business has to make a profit to survive.  However, unlike most businesses profit is not the sole aim.  The key aim of our social enterprises is that they must also deliver social and environmental benefits as well.

Also, any of the social enterprise ideas generated under this programme must also fit within one of our five PROSPECTS sustainability themes of:

• Biodiversity (protecting and enhancing local wildlife and plant life)
• Energy (home and community energy efficiency and development of renewables)
• Recycling (identifying more ways of reusing and recycling our waste)
• Transport (encouraging more use of public transport, bicycles and walking)

• Food (finding ways of making more local, organic, healthy food, grown by the community for the community)

PROSPECTS Social Enterprise Development process:

• The Development Officer works with the community in the Fair Share areas to generate upto 16 potential social enterprise ideas.
• A 'Social Enterprise Assessment Panel', made up of members from PROSPECTS and representatives from existing Social Enterprises and business will assess the 16 ideas and choose 8 for further development.

• The 8 ideas are developed further and a 'Sustainability Impact Assessment' (SIA) is completed for each potential enterprise.  The SIA is a tool to assess how each idea delivers all three aims of our social enterprises, namely, being financially viable and delivering social and environmental benefits to the local community.

• The 'Assessment Panel' meets again & the final 4 social enterprises are selected.
• Sep 10 - The first social enterprise is set up.
• By Jun 11 - The second, third and fourth social enterprises are set up. 

How can you get involved?

If you would like to be involved in a business that provides benefits to the community, want to volunteer or gain experience, give me a call.

For more information about attending events or anything about our Social Enterprise Development programme please contact Mike Stapleford at PROSPECTS on

01254-380675 or e-mail mike.stapleford@prospectsfoundation.org.uk

The PROSPECTS Social Enterprise Development Programme is funded by the Big Lottery Fund through it's Fair Share Trust fund.  This is administered, on behalf of the Big Lottery, by the Community Foundation for Merseyside.