Introduction to Social Enterprise

What social enterprise is, and what it isn't. Choices of carrying out activity within an existing, linked, umbrella or independent organisation. Trading to meet mission. Legal forms and status. Sectors and groupings. Sources of support, funding, investment.

 Drawing up a Feasibility Study

Establishing success/failure criteria, customer and client requirements, outputs, time-scale, milestones. Quantifying inputs required to produce these outputs. Assessment of availability and cost of inputs. Drawing up a first number model. Comparative studies. Benchmarking.

 Drawing up a Business Plan

Planning process that creates sustainable enterprises. Costing and Pricing. Defining and quantifying markets for each product, human, physical and financial requirements to meet market needs successfully, management structure. Creating robust financial projections. Assessing investment requirements.

 Drawing up an Enterprise Initiation Action Plan

Identifying all the steps necessary to establish a successful enterprise. Drawing up a Critical Path Analysis. Defining and distributing tasks. Process Management.

 Raising Finance

Assessing finance requirement and timing. Balance of grant, equity and borrowing. Long and short term finance. The right source for the right facility. Mechanisms available. Making the business case. Building long term relationships with investors.

 Budgeting and cashflow

Cost management and reduction. Cashflow monitoring, management, maximisation. Working capital, what it is, how much is required, where to get it from. Profit generation. Capital depreciation and renewal.

 Market Research

Identifying the question - is it about size, nature, needs, how it works. Identifying niche markets, predicting product life cycle, scoping the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. Assessing likely sales volumes,

 Marketing and Promotion

Presenting the organisation, its values and its out-puts properly. How to develop a coherent approach, a style. Identifying and using channels of communication. Targeting effort and expenditure to secure results that strengthen market position.

 Risk Management

How to identify, avoid or minimise risks. Developing insulation, fall back and exit strategies

 Legal Structures

Choices of legal forms and legal status for trading entities. Governance, stakeholder identification and involvement.

 Management Roles

The role of senior management in the organisation, and members of the management committee/Board of Trustees. How Management Committees can monitor a social enterprise.

 Accounting for trading

Setting up a proper accounting system for a social enterprise. How to account for trading income within an organisation.

 Developing Enterprises to provide employment opportunity for excluded groups

Realistic assessment of productive capacity and support costs. Valuing and marketing all out-puts. Sources of support and investment. Models of success and models of failure.

 Social Accounting and Audit

Deciding what we want to measure. Cost effective ways of recording and evidencing social impacts. Internal and external auditing of social accounts. Use of audit reports for internal management and external marketing.

 Environmental Management and Audit

What we need to manage. How to quantify existing positive and negative impacts. Setting realistic improvement targets and ways to monitor and evidence progress. Internal and External Audt. Use for internal management and external marketing.

 Quality Assurance

What it is. Setting standards. Developing policies and procedures to enable people to meet standards. Continuous Improvement, what it is and how to facilitate it. External accreditation, do you need it, which one, how to obtain it, how to make it affordable.

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