I spent the day at an event in Cambridge on the future of local government and the role of social enterprise. Some excellent speakers - Dai Powell from Hackney Community Transport (http://www.hctgroup.org) was really interesting on barriers for social entrepreneurs and engaging with local government.
The theme was how can social enterprise step into the gap left by local government cuts. Local government is listening - the door is open. The Chief Executives and Leaders of all of the county and borough authorities in the East of England were there. They wanted to know how social enterprise can fill the gap.
But for me, it was social enterprise that needed to raise it's game today; not enough had thought about what they were offering, and why, and whether it would be self sustaining. Some were offering precisely the services that local government is cutting, with no real ideas on how they would make a margin to reinvest - they hadn't moved on from the grant-based model; they had simply been rebadged as 'social enterprises'.
Very few stood entirely apart from payments which ultimately came from central government - very few seemed genuinely self-funding. One organisation wins tenders to run bus services from local government - instead of taking the profit, it is invested in the community. All good stuff, no doubt, but is it social enterprise? And if government funding dried up tomorrow - could the company survive? No - so is it a revolution?
There's a real danger that some pretty conventional ideas will rebadge themselves as q social enterprises in a bid to meet the zeitgeist - but which are sufficiently innovative, well-thought through and financially sound to genuinely offer something to communities and residents? The market will decide.
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