Since the government published its Social Enterprise: a strategy for success in 2002, developing this sector has been a priority for the UK government and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. More recently the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) set out the Government’s cross-departmental commitment for thousands more social enterprises to thrive by:

• fostering a culture of social enterprise
• ensuring the right information and advice are available to
• enabling social enterprises to access suitable finance
• enabling social enterprises to work with government.

But Hall Aitken staff working with social enterprises in the past couple of years found that there is still confusion about what a social enterprise is, and therefore how the sector can be developed to contribute to area regeneration or specific sectors.
To help identify ways to develop social enterprises we have developed and piloted a toolkit – available as a download www.hallaitken.co.uk
 
Our toolkit uses a three-stage analysis of social enterprises. It is designed to evaluate the current status of the organisation and can be used to focus business strategy and develop a comprehensive business plan. The toolkit:

• Identifies the enterprise potential of individual organisations and of the sector in an area;
• Examines both financial and entrepreneurial capacity in these organisations; and
• Looks in depth at the issues facing individual organisations so helping understanding of the issues to be resolved.

The assessment is useful as a stand-alone exercise for exercises in growing the social economy, or can form apart of a wider assessment of the economy of an area or region.

Further details from Paul Buchanan This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , 0141 225 5517