£4000 to Start a Social Enterprise – SSE comes to the West Midlands

The School for Social Enterprise (SSE) is launching in the West Midlands and only has two weeks to go!

SSE West Midlands are currently recruiting social entrepreneurs and also want to see organisations / support providers that are interested or want to find out more.

Here’s the detail from our friends at SSE

Things are moving fast now for the new school and we have decided to hold some taster sessions for potential students to find out a little more about the school and what we offer them during the upcoming Lloyds West Midlands SSE course (www.yourideastartshere.co.uk) in the West Midlands.

 

Come and meet us at the following venues:-

• Wednesday the 20^th March — The Renewal Family Centre, Vulcan Road, Solihull,  B91 2JY   17.30 – 19.30*
•  Monday the 25^th March — Room 201 UCB Building, Colmore Row, Birmingham,    B3 2AP     14.30 – 16.30*
•  Wednesday the 27^th of March — Goldmine Centre, The Vine Trust, 33 Lower Hall Lane, Walsall WS1 1RR   17.30 – 19.30*

*As this is a new school to the region we have also booked the venues for a three hour session prior to the taster sessions to enable interested parties (eg. established social entrepreneurs, social enterprise and business advisers, local authorities, charities and third sector organisations etc) to just drop in and find out more about the school.

For further details please see the attached flyer

 

From Grant Reliance to Trading

Had a very interesting day today at the #fairsharetrustawayday where I presented on social enterprise and ran a short workshop for those who are looking toward trading as a route to independance and sustainability, which made me think it was worth sharing some recent case studies of our work with voluntary and community organisations and charities.

The first one click here looks at business planning, project management, in-house consultancy and training with the Disability Resource Centre

The second click here looks at market analysis, business planning, community enterprise and income generation

I hope that some of you find them useful.

My Start Up Diary Part 1

You may remember my recent post David it Hurts No it Really Hurts, a post which considered the feeling in the third sector with the public sector cuts. Well I’ve felt the pain personally, as my previous employer was unable to continue my post I was made redundant. Ahhh what to do, I’ve worked full-time since I was about 20 [and that's quite a long time ago]?

Well the answer seemed to be simple, after all I have been working in enterprise development for many of those years [over 20, almost giving my age away now!], providing advice and guidance to new start-up enterprises and large voluntary sector groups, charities and social enterprises. So I decided to start-up my own CIC, Development in Social Enterprise!

The model of business is simple, I work with a range of quality assured [SFEDI] associates so that we can provide expert, qualified and experienced business support and consultancy that is value for money, no massive overheads to pay, “simples” as that funny meerkat says! And, dare I say it, perfect for the current market where many organisations need support, but have little money.

But what about social mission? Ah yes, this is extremely important as I keep bleating on about in my posts. It’s all in the name really, Development in Social Enterprise works with community based Individuals and organisations to develop new services or products which have impact in their local communities. Directors are also committing to provide free support to some start-up enterprises along the way, as we know starting out is difficult and usually on a budget of about £0. Our CIC is ltd by guarantee not shares.

I’ll be keeping a start-up diary here too, so hopefully this will become a very useful free resource to you all. I’d also recommend looking at Start Up Donut which I find useful.

So keep watching or sign up as there will be some very interesting learning to come in this series of my start-up journey.