Marked for success or more confusion?

The principle aim of the Community Interest Company (CIC) was as an easy identifier for social enterprises, but this seems not to have happened in the way people hoped – perhaps because as a legal form CICs offer no features that are inherently unique (i.e. protected asset locks and principle purposes can be entrenched in other legal forms).

But we now have the shiny new Social Enterprise Mark, which will hopefully have a better chance of being the easy identifier as it’s based on recognising defining characteristics of social enterprise in whatever legal form or structured they are enshrined.

BUT... will this Mark spark a new market for ‘marks’? The Soil Association and FairTrade Foundation were both pioneers in certifying organic and fairly traded goods, but other organisations offering organic and fair trade certifications have since emerged...

So perhaps we should be more open to the other ‘marks’ that are available to social enterprises to seek (the Social Firms Star for instance), and welcome others’ attempts to introduce other standards (there’s moves for a worker co-op mark, and Scotland did look at having its own mark as well) and explore how they might best complement each other.

Ultimately though, the Social Enterprise Mark shouldn’t be a holy grail, but one of a number of tools that we should approach and consider its appropriateness to us in the context of our enterprises’ own needs and marketplaces. Some will take the mark and use it to great commercial advantage I’m sure, while for others it simply won’t be relevant...

does your legal form make you a social enterprise?

The current launch of the national social enterprise mark has brought to the fore once again the issue of how we identify and recognise social enterprise.


Many argue that in order to be a 'true' social enterprise, your organisation must exhibit specific characteristics and that these must be present in one of a number of limited legal forms (limited in number and choice, that is) - asset locks, accountability to more than just investors, controls on how profits and used and distributed, and so on...


Given the complexity and range of such characteristics, most generally accept that any form of co-operative, company limited by guarantee, CIC or other similar legal forms are acceptable as 'true' social enterprises.



BUT - what about the S&M Club that almost became a CIC (pdf article - see p2)? the Thailand lap dancers co-operative? and so on...


Given the importance that as a sector we ensure that our image is consistent and easily understood, should be perhaps be moving away from simply accepting enterprises at face value on the basis of their legal form?

especially when those legal forms can be used for activities and services that we would not necessarily recognise as meeting social and environmental needs...

Hypocrisy over social enterprise marks?

I recently learnt that RISE, the regional social enterprise partnership that developed and pioneered what’s tipped to become ‘the’ quality standard for social enterprise kite marks, hasn’t actually been award the standard itself, despite using the image prominently on its literature.

Looking into this area further, Social Firms UK, the national body who’ve developed the ‘Star Social Firms’ kite mark in partnership with SFEDI, haven’t actually been awarded it themselves either.

So what’s going on? Is it a case of ‘do as we say, but not as we do’ by the great and the good, or perhaps indicative of something else –is it a case that the criteria of these kite marks are too prescriptive and not able to fully recognise the diversity of our sector? (the national review of the social enterprise mark underway at the moment would seem to support this). Or perhaps its more to do with the desire that as a sector we get on with ‘doing’: a key criteria of these kite marks is in relation to trading, so are our networking/umbrella/apex bodies perhaps not entrepreneurial enough? (which harks back to my concern that their message is becoming ‘do as we say, but not as we do’).

Either way, this surely only contributes to confusion about social enterprise that many within and without our sector have about what we are…