GOOD DEALS
the first national social investment conference
6 May 2008
LSO St Lukes, 161 Old Street, London EC1V 9NG
Office of the Third Sector
The Office of the Third Sector leads work across government to support the environment for a thriving third sector (voluntary and community groups, social enterprises, charities, cooperatives and mutuals), enabling the sector to campaign for change, deliver public services, promote social enterprise and strengthen communities.
The Office of the Third Sector was created in May 2006, incorporating the responsibilities of the Active Communities Directorate in the Home Office, and the Social Enterprise Unit in the Department for Trade and Industry. We are part of the Cabinet Office, at the centre of government in the Cabinet Office in recognition of the increasingly important role the third sector plays in both society and the economy.
The Office of the Third Sector's responsibilities include national policy on social enterprise. Our social enterprise activity is focused on working across government to create an environment in the UK for social enterprises to thrive. Our vision is of a dynamic and sustainable social enterprise sector contributing to a stronger economy and a fairer society.
www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/thirdsector
NESTA
Challenge at NESTA is a portfolio of work designed to understand and accelerate social innovation. Through practical experiments, NESTA tests hypotheses about how a more enabling environment can be created and sets out to make it happen.
Our Big Green Challenge, for example, is examining ways of stimulating the scale of response the UK needs for civic action on climate change. The Health Innovation Accelerator, delivered with the Young Foundation, works arms-length but closely co-ordinated with the NHS to design and incubate the new models needed to tackle long term conditions. Innovations in Mental Health is forging pathways to scale for innovations from users and frontline staff in a system in which innovation is suppressed.
In similar ways, Challenge is working as a market-developer to create access to risk capital for social enterprises. This will mean creating new supplies of finance, but also doing much more to help social enterprises understand what difference new kinds of capital can mean to them through investment-readiness services and training. It will mean uncovering and amplifying hidden innovations, connecting investors and investees in new ways, building capacity among professional advisors, improving financial planning capacity in social enterprises and attempting to simply the regulatory environment, for example, developing more systematic guidance on the application of State Aid directives to social venturing.
NESTA’s mission is to transform the UK’s capacity for innovation.
RBS Group
At RBS Group, we are continually looking for ways in which we can contribute better to the communities that we operate in. Our Community Banking team is at the heart of our activities with a particular focus on people, places and organisations.
For us, this is about assisting disadvantaged people and communities into
the economic mainstream and helping deprived neighbourhoods become more
enterprising. We are focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs to realise
their dreams of starting up in business.
We also give help and advice to not-for-profit organisations that are often
at the heart of efforts to build stronger communities, we realise that these
organisations are themselves working to become more enterprising.
We strongly believe social enterprises are an important contributor to the
growth and regeneration of local communities. It is not easy we know, to
set up and run a business - even more so, a social enterprise. They challenge
the accepted ways of doing things. It’s not that they set out to be
awkward, but having discovered better, more suitable ways to tackle some
of the most pressing social, economic and environmental issues facing us
today, it’s hard to accept the status quo.
By focusing our activities on these areas, the Community Banking team is able to show that by working together, the private, public and third sector can make a real and lasting difference to the lives of people in some of our poorest communities.
Community Banking Team:
020 7427 9139
Social Enterprise magazine
Social Enterprise is the only magazine dedicated to social entrepreneurs and their businesses within the UK. And – so we are told – we were actually the first magazine for the social enterprise movement in the world. Now in our seventh year, our knowledge of the UK sector is unrivalled.
Through our monthly magazine and daily online news, our mission is to bring together the huge range of individuals and organisations in the social enterprise movement in a space where they can learn about and inspire one another – and tell the rest of the world what they’re missing.
The printed magazine and our daily web-based news service provide all the most up-to-date and essential news, politics, finance and practical information for social business people. Coupled with expert insights and columns from some of the sector’s most inspiring and controversial thought – leaders, Social Enterprise is something that anybody truly interested in doing business for social and environmental aims can’t afford to miss out on.