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At around midday yesterday, the School for Startups team welcomed a packed audience of entrepreneurs who had traveled from all around the UK, to pass through the historic doors of the Royal Institution, for a precious seat in its sold out auditorium in London. Our first event this year, Growing a Successful Social Enterprise was an open panel exploration of the issues and burning questions arising from this relatively new and often misinterpreted business classification.

Delivering our curriculum in his trademark charismatic and direct style, Doug gave his run down of the core principles behind starting a social enterprise. One of the take home points of this discussion was that the distinction between a social enterprise and an enterprise in its most commonly understood form is largely blurred. Hence, collectively we can refer to social enterprises as simply enterprises, for business analysis purposes and treat them as such when applying our core considerations.

These considerations were delivered by Doug in the form of 20 key questions – the questions that every business must ask itself in order to determine its core value proposition and long term sustainability. In our usual day-long events, we would explore all of these questions over a period of eight hours, but since a wealth of information had to be covered, Doug explained a brief overview of the key concepts behind these highly effective so-called ‘thinking tools’.

After the overview, invited to the stage for a joint session with Doug was Carole Anne Rice of The Real Coaching Company. Carole’s company is aimed at entrepreneurs who want a more objective approach to their skills training and personal development. She provides coaching and assistance in areas such as goal setting and motivation, helping entrepreneurs to stay focused and drive ahead with their ideas. Its clear that coaching is a highly competitive field that has recently taken off in the UK, following on from the US where it originated.

Next on Doug’s discussion list was our first Featured Entrepreneur Samantha Kelly, who described her early stage venture aimed at helping juvenile detainees and ex-prisoners with personal development. The distinction between what constitutes a charity and an enterprise arose which highlighted the need for further research into the area, with a specific focus on funding and monitoring the overall efficacy of the new service.

We then welcomed our special guest for the afternoon, Uday Thakker, founder of Red Ochre a consulting company that helps small businesses looking for training and preparation prior to starting social enterprises. Uday highlighted in great depth, the various categories of the social business legal framework as it stands today and mentioned the inherent lack of official legal definition for a social enterprise. Positioning your venture within this framework is critical since it has a direct effect on  scalability and the regulatory requirements which may arise.

After a brief Q&A session with Uday, Julie Devonshire, CEO of Global Ethics Ltd. delivered an immensely powerful presentation on how social enterprise can create real positive change in the developing world. Her flagship product, called One, is a mineral water stocked by major retailers that donates one hundred percent of its profits into creating water pumps in Malawi in the form of children’s playground equipment. A former director of Investors in People, Julie explained how the novel equipment stores water for villagers and how her venture has resulted in providing more than two million African people with clean drinking water. Over the last four years, the company has donated an estimated £3m and it has also branched out into distributing contraception and HIV testing. Julie’s company made an impact with our captivated audience as a truly successful model social enterprise and we are confident that we will be hearing more about her future successes.

The afternoon’s focus fell on our second Featured Entrepreneur, Philippa White, of The International Exchange (T.I.E). Philippa’s company offers people working in the  communication sector the opportunity to volunteer their skills in the developing world to enhance their career and gain new life experiences. Doug offered Philippa some great advice on how to leverage her sources of professionals, some of whom are high profile marketing and PR agencies, to gain the necessary resources to help grow the company and make it sustainable.

We then explored the role of the investor in channeling funds into social ventures with the help of Jonathan Jenkins of UnLtd and Anthony Ross of Bridges Ventures. Jonathan explained the various options available to social entrepreneurs for sourcing funding to support their ventures. Anthony explained the details typical investors look for in a prospective company or organisation and answered questions about the typical terms and fund sizes consistent with the industry. Jonathan was asked by our audience how a growing social enterprise sector might affect funds and the economy as a whole. As it happens, we may not see an instant change in the funding approach as funds remain largely tied down by government regulations. There does however seem to be some light at the end of the tunnel since this sector is rapidly changing and we may see some new opportunities open up.

Moving on, we introduced the third Featured Entrepreneur showcase, Tom Rippin, founder of On Purpose who talked about his one year  leadership program aimed at placing tomorrows leaders into leadership positions in high profile companies like O2 and Comic Relief, to enhance their careers and learn about the day-to-day running of such organisations. Associates are paid an equivalent of £20k as part of the training programme, however there were some details about the sourcing of funds that required further research.

Next up on the Featured Entrepreneur hot seat was Darren Taylor, founder of Eco Computers who gave a fascinating account about how his company has helped disadvantaged youth by training individuals in computer refurbishment, repair and sales. Additionally, employees who complete twenty hours of work are awarded with a computer which proves a brilliantly effective incentive. Taylor was applauded by our crowd for his achievement in growing a company that was originally denied funding. The computer entrepreneur naturally struck a chord with Doug’s industry background and Doug remarked that the idea ‘was genius’.

After a brief networking break, S4Stv started its live broadcast where several entrepreneurs surgeries began. Doug was rejoined by Anthony to help advise our fledgling entrepreneurs. A live twitter feed enabled viewers from our auditorium and web watchers to post their comments and thoughts on the businesses presented. For more information about the entrepreneurs interviewed please visit the featured entrepreneurs page here. The S4Stv broadcast covering all the surgeries can be viewed here.

Enthusiastic as ever, our growing community of entrepreneurs commented on the thorough, practical advice presented by Doug and our special guests as well as the timely nature of the debates and key questions. This morning we’ve been receiving a constant influx of positive emails and comments on the site about our Growing a Successful Social Enterprise event and we will hopefully be responding shortly to all of them. In the meantime, stay tuned for our next event and if you haven’t done so already, register for our site here to stay up to date and in touch.

Tags: Live Event, Royal Institution, Social Enterprise

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