Why Is Community Essential to Sustaining Social Impact?
At The Federation, did you know we’re home to a change-making community of innovative ethical and tech enterprises?
All committed to people-powered social and environmental progress, twenty-eight social enterprises have been brought together by the Co-op Foundation and Luminate to collectively pioneer fairer and sustainable futures for people, communities, society and the environment.
It makes for a heady combination of social and tech innovation too. Organisations like Ethics Kit and Open Data Manchester are chipping away at the digital industry’s need for more responsible tech. InnovateHer, Hive Digital and Digital Advantage are leading the way in digital education across Greater Manchester through their GMCA backed Go Digital programme.
Education is a strong theme amongst the ethical enterprises at The Federation, with Children’s University and PIE creating opportunities for more contextual, child-led and character-building learning opportunities, but health is key too. FreshRb are engaging communities to change behaviours around the impacts of ageing, and tech for good is taking on a whole new meaning at WeAreAssif, who are utilising AI to diagnose and support mental health issues.
National issues are countenanced by local responses too. Invisible Cities Manchester and Noisy Cricket’s HI Future venture are turning social mobility employment on its head, and with Amity CIC on hand with facilitation expertise, Cohesion Integration Network pushing for cross-sector collaboration and Tech for Good Live providing a global platform, the collective impact is phenomenal.
Yet, as diverse as the issues and approaches of these organisations, in coming together as a community, exploring collaborations and investing in learning opportunities to enable our growth, commonalities are emerging. Key learnings, that in the surfacing, can help us sustain our efforts as individual organisations as much as it informs a broader conversation on how profit, purpose, people and the planet might work cohesively for the benefit of all.
That’s what our ethical enterprises exist for, after all. Here’s what we’ve found…
- A social enterprise exists under one business model, but the dual nature of creating income and driving impact means that two value propositions often exist within one venture. To sustain our enterprises, we need to create value (for customers) and change (for our beneficiaries).
- As social value isn’t always seen as valuable in capital terms, generating income to fuel impact can be challenging. This is further complicated when you realise that as a social enterprise, you’re often working at the root of systemic, cultural or personal issues in the place they were created, where resistance is common and change takes time.
- The outcome is twice the work for less (financial) reward and continuously having to chip away at entrenched inequity, inequality and injustice with little understanding of the worth of your organisation’s work. It’s hard graft but explains why social entrepreneurs, innovators and change-makers have such a strong sense of purpose. You need it.
- Resilience and self-belief are also key. Challenging a globally held capitalist mindset when it comes to value and working directly with those individuals, organisations and institutions where the problems often originate to create new solutions take a strong will. A will that you will constantly need to balance with your health and wealth.
- Speaking of wealth, social enterprises tend to walk a precarious line when it comes to their finances. Generating enough income to pay the bills is common to us all, but the nature of our work often means that profit can feel like a dirty word. Yet, that profit is needed to fuel our purpose, so get our hands dirty we must.
- Hard work and dirty hands rarely translate to robust health, however. On any given day, between two and four of us will be teetering on the brink of burn out. Being intently focused on our respective purposes, running a tight ship organisationally speaking and often feeling your work is misunderstood leads to isolation too.
It’s why through The Federation, building a connected, supportive and mutually understanding community is key. Monthly socials where we cut loose, regular scrums where we soapbox our issues and share best practise and successes and collaborative projects where we can share values, expertise and impact helps.
Its the safety, connection and shared sense of purpose that comes from working alongside other ethical enterprises at The Federation that makes the difference, and in creating fairer and more sustainable futures, for our ethical enterprises and the broader context of our work, it has to start with those purposeful individuals and organisations first.
