Serving Community Enterprise

January 2010 Blog Posts (8)

the secret truth about business plans?

As an enterprise/business advisor (a graduate of 2 university degrees in business, a member of various professional bodies, and published by peer review on business support), I've had a lot of time to think about business plans.

And there's a lot of stuff about them out there: courses, books, templates, on-line tools and programmes, consultants offering to write yours for you...

However, there always seems to be an underlying assumption that whenever you start to talk… Continue

Added by Adrian Ashton on January 27, 2010 at 14:44 — 1 Comment

EIS for CICs

My slides on the Enterprise Investment Scheme for Community Interest Companies are now available here: EIS for CICs.pdf.

If you have any questions, do get in touch.

Alastair

Added by Alastair Irvine on January 22, 2010 at 16:30 — 1 Comment

Powerpoint for CIC Start 2010 Event

Here's my powerpoint from CIC Start 2010, which covers the main themes and objectives. Some real progress has been made and I will be putting out some copy on the back of the event shortly.

CIC_Start 2010Jan10.ppt

cheers

John

Added by John Mulkerrin on January 21, 2010 at 15:00 — 6 Comments

CIOs - Charitable Incorporated Organisations

If anyone is interested in looking at CIOs, I have just produced a briefing on these. I think CIOs could be a very effective tool for CICs to use if they wish to set up a charitable arm to their activities, as well as reducing the regulatory burdens for existing charitable companies. There is also the potential to convert from a CIC to a CIO which is useful in a range of scenarios, including to benefit from tax exemptions as a charity. The briefing can be found by… Continue

Added by Heidi Fisher on January 13, 2010 at 21:03 — 7 Comments

Writing a social statement

Does anyone have any thoughts on writing a social statement

Added by SUE ELLIS on January 10, 2010 at 16:38 — 6 Comments

What is a social enterprise

I am writing a paper called "What is a social enterprise?". This paper forms part of a survey we plan to carry out of social enterprises in our local area of Leicester, Leicestershhire and Rutland. Copies of this paper are available on request to anyone who would comment back to me on it. We are also members of SEEM -Social Enterprise in the East Midlands.

This paper has now been published on my own blog

Added by Trevor Locke on January 8, 2010 at 14:00 — 5 Comments

Caps set at 20% (shares) and 10% (performance loans)

Here's the link to the Regulators full response

http://www.cicregulator.gov.uk/consultationresponse.shtml

Please put your thoughts on record here, from an initial reading I have to say this looks quite balanced and positive.

The concern regarding it causing a detrimental effect to any grant funding has been noted so hopefully we'll get some centralised work done on that, the… Continue

Added by John Mulkerrin on January 5, 2010 at 21:51 — 13 Comments

if we don't start to value our own people more, social enterprise will be lost...

The recently published national Careers and Salary Survey 2009/10 (regeneration & renewal 09/21/09) makes for sobering reading for the social enterprise sector:

1) future career opportunities and prospects in social enterprise are felt to be more affected and limited by changes to funding regimes than in the private and public sector;

2) social enterprise (while it may 'punch above its weight') apparently pays its people less than is fair - typical sector salaries see… Continue

Added by Adrian Ashton on January 4, 2010 at 20:24 — No Comments