Adrian Ashton's Blog (20)

About a year ago, I argued the pressing and urgent need for social enterprises to value their people more or risk losing them.



Sadly the latest national salary and careers survey seems to suggest that these warnings have fallen on deaf…

so - this may (hopefully) provoke some discussion: a posting on a LinkedIn group recently said that of the 5000+ registered CICs, only 1% were co-operatives and the majority are 'inactive' (not trading) which was based on the authors looking up their records at Companies House.

if this is the case, then this surely poses an urgent question for the Association - namely what's going on if people are incorporating as CICs but then not actually doing anything? I know that the CIC…

There’s increasing interest from politicians and investors for social enterprises to enter ‘non-traditional’ market places (apparently there’s a belief that social enterprises don’t usually foray out of construction, catering or childcare into markets like telecoms, IT, financial services, etc etc...), especially into industries where private businesses have failed.





So – leaving aside the argument that if other businesses fail in these markets, where is the logic in us…

Co-operative enterprises are extremely varied in their basis for membership, forms and structures, but all share a common global basis of…

a charity made front page news by closing after receiving £100,000 from the Home Office because it's been "too successful" in reducing crime and so its services are no longer needed.



Well done to them - rather than try and continue a service that no one wants/needs, or to re-invent themselves with new services (which would undoubtedly have moved in into areas different to those that originally attracted its staff, volunteers, trustees and other supporters to it), they've decided to…

dear all - sadly my main website is unwell.



Hopefully back up before too long, but until then thanks for your patience if you're trying to access copies of any of my published articles, cheesy pics or links...



in the meantime you can still see my blog - http://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com, follow my tweets at…

There’s a regular feature in a private business management magazine that asks prominent business leaders each issue if, with hindsight, they’d have done anything differently if they had their time again.



Recently, at a networking event organised by Social Enterprise Yorkshire & Humber and Unltd, I had the opportunity to ask a panel of prominent and successful social entrepreneurs what they, if they had their time again, and with the benefit of hindsight, might do differently.…

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…