Suicide prevention organisation Pieta House, autism advocacy group AsIAm, food redistribution organisation FoodCloud and education market leveller jumpAgrade are all examples of successful social enterprises. With their distinct agendas, they form part of a diverse and growing tapestry of organisations tackling issues that their founders believe can best be solved through their unique models.
Operating across sectors as diverse as healthcare, social inclusion, disability, education, arts and heritage, and community development, among many others, social enterprises play a significant role in supporting the implementation of important social agendas, both nationally and locally, across a wide spectrum of Irish life.
Tim Griffiths, chief executive of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI), has a very clear view of the vital role social entrepreneurs play in making Ireland a better place.
“Social entrepreneurs are society’s problem solvers. They see problems, they develop solutions, and they have a bias for action. They typically have a unique insight into a problem and can look beyond the horizon of the current way of doing things. They can see things that nobody else sees and they are willing and able to do things that nobody else can or will do.”
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Social entrepreneurship was not a well understood or recognised concept until relatively recently but has undergone an explosion in the past two decades, a period coinciding with the launch of SEI in 2004. SEI helps to develop social entrepreneurs through a range of programmes involving early and developmental-phase funding, training and mentoring, and providing accelerated support for high potential impact enterprises. Since its foundation SEI has supported more than 650 enterprises.
A report last year by the Department of Rural and Community Development shows that the Republic is home to 4,335 social enterprises, with an estimated income of €2.34 billion.
This significant income figure underlines one of the key differences between social enterprises and traditional charities or not-for-profits: while many receive philanthropic support, social enterprises often have a sustainable revenue model as well, making them more akin to a commercial business.
There can be more similarities than differences between traditional entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs.
“In terms of the commonality, both feature incredibly driven people who have come up with ground-breaking ideas that often challenge the status quo in either a commercial environment or in a social environment. All of the challenges that you experience in business, such as how to develop and sustain a viable enterprise, as well as legal and HR issues, are there for social entrepreneurs too,” says Griffiths.
“In many ways, social enterprises have to operate to a higher level of standards, especially in the area of governance. There is an additional challenge there to stay true to the mission when sometimes it is not the most economically advantageous thing to do.”
Iseult Ward, co-founder, along with Aoibheann O’Brien, of FoodCloud, which redistributes surplus food directly to charitable causes, agrees.
“As social enterprises, we have to balance two focuses: building sustainable revenue streams and maximising the impact that we make,” she says. “That can lead to having to make trade-offs and difficult decisions. In a purely commercially driven business you tend to have just one goal – that of maximising shareholder value.”
However, with corporations having to increasingly lean into their environmental and social responsibilities, the differences are not as acute now as they once were.
“Traditional business has a lot to learn from the social enterprise sector as a result,” says Ward.
Indeed, one of the more interesting aspects of FoodCloud’s operations is that a key part of its funding model is that it earns money from the end-to-end technology platform it developed to cope with its own logistics challenges in sourcing and distributing food, and which it allows others to access. Businesses that donate food, for example, pay to use this platform to track their activities and social impact as part of their ESG reporting. The technology has also been rolled out in food banks in other countries, including the UK, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Indonesia.
The motivation for setting up FoodCloud was the fact that between 30 and 40 per cent of food is wasted globally while 800 million people don’t have enough to eat.
Now 12 years in operation, it delivers 1.5 million meals a week and has been responsible for more than 317 million meals being redistributed in Ireland and internationally since its foundation. FoodCloud has overcome many challenges, including the lack of a food-bank culture in Ireland, which involved education and reassurance for stakeholders involved in the supply chain, including food businesses and regulatory bodies such as the Food Safety Authority.
Niamh Tallon is another social entrepreneur with a strong sense of personal motivation. A digital marketing graduate and keen sports enthusiast, who had worked in a number of traditional businesses, she launched Her Sport because of the disparity between male and female sports participation and the negative effects this was having on girls and women.
One in two girls drop out of sport by the age of 20 while four times as many girls as boys drop out between primary and secondary school, Tallon points out, while level of self-esteem and confidence are much lower among Irish girls than the international norm. Sport can play a big role in addressing empowerment issues for girls and women, she says.
“Research shows that girls who play sport become women who lead and some 94 per cent of women in executive management positions have a background in sport,” says Tallon. “I would have noticed a lot of my peers dropping out of sport. It struck me that they were missing out on a whole load of opportunities.”
Her Sport delivers workshops for schools, clubs and businesses and has an online community of more than 250,000, encouraging participation in sport as well as promoting coverage of female sport, something that has been greatly underrepresented to date, Tallon says. And the work appears to be making an impact. A survey for Her Sport showed that, of those who were currently not participating in sport, 87 per cent said they were encouraged to try it again.
Looking at the wider picture of social entrepreneurship in Ireland, the department’s report found that while about half of the recognised base of social enterprises have been established for more than 20 years, approximately 16 per cent were established within the past four years, suggesting a dynamic and evolving sector.
Social enterprises account for 3.7 per cent of the total Irish workforce – 84,382 people. Women represent 69 per cent of social enterprise workers. This is broadly in line with the social economy throughout the OECD, reflecting in part the specialisation of the of the social economy in historically feminised sectors and occupations such as care, health and education.
Irish social enterprises are active in a broad range of sectors, in line with other EU countries. These include childcare, community infrastructure and local development, health, youth services, social care and heritage, festivals, the arts, and heritage, sectors which together account for over just over two-thirds of the social enterprise sector. Other areas include sport and leisure, training and work integration, housing, food, catering and hospitality, environmental services, retailing, transport, and financial services.
About 75 per cent of social enterprises have a local focus, while 15 per cent operate internationally. Most derive their income from a mix of trading goods and services, and government grants. A significant portion (40 per cent) have an annual income of less than €100,000, with the median annual income standing at €180,000. Around half of the social enterprise workforce is part-time and social enterprises are mostly made up of micro (57 per cent) and small enterprises (35 per cent).
Griffiths says the promoters are very much the driving forces behind these enterprises, especially in the foundation and early-stage development phases.
“Social entrepreneurs are often powered by their lived experience, which can give them a unique insight,” he says. “They may not have the business experience but they have as much potential in any case as anyone else. What we try to do in SEI is to accelerate closing that experience and expertise gap to get their enterprise up and running or to take it to the next level.”
Running a social enterprise has many challenges and while, as in the commercial sector, not all will succeed, Griffiths says the impact these unique organisations have is profound.
“It’s tough,” he says. “Changing systems to solve social problems is incredibly difficult, as you come across a lot of barriers. It’s what make the successful social enterprises such special projects involving people who can navigate such barriers and still keep going.”