Unlocking the impact of our social organisations

The event celebrated social organisations as beacons of inclusion, diversity and opportunity and reconsidered their role in supporting the region, socially and economically. Speakers shared their best practice to help these organisations expand their impact through partnerships, funding and engagement with the private sector.

The Ford Family Foundation also attended to hear from six fantastic social enterprises, who pitched for up to £200k of investment to increase their scalability, growth and social impact. Our fingers remain firmly crossed for those pitching!

As part of the event, we asked the organisations about their support needs and the impact of meeting these needs. If the non-financial development needs were met, they indicated they could support an additional 12,350 clients.

This would hugely increase the support for mental health, PTSD recovery, veterans, under-represented communities, raising aspirations, and all the other amazing work our social organisations do for our communities. They also indicated that this work would generate an additional £4.8m in income.

Director of Enterprise Works, Sam Gardner said “We were really blown away by the passion, commitment and impact shown by the social organisations and surprised by the significant economic and social impacts of increasing support for this sector. There is such an opportunity here”.