News Release 2 July 2010

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE REDEFINES THE PROFIT MOTIVE

A new way of doing business is being discovered in Australia. Owned by groups of
people, charities or clusters of organisations getting together, social enterprises are doing good by doing business. Outlook Environmental employs people with mental illness in community recycling centres, reducing landfill waste. StrEAT gives homeless young people a chance to make money as street vendors of healthy fast food. The Brotherhood of St Laurence has created jobs for unemployed residents of the Fitzroy and Collingwood public housing towers by taking over a private contract for security guards and turning it into a community contact and
concierge service.

For these enterprises and thousands like them, profits are counted not just in dollars, but also in terms of people’s improved life chances, or benefits to the environment.

Profits can also be returned to communities of owners or service users. When the
Yackandandah petrol station threatened to close, local residents got together, created the Yackandandah Community Development Company, and raised the capital to keep it open through an unlisted share offer.

There are thousands of examples of social enterprises like these around Australia. Though they are a longstanding hidden engine of the Australian economy, they have never before been counted.

Research released this week by Social Traders and the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies (ACPNS) at QUT has surveyed 365 out of the estimated 20,000 social enterprises in Australia.

All of them have in common a commitment to reinvesting the majority of their profits, or surplus, back into the fulfillment of their organizational mission.

Findings of the research:

• Social enterprises operate in every industry of the Australian economy but particularly in the fields of education and training, arts and recreation
• The main aims of social enterprises are to create opportunities for people to participate in their community and to develop new solutions to social, cultural, economic and environmental problems
• Social enterprises are intended to serve an extraordinarily diverse range of social groups. Young people are most frequently cited as beneficiaries.
• For nearly 80 per cent of the social enterprises surveyed, the way they do business has to be aligned with their mission, and for most (65 per cent) what goods and services they trade are directly related to their mission.

“Our research suggests that the Australian social enterprise sector is mature, sustainable and internally diverse in both its purpose and organizational structures ‘’ said the principal researcher and author of the report, Associate Professor Jo Barraket from The Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit studies at QUT.

Though this social enterprise survey gives us information about key business features of social enterprises, more research is needed to find out how they create employment, what kind of social impact they achieve, and why some succeed while others fail.

A policy roundtable was convened by Social Traders in Melbourne on 30 June to discuss the research findings and future research priorities for this emerging sector.

To download the research

Both the summary report and the final report are available from
http://www.socialtraders.com.au/finding-australias-social-enterprise-sector-fases

For more information contact:

May Lam
Policy and Research
Social Traders
P: 03 8319 8442
M: 0405549589