During 2020 a small group of organisations in the social enterprise sector got together to talk about how we might strengthen the sector over the long term. We shared an ambition to create a national social enterprise strategy, similar to those in other parts of the world.
The group included ACRE, Social Traders, SENVIC, SASEC, YLab and Good Cycles with coordination and seed funding from the English Family Foundation. With support from additional philanthropic foundations, the Yunus Centre was engaged as the project partner. This collection of 8 organisations formed the Social enterprise National Strategy (SENS) Advisory Committee.
The Advisory Committee has now released two reports publicly:
- Part One: a summary of themes, tensions & provocations, capturing the history and learning in the social enterprise sector in Australia and internationally.
- Part Two: a possible pathway for building the connective tissue across the Australian social enterprise sector so that collectively we can amplify our impact. It asks us to consider – what would it look like if we were to better organise at a national level?
The next step in the project is to form a governance structure to enable the project to move forward, including wide sector consultation and co-creation. A third part of the report will be used during the co-creation process and is available on request.
In the interim, the reports are being released across the social enterprise sector and we encourage everyone to share the reports widely.
Social enterprise National Strategy Advisory Group members:
- English Family Foundation (Belinda Morrissey)
- Yunus Centre at Griffith University (Alex Hannant, Jo McNeill, Ingrid Burkett)
- ACRE (Matt Pfahlert)
- Social Traders (Tara Anderson)
- SENVIC (Nick Verginis)
- SASEC (Sharon Zivkovic)
- YLab (Michael Lim)
- Good Cycles (Jaison Hoernel)
Access the Part 1 & Part 2 reports:
https://www.griffith.edu.au/griffith-business-school/yunus-centre/our-work
Footage courtesy Impact Boom, Social Enterprise Council of NSW and ACT, Queensland Social Enterprise Council, Social Enterprise World Forum. Production gifted by Digital Storytellers.