Sponsors

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources - 170,000 people in 49 countries - and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilise the right people, skills and technologies to help clients improve their performance. As a leading corporate organisation we have a clear responsibility to our communities and to society at large. The health, stability and diversity of our communities affects us all and Accenture UK is at the forefront of creating positive and lasting change. Guided by our community objectives, we aim to promote positive social transformation by working with community partners that share our vision of a sustainable, diverse and skilled society. Importantly, our people are committed to contributing to this vision. During 2008 we will seek new ways to place corporate citizenship at the heart of our business through giving our time and skills, our structured financial giving, the initiatives we have in place to create a workforce that is representative of society at large and by continuing to assess and reduce our environmental impact.

For further information, please contact Donna Drysdale, donna.drysdale@accenture.com or visit www.accenture.com

The Office of the Third Sector is responsible for supporting and developing government policy for the third sector including voluntary and community organisations, charities and social enterprise. We are part of the Cabinet Office, in the centre of government, in recognition of the increasingly important role the third sector plays in both society and the economy.

Our vision

A thriving third sector, enabling people to change society.

Our aims

Our overarching aim is to:

• Develop an environment which enables the third sector to thrive, growing in its contribution to Britain's society, economy and environment.

Our thematic aims are to work in partnership with the sector to:

• Enable campaigning and empowerment, particularly for those at risk of social exclusion.
• Strengthen communities, drawing together people from different sections of society.
• Transform public services, through delivery, design, innovation and campaigning.
• Enable social enterprise growth and development, combining business and social goals.

Our role

We deliver on our aims by:

• Driving action to improve government and third sector partnership working, such as promoting the Compact.
• Funding programmes to support the sector's development, such as Capacitybuilders and Futurebuilders.
• Ensuring a good regulatory environment for the sector, such as the implementation of the Charities Act 2006.
• Developing the evidence base and analysis of the sector, in work such as the Citizenship Survey, to better inform the work of the Government and third sector.

Contact us: OTS.info@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk, 020 7276 6400

DCSF and DIUS are pleased to support the first Young Voice, a conference designed to help and promote young social entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. So many young people are keen to change society for the better in all areas: including in the environment; in the business world; and in social justice. And they have the skills, enthusiasm and dynamism to achieve this!

Through our investment in Enterprise Education, which develops their creativity and business awareness, through to funding youth-based social enterprises, DCSF is proud to nurture young talent. And DIUS is keen to target those students interested in starting up social enterprises through its funding of the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship which, through its Flying Start 3-day residential programme, supports a range of workshops and online personal support including advice and mentoring.

Together we want to see young people considering social enterprise as a career option, both as employees and as entrepreneurs themselves.

The Department of Health’s Social Enterprise Unit has been set up to encourage innovation and entrepreneurialism in health and social care and pave the way for new services that better meet patients’ and service users needs. The Social Enterprise Unit aims to provide advice and support to social enterprise organisations and commissioners in the health and social care sector.

Within this role the Social Enterprise Unit is working with social enterprise pathfinders that will lead the way in delivering innovative health and social care services. The learning from these pathfinders will be shared across the health and social care sector so that others can benefit from the pathfinders’ experience.

The Social Enterprise Unit now has a dedicated social enterprise investment fund in place to help aspirant and existing social enterprises within health and social care with set up costs.

If you would like further information, or to get in touch with the Social Enterprise Unit, please e-mail: social.enterprise@dh.gsi.gov.uk

Liverpool City Council has been supporting social enterprise development since 1995 via a network of community-led economic development agencies enabling community and social entrepreneurs to develop their own social businesses via advice, grants and a number of focused interventions.

The current service is located within BusinessLiverpool (www.businessliverpool.co.uk) and as well as a managing a social enterprise support service, the sector benefits from a number of specific projects:

• In 2007 the Liverpool School for Social Entrepreneurs (www.sse.org.uk), a partnership with the SSE and local social enterprise Blackburne House, recruited the first of 30 students who aim to go on and create new trading enterprises.  It has also just launched a new Cultural Leaders Program for social entrepreneurs in the cultural and creative sector.

• The Liverpool Academy of Sustainable Enterprise delivers a program of leadership training, professional development and mentoring for social entrepreneurs and managers will be three years old in 2008.

• A new e-learning program for social enterprise planning has been developed by local social enterprise Pulse Regeneration (www.pulseregeneration.co.uk) and access to it and further development is being sponsored by Business Liverpool.

• We are also piloting a new Social Return on Investment tool (www.sellingaddedvalue.co.uk) which we hope will improve marketing and procurement opportunities for social enterprise.

Since 2004, these programs have helped create around 50 new social enterprises and well over £6m of new turnover as well as assisting a further 90 existing social businesses in social businesses.

The City Council and BusinessLiverpool are proud to be sponsors of Voice08 in Liverpool. Please contact Jerry Spencer on 0151 233-5453 or Paul Brown 233-5328 for more information.

The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) leads the economic development and regeneration of England's Northwest. As a business-led organisation, the NWDA provides a crucial link between the needs of business and Government policies. As such, a major responsibility for the Agency is to help create an environment in which businesses in the region can flourish through offering business support, encouraging new start-ups, matching skills provision to employer needs and bringing business investment into the region. The NWDA also recognises that social enterprises can be a catalyst for regeneration so has an active programme of support for their development.

The Regional Economic Strategy, which underpins everything the NWDA does, identifies the need for 38,000 firms per year to be created in order to reach the UK average. To assist in achieving this, the NWDA is committed to increasing the formation, survival and growth rates of enterprises in the Northwest, improving the availability of business finance and influencing Government policy on small business regulation. The Agency is also committed to creating an enterprise culture that encourages individuals and businesses to take opportunities, start new businesses and make existing businesses become more innovative.

For more information about support available to social enterprises, call the Business Link Northwest service on 0845 00 66 888.

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At RBS Group, we are continually looking for ways in which we can contribute better to the communities that we operate in. Our Community Banking team is at the heart of our activities with a particular focus on people, places and organisations.

For us, this is about assisting disadvantaged people and communities into the economic mainstream and helping deprived neighbourhoods become more enterprising.

We are focused on helping aspiring entrepreneurs to realise their dreams of starting up in business.

We also give help and advice to not-for-profit organisations that are often at the heart of efforts to build stronger communities, we realise that these organisations are themselves working to become more enterprising.

By focusing our activities on these areas, the Community Banking Team is able to show that, by working together, the private, public and third sector can make a real and lasting difference to the lives of people in some of our poorest communities.

Email address for contact:
community.banking@rbs.co.uk
community.banking@natwest.com

The Make Your Mark: Change Lives campaign is run by Make Your Mark, with support from the Social Enterprise Coalition, the Office of the Third Sector and a wide range of Partners representing the social enterprise movement, the education and enterprise sectors.

The aim is to inspire young people to have enterprising ideas for social and environmental change and make them happen.

Communities and Local Government has a vision of confident, vibrant, sustainable communities where everyone has a say in shaping their local environment. Working closely with stakeholders from across the public and community sectors, the department’s remit includes developing policy on: cities and regions; communities and neighbourhoods; fire and resilience; housing; planning; building and the environment;  local government and the Thames Gateway and the Olympics. 

The Community Empowerment Unit is at the heart of this work and on 19 October 2007, Hazel Blears, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, launched a Community Empowerment Action Plan. Backed with £35 million of funding, this plan is being taken forward with partners in local government and seeks to further encourage more asset transfers from the public to the community sector and to create a new network of 18 empowerment champions (local authorities who are broadening and deepening empowerment practice in their areas). 

The Third Sector Team was created in late 2006 to develop a more effective framework for developing the partnership with the third sector across the department. The team have been developing approaches to improve the understanding and awareness of the potential of the third sector, including social enterprise, in delivering on our priorities through better strategic partnering, involvement and engagement.

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