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Off-Radar efforts

posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007 09:15 AM

Earlier this month an article by Alison Benjamin in the Guardian tipped me further towards despondency, with the conclusion that in spite of government efforts to promote social enterprise, there just aren’t that many social entrepreneurs around.

For one running a self-sustaining social enterprise software business, it was yet more disappointing, knowing that part of Guardian Media Group was a recent and satisfied customer.

A week before, another Guardian article had revealed that the NHS planned to spend £100 million on finding new IT suppliers. With several existing NHS customers, there must be hundreds more we could supply, were it not for their unassailable procurement mechanism.

Regrettably, this lack of awareness extends to government themselves, with departments advocating social enterprise and at the same time strangling them out of existence. One thing consistent across the board, is late payment - and no matter what guidelines there are or initiatives to encourage otherwise, few of these organizations want to pay on time, if at all.

Seeking support is near pointless, with a plethora of development agencies and advocacies who simply don’t respond to communications. Right to the very top, in fact, as I await a reply from Baroness Thornton, now 2 years overdue.

We survive, nevertheless. It could be better, giving us a chance to create local employment at least on a small scale, but while the pundits insist that we don’t exist, we remain totally off-radar.

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