What is a social enterprise?
In 2019 we made a commitment to be more active and engaged members of our community and to make sure that we were doing our best to make a positive social impact in our local area. This has always been a part of our mission, but we wanted to take this commitment one step further and become a social enterprise.
What is a Social Enterprise?
A social enterprise is essentially just a business, it operates in a typical business sense, selling goods and services in order to generate it’s income. What makes a social enterprise different is that it has a social or environmental mission at it’s core, and that the business doesn’t exist solely to make it’s owners wealthy. Profit is just as important as it would be to any other business, but instead of going to shareholders and owners, the majority of it is reinvested into the business or put directly into furthering it’s social mission. It’s a way of demonstrating a commitment to making a positive social impact and an indicator that the money a client spends on those goods or services will be directly helping with this.
So, what does this mean for us?
We won’t be changing the way that we work, in a sense we’ve always operated in this way. We’ve always worked alongside community organisations, and we’ve always had the aim of making our community a better place. What it does mean though is that we’ve set ourselves some very specific goals that we think will go the extra mile in making a positive change. These are:
1. To give free advice and consultations to charities, non-profits and other social enterprises
Video production and marketing is our area of expertise, and we want to open ourselves up to charities, non-profits and social enterprises so that they can utilise this knowledge to make positive change. We will be offering them free advice and consultations to make sure that they are making the most out of video and that it is pushing them towards their social or environmental mission. We will be a resource where they can bounce ideas off of us, ask us questions and to work with us as an impartial adviser on their projects.
2. To mentor and develop young people who are looking to forge a career in video
In our time as a company we have come to realise that our local area has a wealth of talented young people who would make an incredible addition to the video production industry. We feel that we have experiences that can help them in achieving their goals, and an important part of our mission is to make sure that we support these young people in any way that we can. This will be in the form of; talks, camera and equipment training, or through individual mentoring for young people aged 13-25 years old. What’s important to us is that we are passing on our knowledge and experience in a way that helps young people. In addition to this, we want to open ourselves up to educational institutions such as schools and colleges in regards to their curriculums and the way they teach young people. We want to be a voice for employability, and to give schools and colleges an insight into how they can help their young people become more employable in the future.
3. To create a selection of free projects for micro social enterprises and individuals with a social mission
We truly believe that a good video can go a long way in making a positive change in the world. That being said, not everyone is in the position where they can produce the video they need to get their message across. With this in mind, we want to help 2 micro social enterprises or individuals each year by creating a free film for their campaign or social impact goal.
4. To reinvest the majority of our profits in a way that furthers our social mission
We will be reinvesting a minimum of 50% of our profits back into our business in areas that further our social mission. For us, we know that our profits can be used to buy new equipment, to develop areas of the business that will be beneficial to our clients and to provide the best possible opportunities for any young people we work with.
