Social Enterprise anyone ?

Yep its another random thought process blurb.

Lets set the scene with some music.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm lets settle for little fluffy clouds by The Orb.

The little fluffy clouds is or are the first track of a whole double CD/LP by The Orb, who are a fabulous bunch of folk who make CD's.

Hey do they even make LP's now ? I know that they use them in clubs and muck bout with the LP's with their fingers to make different sounds, sorry, showing my age and lack of grasp here.

Lets move onwards and upwards.

Well, MASTT is heading towards its 1st AGM. Lets sing and cheer.

Anyone can attend, I was looking at the list of what we the small group of members of MASTT have achieved this year. My god but it adds up to us all getting thoroughly exhausted. I'll post the list on the homepage as soon as I can work out how to do that. (mental note to self-work that out pip).

One big thing we are working towards at the moment is being incorporated. Yep , exactly what I thought.

What the hell is being incorporated when its at home?

Well at the moment MASTT is an association of people no different from any other group of people who join together to do stuff in their neighbourhood. But we have our eyes set on yet more.

When the local council licensed a peice of land to use to use as a community orchard we had a lot of trouble with the council because we do meet their criteria. For them to be happy with us a group we basically need to be a limited company, in England its shown by having a Ltd sign after our group name. And the Ltd sign means we are incorporated.

Does this make sense to you. I have just grasped the concept now because I attended an afternoon workshop to teach about Social Enterprise ! hehehehehehe i really don't see why you should be spared from all of this jargon and hoop jumping if I have to get to grips with it.

Social Enterprise and incorporated add up to one thing. We would be an offiacally recognised group able to trade as we see fit for the benefit of the community.

We have been looking at CIO's, CIC's, Charitable status, Cooperatives, and its been a heady plod for me.

But one thing finally made the breakthrough for me. The lady leading the workshop entioned that we'd be setting up in business with partners to buy and sell stuff so we should feel safe with them, (the partners).

Thats when the penny dropped for me, and I thought "Blow all this fancy talk of Social enterprises and what model we need to choose, we're setting up a business".

Its simple. MASTT will be run more along the lines of a business with a single aim in life---- to serve the community. We'll have to produce accounts and have them audited properly. Have proper meetings and keep records, which I'll  point out that we already do this stuff, but it means that big organsiations like the local council will feel safe in dealing with us. So, for instance when the council struggled to find a good way to lease us a piece of land, if we had been incorp'ed the structure for protecting us from disposing of the land in any way would ahve been in place already.

Phew I'm glad that I got that off of my chest. Its been bugging me for a while.

Social Enterprise, as a term gets bandied about too easily IMO.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB6urWmrM4k The last track of The Orb CD. )

Yes this term of SE is chucked about so easily and it gets assumed that everyone who hears it already understands, well I didn't but I do now and hoepefully this bundle of thoughts will help spell it all out for you.

We'll be having a meeting to sort the form of incorp. we will pick in the near future. I'll tell you more as it happens. Now I'm heading back to the online game I play most nights for a while as it settles me down nicely pre-bed.

Night night.