Newborns, nature, co-working and compost: behind the scenes at four UK social enterprises

In the 1990s, Sallyswood estate in Irvinestown, Fermanagh, was an area of empty housing, bricked-up windows and high levels of crime. So when ARC Healthy Living Centre was due to open in a refurbished building there, some wondered if the windows would survive overnight.

The sceptics were proven wrong. And 20 years on, ARC is still proudly located in Sallyswood, serving people across a sparsely populated county with limited public transport and limited access to services. 

A registered charity, ARC is linked to the Irvinestown Trustee Enterprise Company Ltd (ITEC), a social property company created more than 100 years ago. ITEC aims to boost economic prospects in the area, currently managing some 55,000 square feet of affordable workspace.  Together with local partners, ITEC set up ARC to address persistent social problems such as substance abuse, social isolation and poor child nutrition.

Today, ARC’s huge range of services – from a food bank to an afterschool club to a falls prevention programme for old people – may appear incoherent. But they all stem from what CEO Jenny Irvine describes as 'empathetic listening' to people’s needs, and they’re all focused on improving long-term health by ‘helping people to help themselves’. Its addiction service, for example, helps people who have not yet fully stopped using drugs and are therefore not eligible for government support programmes. ‘It’s a harm reduction model based on respect and empathy, working with people right where they are,’ says Irvine.

ARC has been accredited with the internationally-recognised Social Enterprise Mark since 2009. Some of its programmes are funded through government contracts, while others are self-sustaining. ARC also generates income through room hire and events and through coordinating a pool of childcare workers; funders including the National Lottery have covered the costs of referrals through social prescribing. ARC also gets the surplus generated by ITEC’s properties.

Irvine says it’s essential not to ‘parachute services in’ without considering the long-term impact of removing those services, should funding sources dry up. And she warns against chasing money for the sake of it. In recent decades much of the funding in Northern Ireland was for promoting peace and cross-community relations. But that wasn’t really an issue in Irvinestown. ‘We were never going to diminish that by seeking funding to respond to a problem that we probably didn’t have,’ she says

Irvine, who trained as a nurse, recalls the moment that led her to ARC. She and her mother, also a nurse, had been called to help respond to the aftermath of the Real IRA bombing in the nearby town of Omagh in 1998, which killed 29 people – the deadliest day of the Northern Irish Troubles.

‘I said, “Somebody should really do something about this.” My mum looked at me and said, “Well, you’re somebody!” There's nothing like your mum to give you a challenge!’ When the CEO role at ARC came up not long after, she applied.

Irvine’s nursing background continues to inform the ARC philosophy – prioritising proactive, preventative healthcare. ‘The idea that we nurses assess the situation; it’s person-centred; that the care meets the needs, that we evaluate everything we do – that model can be applied very well to this type of work,’ she says.

It all started two decades ago when a group of nature-lovers were given guardianship of a derelict patch of land at the heart of Hulme, an inner-city neighbourhood just south of the centre of Manchester: Hulme Community Garden Centre was born. 

The organisation now looks after a two-acre area and runs a number of programmes for the benefit of the local community. 

The garden’s volunteer group are both contributors and beneficiaries of the organisation. Many of the 50 regular volunteers are people who have been facing crisis or trauma, or simply have had a tough period in their lives. In addition to learning new skills and improving their mental health through gardening, the volunteers also build new social connections with like-minded people in a safe space. 

At the same time, they maintain the garden and grow plants that are then sold in the garden centre, creating an income stream for the organisation.

In addition to this, Hulme Community Garden Centre runs various educational activities, from creative learning for toddlers and young families to primary school sessions. The centre also offers opportunities for college and PhD students – some of which have been using the site for their research. 

A charitable company limited by guarantee, the centre receives funding from the public and private sectors on a project-by-project basis. To become more self-sustainable it is now developing its other sources of income, such as selling plants and edibles grown in the centre and woodwork items made by volunteers.

Hulme has undertaken major regeneration in the past two decades and is now a vibrant and diverse community. University buildings, cultural organisations, new flats and affordable homes have replaced stern 1960s blocks of council housing that dominated the landscape in 2000. The centre is now in the process of building new indoor space for the shop and cafe, having crowdfunded £200,000 from local community members.

When Outlandish was founded ten years ago by a group of friends who wanted to do “tech for good” – developing digital tools to create a positive social impact – it was set up as a limited company like any other. 

But the team soon realised that what they were doing wasn’t just about profit: it was about people, so they decided to become a co-operative and follow a sociocratic governance structure. 

That means the co-operative has no hierarchy, with all eight members having equal power. Decision making is streamlined thanks to a system where members are part of smaller 'circles' that oversee specific areas of the business (for example finance, design or tech). Decisions can be approved at 'circle' level so they don’t require everyone to vote each time – with only the most important matters being dealt with by all of the members.

Outlandish makes its income from client work, for which it charges a day rate like a commercial agency would. 50 per cent of this income goes to pay workers’ wages, and about 30 per cent goes to non-project internal spending like admin or training. The 20 per cent surplus is used to fund social impact projects or to support the tech co-operative sector at large.

The co-operative also runs Space4, a co-working space for impact co-ops and freelancers, and organises workshops for other organisations to develop skills, discuss its governance model or talk about ethics in tech.

Running a growing co-operative is not without challenges, explains co-working space and events manager Polly Robbins. Co-operatives do not normally take investment from external investors – to be able to maintain the 'one member, one vote' co-op principle – which means it can be difficult to grow. A way to unlock finance is to develop peer-to-peer co-operative lending: co-ops that are doing well and have a surplus can lend to others that are seeking investment to scale up.

In Liverpool, there’s no specific food waste collection service, which means it ends up being incinerated or in landfill. For Minna Alanko-Falola, who grew up in Finland in a family where composting was an obvious thing to do, this didn’t feel right.

After a twenty year career in the charity sector, she set up her own social enterprise, Compost Works, that runs community compost sites where local people can bring their food waste to be composted.

The business receives funding from public authorities and local community groups to install communal compost facilities, usually in public spaces or shared private land where people can come and dispose of their food waste. Once the food waste has been processed into compost – which can take between six months and a year – it is redistributed among users and local community gardens and allotments. 

Compost Works manages the sites with the help of local volunteers, ‘Compost Champions’. The social enterprise also partners with other organisations that take ownership of the compost facility and are given training on how to manage it independently. 

For Alanko-Falola, community compost sites are just the first step. She is working on a cargo-bike collection scheme that will pick up food waste directly from people’s homes. But that doesn’t come without challenges: while the community composting sites only require minimal authorisation, the legislative permits required to become an accredited waste carrier are much more complex.