Social Enterprise Background

What is social enterprise?

Parramatta City Council's definition of social enterprise is: a 'social business' that is established to provide real employment opportunities (real wages, real jobs, real choices) for local residents from the prioritised target groups - refugees or recently arrived migrants, Indigenous people, people with mental health issues, young people at risk and other long term unemployed. In addition, they usually have social objectives relating to:

• providing a service or product that addresses an identified community need that is not being met by the commercial market; and/or
• developing income streams that allow Non-profit organisations to become self-sustaining and independent over time.

Social enterprises are a true hybrid-model as they profit-making but non-profit-distributing – that is, they reinvest all profits back into the enterprise, so work towards the social aims of the organisation can continue, rather than distributing them to shareholders, members or owners. Social enterprises seek high levels of accountability to their stakeholders, rather than just to shareholders.

Social enterprises focus on applying practical, innovative and sustainable approaches to benefit society in general, with an emphasis on those experiencing social exclusion. The legal form of the organisation is chosen to best meet the needs of the enterprise and its objectives, and so the enterprise could be established for example as the trading arm of a traditional not-for-profit organisation, a co-operative or a company limited by guarantee.

PCC’s Social Enterprise program

Under its Parramatta Twenty25 strategic plan PCC has committed to working towards seven key destinations over the coming twenty years. The strategic plan is based on triple bottom line principles and therefore provides strategies designed to positively impact the wellbeing of Parramatta’s communities and environment. The innovative responses to service delivery and social and environmental issues that social enterprises are known to generate are likely to provide unique opportunities that work towards the Parramatta Twenty25 objectives.

PCC’s social enterprise program sits within the Community Capacity Building team, which is one of four units within the Community Library & Social Services Unit (CLASS).

Social enterprise is a key strategy area for the community capacity building program as it has been identified as a vehicle for delivering on its objectives, particularly in relation to increasing economic participation opportunities for marginalised individuals across the LGA. In addition to this primary objective, as demonstrated overseas, social enterprise initiatives also often generate social and environmental innovations.

The social enterprise program aims to ….”make a positive contribution towards improving social wellbeing”. It does this through…..”attracting, incubating and growing social enterprise opportunities to increase local sustainable employment opportunities and pathways for those experiencing social exclusion across the LGA”.

The five key strategy areas that have been developed for the social enterprise program provide the required ‘best-fit’ for a local government oriented program and also support the community capacity building strategies of the program that it sits within.

The social enterprise section organised under these headings:

• Social entrepreneur and social enterprise identification and development
• Mentoring and other business support for local social enterprises
• Seed funding local social enterprise development
• Maximising social enterprise opportunities arising from PCC procurement and assets usage 
• Impact measurement and analysis

A strategic approach to the nurturing of social enterprises will deliver employment and economic participation outcomes for local individuals who face complex and often multi-faceted barriers to securing sustainable employment opportunities (real wages, real jobs, real choices). Ultimately, economic participation amongst these groups should increase, and also be underpinned by more equitable access to the economic opportunities that Parramatta has to offer its residents. This will assist with the capacity building objective of growing more robust communities, and also has the potential to impact entrenched social issues.