What is social enterprise and why bother?

In Yorkshire and the Humber the sector plays a particularly important role in communities facing deprivation, with social enterprises significantly more likely than conventional businesses to operate in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and create employment pathways for people facing barriers to work. Yorkshire and Humber social enterprises are especially active in housing, health and social care, skills development, creative industries and environmental sustainability.

Many are rooted in local communities, such as our own, creating value, employment and purpose while addressing need and servicing market opportunities. Research also suggests the sector has a more diverse workforce and leadership profile than mainstream business, helping create fairer and more inclusive local economies. This is very much the story of Giroscope, its past and its future.

Our active voice and influence

Giroscope is not only a housing organisation; we are an active partner in shaping wider conversations about our neighbourhood’s renewal. Through our day-to-day work we bring lived experience into discussions and everyday partnerships. Our insight strengthens regeneration planning and helps ensure this translates into real street-level impact.

Building the right infrastructure to grow social enterprises is one of our core goals. This matters because social enterprises increasingly contribute not only to economic growth, but also to local resilience and community wealth building. Across West Yorkshire alone, the wider voluntary, community and social enterprise sector has been estimated to generate more than £5.4 billion annually in combined economic and social value. This demonstrates the scale of what mission-led organisations can achieve when rooted in place and supported over the long term.

We continue to invest in HU3. Our latest development is the redevelopment of the Grade II listed St Matthews as a re-imagined community-facing enterprise centre, a ‘University of the Neighbourhood’ and a Creative and Innovation Lab.

Here at Giroscope we are determined to grow radical ideas with deep roots that together build a collective future and shared investment in HU3. Over our 40 years we have learnt that delivering thriving communities requires long-term sustained commitment, collaboration, shared action and investment. Giroscope has mobilised its resources and talent and now invites other investors, partners, businesses and fellow residents to help build the next chapter in expanding affordable housing, enterprise and community renewal.

Creating the conditions for home-grown and sustainable local economic growth and employment opportunities is a key mission for Giroscope and, as a long-established social business, it is an exciting movement to be part of. Social enterprises change people’s lives in many diverse ways: through creating jobs; through minimising environmental waste; through reinvesting profits into community activity; through developing new services to help the most vulnerable.

Social enterprises exist in the space between traditional charity and mainstream business. This is where Giroscope operates. We trade for social good.

We meet clear local need and are sustained by addressing these through providing housing and business tenancies and other neighbourhood services. Equally we have nurtured many volunteering opportunities enabling people to gain new skills and employment opportunities, but we do not rely on volunteers to deliver our core services or require grants or donations to survive.

We are different from many housing providers and traditional businesses. As both a charity and a company, Giroscope is focused on realising a practice-driven vision of supplying affordable homes and new business environments enabling stable and confident lives for those living across West Hull.

We operate with a strong social mission and purpose similar to that which characterises more orthodox charities that rely on charitable donations to be sustained. Giroscope is not in business to maximise shareholder interest or driven primarily by generating profit; there are no shareholders. We do not exist to make owners wealthy. We only rent to people!

Currently, Giroscope is rolling out a number of wholly owned subsidiary social enterprises. Our social and volunteer-focused projects are transitioning into social trading entities.

With a fair wind, they will help drive our ambitions to accelerate neighbourhood renewal and build a lasting positive contribution to West Hull. Our ambition is that they emerge as self-sustaining enterprises: highly energised, creating employment and investing in our neighbourhood while delivering social and community value.

Growing social businesses aligns directly with our ethos and values. Our history and practice are rooted in understanding our neighbourhood and what it needs. We believe businesses should operate differently,  placing people, place and planet on an equal footing with profit.

At a time when many communities continue to face economic inequality, insecure housing, declining high streets and reduced opportunity, social enterprise offers a practical and hopeful alternative: keeping wealth local, creating meaningful employment, supporting community wellbeing and building long-term resilience from the ground up. This is why we bother!

If you want to find out more about our work, you are invited to our forthcoming events during Humber Business Week 1-5 June, including:

Social Investment: What it is and how it can be used’

Thursday 4^th June 10.30 am – 12.30 pm

Giroscope will co-host and partner with Key Fund’s, Chris Colwell and Two Ridings, Katherine Odom, for a morning session focusing on social investment funding basics. The focus is on those enterprises and community businesses trading for social good, whether new start-ups,  developing or well-established.

Also at the event, Richard Newby, the coordinator of Giroscope’s Sycamore Gardening social enterprise, will talk about how gardening services can generate social value, trading opportunities and deliver a sustainable income.

Come along to this event and help us launch a Social Enterprise HU3 Network to assist us in co-designing a programme of support to grow, develop and sustain many more local social businesses.