Ian Lawry: Mowgli South West Entrepreneur

The Mowgli Foundation UK South West: Entrepreneur Mentee Case Study Ian Lawry: Chief Executive Officer, Wellspring Healthy Living Centre Ian has a background in family businesses and social enterprise. Before working at Wellspring Centre, he worked in and around the Bristol area for around 5 years. The projects he was involved in at the time were reaching their natural conclusions when he found that the Wellspring Healthy Living Centre was looking for someone to take over. Ian, had no prior background in healthcare but liked the look of the project- seeing that what the Centre really needed was financial sustainability. Ian took tothis task with a business focus and an entrepreneurial spirit.Wellspring Healthy Living Centre is a registered charity based in the Barton Hill area of Bristol, oneof England’s most deprived communities. It provides health and wellbeing services to localresidents, including a GP’s surgery, a dentist, arts, complementary therapies, cooking classes,smoking cessation, mental health and clinical facilities for tenants. They employ 12 staff (FTE), andhave a strong social objective; the main vision is to engage with the local community and empowerthem to take control of their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing through accessible,affordable, high quality services- of particular importance to Ian is the support offered to thosesuffering from depression and mental health conditions, a key service offered by the Centre. Ianbelieves that if the organisation was to grow it would benefit the community further. “If we improvethe Centre’s long term financial sustainability,” he says, “we can offer the clients better and morelong-term services which will directly impact their quality of life.”The Mowgli Mentoring opportunity came at a crucial time for Ian and the Wellspring Healthy LivingCentre. The charity may be undergoing some major changes in the next year, and there are majorchallenges to overcome; including the economic downturn and the UK’s changing NHS policy.“Some projects won’t get public funding beyond next year,” Ian says, “because of the economicdownturn. I want to focus on the health of the business in the long run- and for the Centre to be fullysustainable within 2 or 3 years.” Innovation will be central to Ian’s plans, both in terms of delivery ofservices and generation of new funding streams. This year, Wellspring introduced two new businessventures- Wellspring Oasis, and a café - to help it meet the cost of delivering its services. It alsoreceives funding from a range of individual donors, organisations, the government and viafundraising events. Ian is optimistic about the possibility that more unrestricted funding will beavailable in 2012.Having never had a mentor before, Ian is still clear about what his objectives for 2012 are. “My mainobjectives are to increase profitability and get a long-term growth strategy in place- I need to get along-term picture clarified.” Ian also feels he needs to reassess his work-life balance- and believeshe will really benefit from the “external perspective” of someone “who has been through similarsituations to lend knowledge and experience. It’s a critical time for the Centre and I really needencouragement and guidance.”

Ian Lawry: Mowgli South West Entrepreneur

by Mowgli Foundation on Feb 09, 2012

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 25

Statistics

Ian Lawry: Mowgli South West Entrepreneur — Document Transcript