1. The “How To” of
Social Enterprise
OCASI ED Conference
Friday, November 11, 2011
10:45 am

2. St. Stephen’s Community House
• Our history of social enterprise
• Our challenges and benefits
• Choosing a social enterprise for your
organization
• Having a social enterprise policy framework
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3. St. Stephen’s Community House
• In 1985 began training volunteers to mediate
community conflicts.
• There was a demand to train other people and in
1989 we began to charge fees for attending our
training.
• Over time we began to offer custom group
training or custom workplace training as well.
• More recently began to charge for non-training
conflict consulting and workplace interventions.
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4. St. Stephen’s Community House
• Revenue grew from less than $20K a year to
almost $200K a year.
• In total, we have raised $2.6M.
• This is gross revenue, expenses have also risen
(2 FTE staff now work on enterprise). Direct
costs are clear, but hard to measure indirect
costs/administration. Makes it hard to
accurately gage profitability.
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5. St. Stephen’s Community House
CR&T Social Enterprise Revenue
200000
180000
160000
140000
120000
dollars
100000
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11
Year
Actual
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6. St. Stephen’s Community House
Challenges:
• As seen from revenue chart, it is not
consistent, hard to predict and budget. Board
can view as risky.
• Enterprise has experienced very high staff
turnover. Our enterprise requires high skills and
qualifications, often in demand in marketplace.
At the same time needs a flexible workforce to
respond to changes in demand.
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7. St. Stephen’s Community House
Benefits:
• Profits can be kept or re-invested. Good years
help to build the agency reserve fund.
• Enterprise has brought agency
awards, respect, good reputation in the
community. Many colleagues have attended
our training.
• We fulfill our ultimate mission of
peaceful, equitable society through wide use
of mediation skills.
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8. St. Stephen’s Community House
Final thoughts on CRT:
• Profits have mainly built reserve. Profits not yet
predictable enough to fund on-going initiatives.
• We are trying to be more business-like. Can be
at odds with organizational culture.
• We sought external help to develop three-year
business plan to invest in enterprise and increase
profits. We are in second year and on track.
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9. St. Stephen’s Community House
• Many definitions of social enterprise. Can be
any time fees are charged?
• SSCH also runs childcare centres - $2M in fees
every year – and supportive housing - $50K in
rents. Are these social enterprises?
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10. St. Stephen’s Community House
Choosing a Social Enterprise.
There are two broad types:
• Extension of current charitable mission and
expertise
• Outside of your charitable mission and
expertise
• Third factor is consumer employment, which
can be either type of enterprise
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11. St. Stephen’s Community House
Enterprise is part of charitable mission:
- Your agency teaches English and offers private
classes or tutoring or related services
- Your agency has anti-oppression expertise and
offers anti-oppression training and consulting
- St. Christopher House house-cleaning business
grew out of expertise in homecare for seniors.
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12. St. Stephen’s Community House
Outside of your mission:
• Some of the most successful and profitable
enterprises are completely outside of the core
mission, for example hospital parking lots and
hospital food courts.
• Eva’s Printing business is another good
example of an unrelated business.
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13. St. Stephen’s Community House
Either kind of enterprise may or may not provide
consumer employment:
• Our training enterprise is “in” mission but
does not employ consumers.
• Eva’s printing business is “out” of the core
mission but employ consumers. (Job training
and creation is the mission of the enterprise).
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14. St. Stephen’s Community House
Social Enterprise Policy Framework:
• Important to work through a Board policy.
• Is revenue primary importance? Or mission? Or
consumer employment opportunities?
• Does enterprise grow out of existing expertise or will
agency hire expertise/purchase a business?
• Will employees of enterprise be the same as other
agency employees?
• What is risk tolerance of the Board? How much are
you willing to lose? (66% of new small businesses fail
in the first five years)
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15. St. Stephen’s Community House
Catch 22:
• Nature of government funding is that cannot
be kept or build agency reserves. Enterprise
revenue can build vital agency reserves.
• Very likely you will need existing agency
reserves in place to invest or to manage risk or
loss.
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