BEST Procurement-

Designing social enterprise

business and procurement
support programmes
By Tim Curtis, Research Fellow, Sustainable
Development Research Centre and
Jennifer Inglis, Social Enterprise East Midlands

October 2005
 Designing social enterprise business and
procurement support programmes
This paper reports part of the activities undertaken during the Action 1 preparatory
stage of an EQUAL funded Development Partnership ‘BEST Procurement’ operating
in the East Midlands. The paper identifies the issues faced by social enterprises in
their interaction with potential and actual public sector clients and records the
considerations that formed the basis for the design of the resulting Action 2 social
enterprise and procurement support programme.

Introduction
1
In the East Midlands region, as elsewhere in the UK, there is a strong driver to
promote and develop social enterprise. Central government is promoting social
enterprise through the Department of Trade and Industry and its support of the
national Social Enterprise Coalition, a member organisation of social enterprises and
social enterprise support agencies that promotes the interests of the sector at national
level. Regional Development Agencies have been established to co-ordinate
economic development activity in the regions and many RDAs, in particular East
Midlands Development Agency (EMDA), recognise that social enterprises can help
deliver on their targets for social inclusion. There are also agencies that have
recognised the benefits of social enterprise in meeting sustainability targets for
regenerating communities and involving local people in the improvement and delivery
of local services.

The East Midlands comprises of the counties of Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Rutland,

Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. The East Midlands is the
third largest region in England, with a population of just under 4.2 million, it has a
distinctive ‘polycentric’ settlement structure based on the three major cities of
Nottingham, Derby and Leicester. Approximately 40% of the population live in towns
and villages of less than 10,000- making the East Midlands one of the more rural
regions in England. The Indices of Deprivation 2004 ranks local authorities over a
number of indicators of deprivation. Nottingham was described as a local authority
that falls within England’s 20 most deprived areas at 12th, with Leicester not far
behind.

Unemployment in the region remains lower than the national average and
employment rates higher. As a result the East Midlands in general, scores quite well
on a range of social indicators, yet masks a more complex picture of social conditions
within it. In larger urban areas, Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, in
particular, suffer serious problems of social exclusion; whilst much of the region is
relatively prosperous such areas contain deprivation not statistically reflected.

Third sector organisations contracted to deliver public services can usually be

described as social enterprises. The delivery of a public service means carrying out a
defined service in return for payment – with the terms usually set out in a legally
binding contract. In this case the third sector organisation can be said to be trading
with the public body: undertaking specific activities in return for payment. In turn this
makes the organisation a form of social enterprise.

Small firms, voluntary and community organizations, social enterprises and ethnic
minority businesses are recognised2 to be (potentially) innovative and add value. They
play an important role in the local economy and contribute to social cohesion. They
often have environmental goals. It is important that they have access to the local

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 Designing social enterprise business and
procurement support programmes
government marketplace, including as members of the supply chain for strategic
partnerships.

BEST Procurement
The overall aim of the Development Partnership is to increase the conversion rate
between public expenditure and social and environmental improvement within the
East Midlands Region. This will be achieved by demonstrating improved value for
public money, establishing social enterprises as key delivery agents for this goal.

The BEST Procurement Development Partnership is focused on improving the

prevailing conditions in the labour market in order to achieve long term structural
change that increases equality in the labour market. Disadvantage in the labour
market is created not only by the relative situation of the "disadvantaged" individuals
but also by the value ascribed by the labour market to those individuals and their
situation and willingness to include them.

The DP intends to help social enterprises and voluntary and community sector
organisations to access procurement opportunities made available by the public sector,
to help the public sector purchase better labour market outcomes through its
mainstream procurement practices and to help social enterprises to provide high
quality employment opportunities for people from BME communities, women, people
with disabilities and people aged over 50 year.

The main partners are public sector bodies (local authorities and health sector bodies),
charities and academic institutions working on issues of sustainable development,
social enterprises and social enterprise support agencies and strategic regional and
national agencies.

The DP is focused on achieving a change in practice within the East Midlands Region
that other parts of the country can learn from, that provides evidence of use to national
policy makers and ultimately that informs European policy.

The DP’s aim is to increase the conversion rate between public expenditure and
labour market equality within the East Midlands Region. To do this it is necessary to
improve value for public money in targeted areas and establish the social economy,
particularly social enterprises and voluntary and community sector organisations, as
key players in achieving this goal.

System design
The emerging Action 2 project design was framed around a supply/demand model (in
line with Figure 1 which is discussed in more detail below), with a marketplace
connecting public authorities as the demand-side and social enterprises (SEs) as the
supply side. The intent of the BEST Procurement Action 2 programme was to identify
a mix of interventions within that marketplace to correct the distortions arising from
lack of information or poor communication. The literature review revealed a relatively
mature body of literature for each of the two aspects of the market – a significant
amount of work has been done at the strategic level of the social enterprise sector (in
academic as well as the grey literature), and on the nature and strategy of public
authority procurement. Less well developed is the link between the two bodies of
literature. There are a few, now well publicised, but rather aged, examples of SEs

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 Designing social enterprise business and
procurement support programmes
entering the public procurement market, in particular that of the construction sector.
These examples mostly indicate difficulties with respect to the contracting side or the
capability of the social enterprise or involve very large SEs supplying primarily
outsourced public services such as homecare.

On both sides of the market place, there are two aspects of the procurement process.
On the side of the SE, there is the external aspect of the provision of products and
services and the choices that SE makes about the capabilities it presents to the market.
This includes the products and services already provided to the public sector in well
known areas as direct outsourcing of public services such as home care or social
service provision through social service provision such as recycling activities with the
disabled or construction industry training for the intermediate labour market. The
internal aspect is the ‘fitness for’ the market, ranging from the basic recognition of a
need or desire to trade rather than exist on grants through to the financial and
managerial capacity to trade effectively in the public procurement market. For the
public authorities, the external aspect is the communications it provides to the market
with respect to its procurement requirements including the nature and size of the
procurement event3.

It is important to note that there are two distinct types of procurement within local
authorities and the importance of each varies according to the extent of the central
procurement function4. The focus of much of the demand side procurement literature
is on the major, planned, public tender processes such as those advertised through
OJEU involving contract managers and central procurement officials. There is,
however, a significant, but as yet within this study, unquantified procurement at a
department or area office level that is more (although not entirely) ad hoc and usually
involves limited action tenders (as opposed to whole UK or EU advertising) to a
specific, small set of tenderers or are single action tenders on the basis of project
extension or locally determined procurement factors.

On the internal aspect of public authority procurement, there is the knowledge of the
skills and capabilities that the SE sector could offer, over and above that already
offered and the ability to ‘bundle5’ procurement requirements with social service
outputs (often crossing departmental budget lines). A significant weakness in this
area is the ability to effectively measure both procurement efficiency and social
service outcome adequately in terms of each other. This leads to the scenario where,
for example, community recycling initiatives ‘cost’ several times more per tonne of
recyclate (the measure of efficiency used in contracts with the private sector, but with
real but indeterminate social service outcomes. In such circumstances the ‘cultural
capital6’ is not being realised or measured. This is often the case where intermediate
labour groups are used as ‘cheap labour’ rather than trading on the specific skills or
experiences within the marginalised group – such as disables groups providing
Disability Discrimination Act compliance services.

The public procurement literature suggests significant opportunities but, unless linked
with specialist documents such as legal guides to procurement with social enterprises,
the support is insufficiently specific to support any but the most determined and well
prepared SE in the procurement process. In these circumstances, personal experience
in the procurement on behalf of individuals in the SE, or direct support from the
procuring authority7, are the primary factors for success. There is, however, literature

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that analyses SME supply more generally which concludes that current trends
(largely desirable) to larger contracts, aggregation of spend, and longer relationships
with prime contractors and “partners” all make life more difficult for SMEs trying to
sell into the sector. The outlook for SMEs (and in this context SEs) that do not offer
any real differentiation (innovation, service, quality, specialist skills) compared to
their larger competitors is not good8.

Figure 1 BEST Procurement Research Model

The model above represents a systems diagram developed during the two day
workshop between SEEM and SDRC and many subsequent meetings during 2004/05.

On the left hand side of the model are the supply-side components, the profit
distributing (non-SE, private sector) and the two main types of SE’s – large
multiservice organisations (usually up to 250 employees up to £250m turnover 9) and
the small, niche SEs that are fully constituted legal bodies. Such small SEs may grow
to the large SE category through organic growth, merger or some form of consortium
(either with each other or with 1st tier private sector contractors). At the large SE level,
the main characteristic is long, large contracts, whereas the niche SE is most likely to
capitalise on ad hoc sales or other opportunistic developments.

The right hand side of the model is demand-side of the market. The model require
development, but the types of contract let by the demand-side can also be split into
large, tendered contracts, usually those above EU limits, and smaller contracts which
are let through limited tender lists, adverts and networking. These are often procured
by the technical department requiring the product or service, rather than a specialist
procurement department. Increasingly, local authorities are being structured on an
area basis and thus can procure identical products or services on a localised or area
basis providing significant opportunities for small SEs.

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 Designing social enterprise business and
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Two areas of significant risk for the supply- and demand-side can be identified. Risk,
or the perception of risk, in these circumstances limits the adoption of new contract
models. Interventions in the areas of risk , to reduce the perceived risk, through
information, experience and capacity building, can free up the process to allow
creatively structured technical and legal specification or free up an SE to develop
new products or services that the demand-side requires.

Suggestions for interventions in Action 2 of BEST Procurement to address the areas

of risk for both demand- and supply-side included:

Demand-side
• Information brokerage- this has been suggested in a number of literature
sources, but barely implemented specifically for SE’s. The standard SME
support services such as TED, OJEU etc are available, but SE’s need to
recognise that such procurement advertising routes can applied to them.
Although national databases have not taken off as suggested, local and
regional initiative would benefit SEs as well as the local private sector.
• Catalyzer-similarly, there are a number of catalyzer initiatives that have been
trialled in a number of areas, most notably the recent BizFizz from NEF 10. The
approach for SEEM may be to replicate an existing model after due
consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of each, but with a view to,
regardless of which model, work as a partner with SEs to assist the
development of their experience in tender processes.

Supply-side
• Fellowship – many SEs may identify either the need or the opportunity to
expand from their existing structure towards greater trading, but there is a
critical period between identifying the opportunity, or an entrepreneurial
individual to take an initiative forward, and achieving that goal during which
the SE is quite vulnerable. It is straying from its core-business into an
unknown area with immeasurable payback and requires intensive support to
overcome the initial hurdles of developing an idea into a defendable business
plan or develop the systems required to be a credible public sector supplier.
The concept would be to provide for a three month intensive fellowship for
social entrepreneurs which provide them with business support from the
private sector11 and time and income to allow the new business to be
developed.
• Management systems capacity development – a major aspect of being a
credible public service supplier is having and maintaining robust management
systems that cover all aspects of financial, health & safety, environmental and
quality issues. As an SE develops towards being a public sector supplier,
support s required in implementing such systems and developing a culture
within the organisation that remains true to the core values of the staff but also
allows it to trade in a new way.

Consultation with potential beneficiaries of Action 2 also provided the following

comments:

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 Designing social enterprise business and
procurement support programmes

• The Programme seeks to identify innovative ways in which public

procurement can tackle labour market discrimination, by demonstrating ways
in which social enterprises can achieve their aims through trading with the
public sector
• There is a £42bn market of public sector procurement in the UK – the
challenge of the programme is to establish how to assist social enterprises in
competing for that market
• At a local authority, or even regional, level, the precise details of this spend
are relatively unknown. Until recently, many local authorities did not have
centralised reports of spending patterns and did not communicate those
patterns to the supply market.
• Local authority procurement is complex with thousands of suppliers and
decentralised purchasing powers ensuring that ‘contracting with the local
authority’ is more a case of contracting with individuals within the local
authority.
• Procurement processes are not primarily concerned with meeting social
objectives but objectives such as Best Value have to be tempered with
efficiency targets.
• Local authorities are generally unenthusiastic about the outsourcing of social
support services which means that enterprises that supply social services12 find
the market very difficult. This programme is not primarily aimed at changing
the service delivery options for the public sector but to capitalise on the
existing procurement (or outsourcing) activities of the local authority- i.e.
accessing the market rather than developing a new one (although this may be
an effect of the Programme).
• There is a cultural perception issue in that large parts of local authorities
consider the social enterprise sector as voluntary or those activities that should
be supplied by volunteers rather than being paid for at commercial rates. They
are not seen as credible businesses that also contribute to social justice.
• There is a need to find and exploit paths of least resistance – behaving like the
private sector in order to secure contracts, communicating added value and
retaining profits for investment in the social aspects of the organisation.
• The private sector, through movements such as ethical businesses, corporate
social responsibility and corporate governance concerns means that businesses
are also reducing overall profitability to meet social or environmental
concerns.
• Resources are required to demonstrate why using social enterprises are better
value than the wholly private sector. Work is being done on this in Scotland
and SEs may benefit from being assisted to communicate their differentiation
through tools such as Social Return on Investment.
• SEs need assistance in marketing positioning, identifying unique selling
points (USPs), niche identification, market intelligence, networking – all
activities that are essential for a successful private sector entrepreneur
• SE’s can’t raise share capital to fund opportunistic growth and are often
understaffed, thus taking advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities requires
an expansion of the staffing levels in the hope of success. This could be
funded through CDFI or could consist of temporary teams given three or so
months to take an idea through to business plan or successful contracting with
the public sector

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procurement support programmes

• There are no recognised schemes for recognising the worth of social

enterprises. Local authority staff are to pressed to undertake that research, so a
Trade or Professional Association for SEs could demonstrate to procurement
officials that an SE is a fit and competent supplier
• Successful social entrepreneurs become ‘precious’ about their creations,
whereas ‘serial’ entrepreneurs could work with SEs wishing to expand to help
change, with a clear exit strategy.
• Franchising of recognised SE initiatives adds authority to the new SE.
• What is required is a lie network of intelligence and support to capitalise on
opportunities, rather than toolkits and guides – meetings like First Friday,
Meet the Buyers, excellence networks rather than books and pamphlets,
advocates rather than advisors.

The resulting Action 2 programme

The considerations described above were then developed into a structured programme
of support interventions to be delivered by a number of partners, not least the public
sector, during Action 2, with a view to begin to correct the distortions arising from
lack of information or poor communication.

The resulting Action 2 design is summarised in Figure 2

Figure 2 BEST Procurement schematic

The design of the programme was such that the starting capabilities in procurement
issues of all beneficiaries entering the BEST Procurement Action 2 programme was
captured, in order to measure the ‘distance travelled’ by the beneficiaries during
Action 2 but also to assist in the selection of interventions that would be most

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beneficial to that beneficiary. Thus, the ‘entry point’ for BEST Procurement Action 2
was designed to be ‘Enterprise Directions’

Enterprise Directions
The objective of the ‘Enterprise Directions’ work is to assist social enterprises
operating in any field of potential relevance to public sector supply to understand
whether and how they can improve their response to the public sector market.

The Enterprise Directions Partner will assist social enterprises making contact with
the programme, providing an initial one-to-one consultation at the clients premises or
a nearby location. They will then signpost the enterprise to one or more packages of
assistance under the Social Enterprise Development side of the programme where/as
appropriate

Enterprising ideas
The objective of the ‘Enterprising Ideas’ work is to run a series of workshops which,
incorporating market information provided, enable participants to develop new
approaches to delivering added social value to delivery of goods and services to the
public sector.

The Enterprising Ideas Partner will convene a series of workshops to enable potential
social enterprise suppliers and potential public sector purchasers to work together on
new ideas that could eventually lead to contracts.

Replication
The objective of the ‘Replication’ work is to identify existing social enterprises that
sell goods and/or services to the public sector in any part of the UK and Europe, and
oversee a process of replication within the East Midlands for approximately 5 new
social enterprises. It is anticipated that 2-3 of these will be established and start
trading during the timeframe of the project.

The replication intervention will be biased towards developing a response to general

observations of the public sector market rather than specific contracts, however,
where there is awareness of suitable contracts over a 2-3 year horizon there may be a
case for working specifically towards them.

Culture Change
The objective of the ‘Culture Change’ work is to assist the staff and boards /
committees / trustees of organisations to evaluate their ‘fitness to trade’ and undergo
development activities to prepare their culture to support a move from grant based
income.

The Culture Change Partner will work with organisations (Voluntary and Community
Sector organisations and social enterprises without significant trading experience) and
assist social enterprises in understanding the nature of their operational culture and
identify what changes they need to introduce to enable them to trade. The Partner will
use a number of tools, from the private and public sector, on a one-to-one basis to
assist social enterprises in developing a change management plan, should they decide
to implement one, and coach them, over a period of a year, through that
transformation process.

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Enterprising Management
The objective of the ‘Enterprising Management’ work is to assist the staff and, to a
more limited extent, the boards / committees / trustees of organisations to implement
management systems necessary to support greater traded income.

The Enterprising Management Partner will work with organisations (Voluntary and
Community Sector organisations and social enterprises without significant trading
experience). Initially the work will be done as a mixture of consultancy and
workshop-style training according to client demand. The success of these delivery
methods will then be compared to inform a decision about the forward strategy.

Sales Broker
The objective of the ‘Sales Broker’s’ work is to achieve increased sales of goods and
services from social enterprises to public sector purchasers.

The sales broker will work on behalf a number of social enterprises, advising them on
the way they promote themselves and making sales leads with public sector
purchasers for up and coming contracts. The broker will set up selling clubs and
networks as a route to collective promotion of social enterprise and the development
of the enterprises’ capacity to sell themselves.

Contract Finder
The objective of the ‘Contract Finder’s’ work is raise awareness within social
enterprises and the Voluntary and Community sector of contract opportunities as they
arise.

The contract finder will work on behalf of a number of social enterprises who
subscribe to the service, sending details of relevant contracts and the sources of
information. The contract finder may also work to promote the use of certain
websites by public sector purchasers where this would assist in the on-going success
of the venture.

Contracting Know-How
The objective of the ‘Contracting Know-How’ work is to develop and run a modular
training programme that meets the development needs of social enterprises wishing to
improve their response to contracting with the public sector.

The Contracting Know-How Partner will be targeting established social enterprises

and Voluntary and Community sector organisations who are already contracting, or
are clear that it is appropriate for them to contract, with the public sector.

Collaborative Frameworks
The objective of the ‘Collaborative Frameworks’ work is to develop, test and evaluate
appropriate ways of engaging groups of social enterprises in providing a successful
collective response to parts of the public sector market.

The Collaborative Frameworks intervention will be biased towards developing a

response to targeted contracts that are coming up over the two years of the

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programme, however there may be limited scope for more speculative collaborative
development where a market opportunity is identified.

Advisory Partner
The objective of the ‘Advisory Partner’s’ work is to ensure that the Partners working
within the Social Enterprise Development Working Group (supply side) of the BEST
Procurement Development Partnership continue to do work of relevance to social
enterprises’ needs.

The Advisory Partners will be expected to take, inform and advise the regular
progress meetings with the Social Enterprise Development Working Group

Equality of Employment
The objective of the “E-Quality of Employment” work is to support social enterprises,
expanding or becoming more financially secure as a result of improved contracting
opportunities with the public sector, to develop their capacity as high quality
employers providing Equal Opportunities in employment.

The E-Quality of Employment Partner will work with signposted social enterprises to
measure the changes in quality and equality of employment and to support social
enterprises to maximise quality and equality in line with their social aims.

Public sector action

The less structured programme of demand-side interventions are based on the local
authorities and primary health care trust partners developing more information with
respect to their procurement practices, particularly considering influencable spend
patterns and procurement processes, in order to facilitate better access of social
enterprises to the market place and fairly distinguish the added (or blended) value that
can be offered by the social economy. This aspect will be the subject of a subsequent
paper.

Innovation?
EQUAL exists to encourage innovative solutions to employment and social problems
which are difficult to solve. It provides support for applying new ideas to learning,
sharing and international partnership.

Evaluations of the ADAPT and EMPLOYMENT programmes13 offer the following

definition.
‘...innovations are novel changes in a system, which are performed and achieved for
the first time in its development. This first-time aspect of a novel change - the
development aspect - is an important but insufficient criterion for innovations; a more
important one is that the development should lead to something qualitatively new
which increases the efficiency of a certain system. Innovations provide better
solutions to problems from the previous state. The decisive determinant of the
innovative content of the new solution is its relation to the old one. It is the relation to
previous solutions and approaches that determines the degree of innovation of a
novel change.’

For the purposes of Equal14, the following categories have been adopted.

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• Process-oriented innovations: these innovations relate to developing:

• new or improved methods of doing things;
• ways to use technology; and
• labour-market initiatives.

Examples of process-oriented innovations include new or improved approaches to

delivering training and guidance and new ways of working with target groups. The
final evaluation of ADAPT and EMPLOYMENT programmes found that the most
common type of innovation was process related.

• Goal-oriented innovations: these relate to developing new outcomes, outputs

or ‘products’, with the needs of a specific target group in mind. In this way, it
is about meeting a gap in the market. Examples include developing new
qualifications and opening up new areas of employment for disadvantaged
groups.
• Context-oriented innovations: these relate to developing frameworks for
interventions. Examples include:
• developing local, regional and national networks;
• developing new frameworks for, and approaches to, dissemination,
information and awareness raising; and
• steps to involve new partners and establish new working arrangements.

Innovation is evident particularly in the co-ordinated response to developing a more

equal market place and simultaneous supplier development of social enterprises. The
connectivity between the social enterprise (supply-side) interventions and the public
sector (demand-side) activities will serve to exchange theory, practice, experience and
new solutions throughout the market-place. Mainstreaming activities are targeted at
wider influence of use of public expenditure and increasing social enterprises’ focus
on understanding the market for what they want to do. Empowerment is addressed
through appointing representatives to the steering committee from the outset and
reviewing accountability of the partnership as the project progresses to target any
gaps. Partnership principles include the way that programme is structured as a set of
working groups focused on particular issues with representation on an overall steering
committee enabling effective stakeholder participation. The partners are invited to
submit their own work-plan against the set of intervention briefs (described above)
and then the actual Action 2 activities were negotiated on the basis of the submissions
of the potential partners. In this way, although the master plan was ‘designed’ the
actual programme for delivery in Action 2 emerged out of the intentions of the master
plan design and the submissions of the partners.

The main activities to be undertaken in Action 2 are to understand and influence the
demand for added value in public sector purchasing, to develop purchasing
frameworks and specific contracts that deal with issues of sustainable development, to
undertake supplier development of social enterprises and the VCS and to develop an
evidence base that addresses key areas of policy.

The outputs will be actual changes to contracting arrangements, toolkits, frameworks

and local agreements, new businesses started, jobs created, improved employment
conditions for existing jobs, analysis of social enterprises added value contribution

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and an increased capability within the social economy to address the public sector
market.

The goal of market-shaping to create growth potential for social enterprises will open
up a new area of employment for disadvantaged groups by creating jobs within social
enterprises and facilitating their entry into them.

The programme will build new political alliances through undertaking joint work on a
shared agenda with the Regional Assembly. The programme will also involve new
working arrangements for the collaborative development of support programmes to
social enterprise at sub-regional level and will bring new partners together, e.g. Local
Authority Procurement Departments with Social Enterprise Support Agencies and the
Voluntary Sector. Other programmes, on the other hand, concentrate on actions
relating to one or other side of the marketplace, e.g. the Provide 15 project focused on
social enterprise support, NAPP focused on Local Authorities16.

The process of identifying the contract opportunities can be formulated as a public

sector market analysis tool for social enterprise. This will ensure the maximum impact
by only working where there is a possibility of success and was welcomed
enthusiastically as a strong new approach by the public sector, social enterprises,
support agencies and the voluntary sector who responded to our regional
consultation17.

The programme will also use new combinations of existing approaches, by combining
use of the various tools, guidance and methodologies currently available18 and
drawing on others' experience to create a holistic approach. Tools and guidance can
remain under-utilised by their target audience without effort being put in to increase
their application.

The programme aims improve an existing approach of seeking to create employment

opportunities within social enterprises by linking this with the creation of targeted
market opportunities in the public sector. Approaches to stimulating the public sector
market for the benefit of social enterprise so far have been partial; based on
information sharing and promotion, on toolkits or on guidance. This programme
makes the link directly between the desired outcome (an equitable labour market), a
major player in shaping the labour market (public sector contracting) the delivery
vehicle (social enterprise and VCS), and the groups that suffer inequality.

Conclusions
The design of the BEST Procurement programme has been undertaken on a ‘whole-
market’ approach. Internal programme design based on a systems approach with
external consultation has resulted in a series of supply-side procurement support
interventions being developed. These were taken forward by Social Enterprise East
Midlands in its BEST Procurement Action 2 briefs for which social enterprise support
agencies were free to bid. The final implementation of the design will be significantly
altered from the original design on the basis of the capability and development
interests of the development partners, adding to the innovation being deployed. This
has been a process of emerging design, based on a broad ranging literature review and
action oriented design workshops. The programme for SDRC in Action 2 is to
measure the implementation of the programme by its partners, identifying where and

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why the programme departs from the design and establishing when and under what
conditions, the market-place interventions work best to overcome labour market
inequalities.

Footnotes and references

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1
The Guild (Dec 2004) A Social Enterprise Strategy for the East Midlands 2004 – 2010, Norwich
2
Sustainability and Local Government Procurement Issue: 0 November 2003 Improvement and Development Agency
3
Too large a contract size may make the risk to great for an SE new to public procurement but too small a contract size
increases the complexity of the supply chain to the public authority.
4
“beyond common-use items/services, local authorities typically delegate responsibility for procurement and
commissioning to individual service departments directly involved in the delivery of a service”. (Local authority
procurement: a research report Aug 2004, Stellent)
5
Referred to as ‘blended value’ as opposed to ‘added value’.
6
“Cultural Capital is the value attached to the collective mental programming (values, beliefs and
behaviors) of the organization that supports its relationships with its employees, customers and
society.” Cultural Capital: The New Frontier of Competitive Advantage Increasing Market Value by Leveraging the
Intangibles By Richard Barrett, 2001
7
Running the risk of distorting the market place by providing direct guidance not available to other suppliers.
8
SMEs & Public Sector Procurement Research Report prepared for the Small Business Service by Peter Smith and Adam
Hobbs Shreeveport Management Consultancy January 2001
9
These limits are only indicative, and are draw from EU definitions of SMEs’.
10
http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/tools_bizfizz.aspx
11
Lawyers, accountants, non-exec directors etc would like to win future work from the new entrepreneur
12
Such as homecare or mental illness support
13
A Methodology for European Evaluation of the Employment Initiative, 1999, NEI/FHVR.
14
Measuring and sustaining innovation – a guide for Development Partnerships May 2005 GB Equal Support Unit
15
The Provide project, www.co-operatives-uk.coop
16
New Approaches to Public Procurement, “A progress report on Social Enterprise”, DTI p33
17
www.seem.uk.net
18
such as Think Smart….Think Voluntary Sector”, 2004 OGC/Home office, p2, LM3, websites such as
www.nearbuyou.co.uk, Public Procurement: a toolkit for social enterprise, DTI, October 2003, and National Procurement
Strategy for Local Government October 2003