MacRoberts LLP is delighted to be on board as a core sponsor of the Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) in Scotland in 2018. 10 years since the first ever SEWF event in Scotland, CEiS – the founders of SEWF and the organisers of the 2018 events – is set to welcome over 1,000 social enterprise delegates from across the world to Scotland’s capital.
MacRoberts has a longstanding relationship with SEWF, having previously participated in events in Rio, Vancouver, Milan and Christchurch.
Scotland has taken a global lead in harnessing the potential of social enterprise, and hosting SEWF again in 2018 coincides with the publishing of recent strategies tailored to support internationalisation of and for Scottish social enterprises.
There is organic growth in ‘social enterprise’ which may be broadly summarised in global terms as putting social – or community – values into trading. In Scotland, and indeed the UK, ‘social enterprise’ can be summarised and tends to be defined by reference to involvement of legal structures which “lock in” assets and surpluses for the social/a community’s good.
Growth in social enterprise is being driven by:
- An increase in entrepreneurs aiming for more than just profit
- A desire amongst a number of global governments to drive benefits to communities or social benefits through economic activity
- Recognition by the financing community that financing social enterprise, whether in support of UN social development goals or otherwise, is compatible with their core values and business.
MacRoberts’ third sector team has market-leading experience of assisting all those who seek to put their values into trading on both structuring and regulatory matters and to meet full commercial/trading needs. In addition, we work very closely with and for a large number of the main public sector and intermediary bodies and investors involved in support and investment within the sector, including in relation to innovative, evolving and hybrid social impact investment models.
