WELCOME
WELCOME TO THE
NATWEST SE100 DATA
REPORT
EMMA WILLIAMS, PROJECT
MANAGER FOR THE SE100,
INTRODUCES OUR ANNUAL
REPORT
This is the seventh SE100 annual report, and it has
become the biggest survey of the UK social enterprise
sector’s turnover, growth, profitability and employment.
Social enterprises are organisations with a social
mission. They are run like businesses, making most of
their income from trading, but reinvest a significant
proportion of their profits back into their social mission.
The SE100 was launched in 2010 by Matter&Co in
partnership with RBS. When we began, we set out our
objective as being to forge a better understanding – within
the sector and among the wider public – of the exciting,
pioneering and successful social enterprises in the UK.
We aimed to put the facts and figures behind the fantastic
stories of change that characterise the sector.
In that first year we gathered data from 350 social
enterprises with a total turnover of £812m. We
discovered strong growth in year-on-year turnover among
the survey participants, and the minister for civil society
at the time, Nick Hurd, said the SE100 Index “shows
phenomenal growth which will boost confidence in the
sector and open doors to private finance”.
This year, we have data from 2,120 social enterprises
with a total turnover of £8.5bn. The findings are
interesting – read on to find out more.
@SE100
#SE100Report
www.se100.net
2 | SE100 DATA REPORT
ABOUT THE DATA
All data was taken for analysis on 26 January 2017 and, to the
best of our knowledge, was correct on that date. Social enterprises
were surveyed using primary and secondary sources, including the
official websites of enterprises in the data set, information from
Companies House and DueDil.
A total of 2,120 enterprises were included in the final data.
For each, we collected both turnover and profit/loss figures for
two consecutive years, whereby the most recent year-end date falls
within 24 months of 26 January 2017.
Organisations included in the data self-defined or were judged
by our researchers as being a ‘social enterprise’ according to the
criteria laid out at se100.net/faq.
Note that growth or decline in the turnovers of social
enterprises can be particularly volatile compared with those of
other small and medium sized enterprises. For example, if an
organisation receives a large grant, it may hugely increase their
turnover for one year. This unpredictability in income is one
of the challenges of the sector. Therefore, when calculating
our growth in turnover figures we have filtered out small
enterprises that have reported growth of more than 1,000 per
cent year-on-year.
The research for this year’s report was carried out by Emma
Williams and the report was written by Julie Pybus.