Summary

• Benchmarking: Social Enterprise UK had commissioned “The State of Social Enterprise Survey 2013” which provides data on performance of SEs in the UK.

• 38% of SEs had revenue increment in past 12 months, as compared to the 29% SMEs; 22% of SEs had revenue decrement as compared to 31% in SMEs. That is, SEs had higher growth rates compared to SMEs.
• The median revenue of surviving SEs grows 5 times in about 10 years.
• In 2013, 78% of respondent used SE status in their marketing, as compared to 53% in 2011. Consumers start to internalize the concept of “Buy Social”.

• SE Definition: The increased awareness of entrepreneurs on the brand value of “SE” triggers the academic effort on defining the sufficient conditions, instead of only necessary conditions, on what is a SE to avoid the abuse of the SE label. According to Professor Filipe Santos of INSEAD, social entrepreneurs should generate positive externalities benefiting the powerless community through sustainable solutions based on empowerment.

• Empowerment: Providing a job to the jobless is an empowerment.

• Sustainable solution: The SEs funded by 3E has a median life of 9.3 years, as compared the median life of 4 years of the US commercial enterprises. So 3E Project achieves a much higher sustainability relatively.

• Benefit on Workfare to the Powerless: Each grant dollar generates 77.4 cents/year of workfare for the people with disability. Over the 9.3 years, the total workfare is 7.2 dollars. That is, one dollar grant results to 7.2 dollars workfare.

• Benefit on Social Costs: The comparison between sheltered workshop and the SE portfolio in Stewards Ltd, a Christian Charity Organization (hereafter Stewards), reflect the significant difference in cost-effectiveness if only counting the workfare. However, social enterprises cannot help those in severe disability. So, there is a limit on social enterprise application.

• Recommendation: Hong Kong government has done a good job in designing and running funding schemes to incubate social entrepreneurship, but not a good job in evaluating and promoting its own achievements. The evaluation and marketing job should be revised to increase the return-on-investment of the marketing dollars.

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