Enterprise for Inclusion sought to answer two distinct but complementary questions:

• The extent to which social enterprise approaches can be effective in tackling social exclusion in rural England.
  
  
• Whether the approach adopted by the programme is an effective way of supporting these types of activities, i.e. the provision of discreet, time-limited packages of grant and advisory support.

In order to provide evidence-based answers to these questions, an extensive range of data was systematically collected throughout the duration the programme. The main conclusions of the analysis of the data were as follows:

• The programme showed that there is considerable interest from rural communities in the use of social enterprise approaches as a way of meeting multiple community goals, including that of tackling social exclusion.
  
  
• The projects supported appear to have broad and multiple impacts on different forms of social exclusion. By far the main impacts appear to be on service provision for socially excluded groups, with significant but lower impacts on disengagement and marginalisation, income deprivation and social deprivation.
  
  
• Evidence suggests that most of the projects supported have the potential to be financially sustainable, albeit with volunteer support from their community and grants forming part of their ‘enterprise model’.
  
  
• The principle of supporting enterprise-based projects through combined packages of grant and advisory support appears to have been very effective.
  
  
• Almost all of the projects supported felt that the duration of the support programme was too short. Many would have valued some form of follow-up support at a reduced level of engagement following the completion of the programme.
  
  
• With the Government Business Link brand moving towards a brokeraged approach to the delivery of business support, the programme shows a way in which, with certain elements in place, this could work for social enterprise.
  
  
• The research suggests that there is a need for a stronger complementary relationship between continuous, more generalist process support and the types of short-term, specialist inputs provided by the programme.

For further information on the outcomes of the research, the programme summary and full research report are available to download from this website. All reports are free of charge.

To download the report, please select the required document from the downloads section above.