Customers

The Social Enterprise Mark is a label which tells customers that a product or service comes from a social enterprise

By buying products or services from holders of the Social Enterprise Mark, you too will be helping to bring about social or environmental benefit.

Social enterprises use their profits to provide a social or environmental benefit to society or your community. Social enterprises are not driven by the need to generate profits for shareholders or owners.

What does the Social Enterprise Mark mean?

Social enterprises are doing all sorts of useful things! From recycling old computers to providing visitor attractions or selling fair-trade coffee, the possibilities are endless. What they have in common however is how they do business.

Social enterprises trade in order to achieve wider social outcomes. This means that rather than maximising owner or shareholder value - their primary aim is to benefit society by creating a wider social or environmental impact.

When buying from a holder of the Social Enterprise Mark you too will be helping to bring about social or environmental benefit.

Click here to find out about the work social enterprises do

The Social Enterprise Mark award

For a social enterprise to be awarded the Social Enterprise Mark they must provide evidence against a set of criteria. They must prove that they are social enterprises through:

• their social aims and achievements
• trading levels
• showing profits and assets are used to support their social aims
• demonstrating that all this is protected in their governing documents

For further information click here

Each application will be assessed by the Social Enterprise Mark Impact and Assessment Manager. There is also an independent Social Enterprise Mark Panel who will formally approve applications. For further information click here.

Lucy Yates, National Consumer Council
"The Mark is a significant step forward for the social enterprise movement. The Social Enterprise Mark has an important role to play - giving consumers a clear way of identifying social enterprise products and services, and confidence that they are benefiting people and planet."