Positioning Paper: WMCA RET

‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship COE

Introduction. The demanding climate change policies adopted in the UK have enhanced the need for the social
economy to create solutions to drive carbon reduction across society and industry. At TIN Ventures we believe Net-
zero targets can be achieved through retrofit of existing buildings to develop innovative new energy-efficient social
enterprise start-ups capable of leveraging digital automation, and growing sustainable social economy supply chain
distribution channels to reach new local and global markets.

As the built environment is responsible for around 45% of CO2 emissions, existing social economy and faith groups
who retain significant built assets as owners and custodians, have an exciting opportunity to play a key role in
reducing the UK’s carbon footprint by reducing energy consumption.

The ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE vision is to work with established faith and community
groups to support city regions blighted by high deprivation, to better prepare its future social economy workforce and
reduce their carbon footprint. We will enable this vision by developing equity-biased social enterprise pathways to
enable Beneficiaries to launch and scale new start-ups. These pathways will integrate social leadership and
entrepreneurship development with inclusive access to (formal and informal) accredited digital, innovation, and green
skills training for high growth sectors.

This centre of excellence approach (see Figure 1.) has been developed to provide the blueprint for a compelling
business case for change, one which can enable innovative new social enterprise start-ups to scale and thrive. We
intend for our Beneficiary start-up enterprises to deepen the availability of local capacity, role-model future-facing
social economy careers, and amplify the impact of levelling-up by providing sustained access to currently excluded
black and minority ethnic groups.

Figure 1. ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE Model

Proposition. The ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE project aims to:

• Build the entrepreneurial skills and aspirations of Social Enterprise Beneficiaries in order to tackle key equity, skills, and
social mobility challenges e.g., the lack of cohesion and links between schools/FE/HE, employers and young (and older)
adults.

• Focus on promoting social enterprises as vehicles for developing local purpose-led disruptive and radical product and
service innovation, targeted at key sectors with known skills gaps and high future talent demand. e.g., the digital, and
green sector.

• Identify three pilot sites across the West Midlands in high deprivation LSOA areas in Birmingham, Coventry, and the
Blackcountry.
 • The project will involve an initial pilot of the ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE in three locations
with a total budget for each site of £1.3m. The impact of the centre of excellence during the pilot phase of the project
will be measured through data collation and analysis of the feedback of Beneficiary users which will be presented in a
Pilot Impact Evaluation (PIE) Report.

• The PIE Report will feed into a business case to justify the continuation and roll-out of the project beyond the initial pilot
phase and potential opening of additional Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE spaces within
additional high deprivation community neighborhoods across the UK.

• Potential constraints associated with delivering the project include difficulty securing host locations for the centre of
excellence, and engaging with relevant stakeholders to support the co-design and facilitation of the Hubs. These risks
will be mitigated by early engagement with potential host locations and partners to broker and confirm their
participation and involvement in the co-design and resourcing activities.

Objectives. The key metrics to measure the impact of the ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE against it's
target KPIs will be:

• Increased skills, confidence, and networks of budding social entrepreneurs demonstrated through launch of a start-up
social enterprise which tackles challenges in their local communities e.g., the lack of cohesion and links between
schools/FE/HE, employers and young (and older) adults.

• Achieving demonstrable and quantifiable social and economic change within communities initiated by social enterprise
Beneficiaries which can be scored by capturing details on - the leveraging of built assets, goodwill, and increased skills
capacity - which enables existing faith and community groups to enhance their economic sustainability, and the social
wellbeing of the most marginalised and excluded.

• The development of a Black Supplier Exchange of social entrepreneurs and enterprises governed and established by an
advisory board of black and minority ethnic business leaders - enabling culturally fluent mentoring, coaching, and
business support for Beneficiaries.

• Achieving ‘B Corp’ (https://www.bcorporation.uk) certification for beneficiary social enterprises as a verifiable ESG
credential.

Timeline. The ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE project will begin with dedicated stakeholder
engagement with potential hosts and delivery partners identified in three locations (within Birmingham, Coventry, and the
Blackcountry). This will trigger the launch of a series of 'listening together' workshops which will be convened by the host
partners to gain wider community and target Beneficiary buy-in.

Co-design workshops will follow which build on the discovery and insight gathered, and conclude with a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) agreement signed by the host and their delivery partners which details how the venue, facilities,
resources, and capacity will be used for the duration of the pilot phase.

The estimated schedule will be:

• January 2023: Select community innovation hub (CIH) faith or community group location(s)
• February 2023: Implement capacity building support with key stakeholders and delivery partners
• March 2023: Begin the target Beneficiary engagement with Be Social, Local recruitment campaign
• April 2023: Implement Pre-Accelerator (Acumen Academy and Help2Grow) leadership and entrepreneurship training
• September 2023: Implement Accelerator (NatWest) and Innovator (Warwick University) business pitch and networking
• March 2024: Social Enterprise Start-up Launch Event
• September 2024: Social Enterprise Start-up Impact Report and Celebration Event
Investment. The ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE is projected to require:
• Seed funding (per hub location) of circa £650k matched with £650k of in-kind or corporate investment (a bid is being
prepared for the DCMS Social Enterprise Boost Fund (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/social-enterprise-
boost-fund-invitation-for-local-delivery-partners).

• Roughly 70% of the seed funding will be used for capacity building within the existing faith and community groups and
to attract the appropriate calibre of corporate and academic partners, trainers, and industry-based tutors to establish
each centre of excellence.

• The remaining 30% will be grant-funded to the Beneficiary social enterprise start-ups to enable them to access the
leadership, digital, innovation, and entrepreneurship skills and employability training alongside the necessary
wraparound support.

Benefits. By investing now in the ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE, we can:
• Not only support existing faith and community groups who lack the essential talent and resources to survive the
current challenging environment in the short-term, but also help the local or combined authority to realise their
longer-term ambitions related to growing the social economy.

• Once established, the ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE could deliver between 100 and 150
social enterprise start-ups each year with demonstrable expertise in digital, innovation, and green product and
service design, and low carbon sustainability.

• These start-up social enterprises will have received a unique contextual and work-based education, encompassing
both green product and service design, and low carbon sustainability theory and real-world practice. They will enter
the social economy sector workforce already equipped to role-model the B Corp manifesto of enterprises which
balance profit with people and the planet, building an inclusive and sustainable social economy that works for
everyone.

Impact. Our Porters analysis of the benefits to faith and community groups across each region indicates that, at a minimum,
the ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social Entrepreneurship CoE can generate a social value IRR of 3% aligned to the Social
Value Portal metrics.

Through establishing and leveraging a national ecosystem of these centres of excellence operating as social enterprise
incubators and accelerators, we can:
• Develop carbon abatement at low cost within faith and community groups through the integration of purpose-driven
products and service design with building science and energy conservation techniques. Imagine local social enterprises
launching new purpose-driven services and products developed using human-centred design tools, and which leverage
natural ventilation and daylight, working in harmony with thermally efficient building fabrics.

• Develop potential social enterprise start-up use-cases which can produce radical or disruptive innovations enhancing
the ‘high-street of the future’ or community-built assets. Set that vision against the typical approach of applying
expensive carbon solutions and technology to offset unnecessarily high energy consumption and we hope the
potential for a step-change in social economy innovation becomes both viable and compelling.

• Drive sustained purpose-led social economy growth by leveraging the ‘Community Innovation Hub’ Social
Entrepreneurship CoE to enhance the confidence, skills, and capability of the region’s faith groups and social economy.
Enabling enhanced resilience capable of mitigating the current challenging economic conditions exacerbated by Brexit,
increased disruption, and high inflation.
for more details contact: alex.cole@tinventures.co.uk