Skip to main content

Non-profit Making Associations: Ethnic Groups

Volume 479: debated on Monday 21 July 2008

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s funding of black and minority ethnic social enterprise. (218904)

The Government do not fund individual social enterprises directly, rather they provide strategic funding to organisations that represent and support social enterprise. This is in addition to the commitments to support an environment in which social enterprise can thrive as set out in the “Social Enterprise Action Plan: Scaling New Heights” (November 2006) and in “The future role of the third sector in social and economic regeneration” (July 2007).

Seven social enterprise representative organisations receive strategic funding from the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) to provide a credible and effective voice for the sector into Government, to act as an advocate for the sector and to work with Government to develop and implement policy.

In total 20 per cent. of OTS strategic funding for social enterprise partners is ring fenced to enable them to work alongside black and minority ethnic (BME) groups to ensure their voice is heard. To draw this work together the Social Enterprise Coalition is funded to develop a strategy to engage and integrate BME social enterprise into the wider social enterprise movement. This work is ongoing and a strategy will be in place in autumn 2008.

In addition we fund Voice4Change England to enhance the effectiveness of the black and minority ethnic third sector.