E3M (www.e3m.org.uk) promotes and supports the growth and impact of mature social enterprises that deliver public services and wider public benefit services with optimum quality and social value. It aims to be a catalyst for change, in particular by focussing on the experience and best practice of pioneering social enterprise leaders and their progressive counter-parts within commissioning public authorities. E3M is led by Jonathan Bland of Social Business International, previously the founding CEO of Social Enterprise UK.
The work of E3M focuses on three M’s: Markets, Money and Models. When the interactions between these are right it can make all the difference to the success of a social enterprise. Each of these key elements is underpinned by another M: Measurement.
At the heart of E3M is its Social Enterprise Leaders Club, the members of which are leaders of the largest and most successful UK social enterprises Alongside Numbers for Good the leading public benefit sector consultancy, Stone King, provides expertise and shares experience and knowledge about the key ingredients for successful social enterprise development and growth.
E3M offers a programme of activities for members and a series of knowledge sharing events open to non-members.
Running alongside and often overlapping with the Leaders Club is the E3M Bold Commissioners Club, comprising senior leaders in public bodies, who are pushing the boundaries of commissioning practice, and wish to share learning and to develop collaborative thought leadership in this field. The Bold Commissioners Club has a special focus on innovation and achieving maximum public benefit in the way commissioning is undertaken.
Julian Blake leads Stone King’s engagement with E3M, having been involved with the initiative from the outset in 2010. He is particularly engaged with promoting a conceptual shift in public services “from procurement to partnership”, following the success of “The Art of the Possible in Public Procurement”, a co-publication with Frank Villenueve-Smith of the leading community transport social enterprise, HCT Group, which promoted the true purposive, permissive and facilitating nature of the wrongly maligned Public Procurement Regulations.