First Steps in Social Enterprise
First Steps in Social Enterprise is designed to benefit anyone in the BME community with a social enterprise idea, sole traders considering social enterprises, new start social enterprises that want to strengthen their model and people or groups considering a move from the voluntary sector to a social enterprise model.
First steps started life as a 10-week classroom-based course. First Steps Online was developed to help more people access the First Steps training, as our classroom sessions are always oversubscribed. It also allows us to offer extra training we are unable to cover in the classroom sessions.
First Steps Online consists of an online course, regular live online training sessions, email support, an online support group and exclusive e-news.
Online Training
Course Curriculum
- An introduction to social enterprise
- Assessing Viability: Is your business idea viable?
- Post research ideas: Marketing your products and services
- An introduction to content marketing
- Social media platforms
- Email marketing
- Getting started with your website
- Operating your social enterprise
- Developing a budget and cash flow
- Pricing to be in profit
- Legal structures: share and guarantee
- Legal structures and governance in the social economy
- Investment strategies for social enterprise
- Creating your business plan and next steps