Ernst & Young >About us> EOY - Social Entrepreneur Of The Year - Ernst & Young - United Kingdom

An award category for people who have deployed entrepreneurial skill and leadership in organisations that delivers positive social change.

Entry criteria

Social enterprises will be a trading business, with primarily social and/or environmental objectives, generating revenue from delivering goods and/or services. Surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners. It will have been trading for at least two years as of 1 January 2012. Examples of social enterprises may be a community interest company (CIC), an industrial and provident society (IPS), a company limited by guarantee or shares, group structure and have charitable status.

To enter

UK Entrepreneur Of The Year 2012 will open for entries in January.

Ernst & Young are concentrating our efforts on three issues where social needs and our own knowledge intersect – education, entrepreneurship and the environment.

Ernst & Young  are well known for our commitment to entrepreneurs but perhaps less well-known is our parallel commitment to working with social entrepreneurs. An ever-growing set of entrepreneurs are choosing for-profit business models as the best way to make a social impact. This means a growing numbers of social enterprises using sound business principles to effect positive changes in their communities.

Through Entrepreneur Of The Year we recognise achievements of those social entrepreneurs who are leading the way in this field. However, we also understand that such success does not come easily and needing to balance the demands of trading profitability with the need to achieve significant social success is challenging. That’s why Ernst & Young is proud of our enterprise support programme which offers meaningful opportunities for our staff to support, train and mentor start-up and growing social entrepreneurs though organisations such as the Social Business Trust, UnLtd, the Bright Ideas Trust and The Prince’s Trust.

Some of our past winners

	Michelle Clothier and Sam Conniff of Livity Ltd won the Ernst & Young award for Social Enterprise in October 2011
	Sophi Tranchell, Managing Director of Divine Chocolate Limited was awarded the title Ernst & Young UK Social Entrepreneur Of The Year 2010 in October
	Steve Howard The Climate Group Limited
	Ian MacArthur and John Bird The Big Issue Company Limited
	Brett Wigdortz Teach First