The aim of this research was to look at and explore the extent to which the methods of social enterprise could be applied to community food projects to help diversify their sources of income and achieve greater financial stability.
Community food projects often lack financial security and are reliant on a range of charitable donations and grants, and various statutory agency funding streams. The research aimed to determine how many food projects are operating as social enterprises, how they do it, what are the keys to success, why projects currently not operating as social enterprises do not do so, and what are the barriers. The research also looked at the practicalities of making the transition from a grant-funded project to a self-financing project.
The results of this research underpinned the development of this web site to provide information on social enterprise for community food groups and guidance on how to utilise it, including useful case studies.
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