I’ve been working  to understand the methodologies used by governments, academics and specialist agencies in different parts of the world to find, identify, count and describe social enterprises.  We’ve looked at 13 (or was it 16?) studies from 15 (or was it 18?) countries in various countries on four continents.

I have tried to call the paper “True Places” but may yet be over-ruled.  That’s a steal from Moby-Dick (Herman Melville) “It is not down on any map; true places never are”.  And if there is a great white whale in my (professional) life, it is positivism in defining social enterprise.  Surely social enterprise is only interesting and exciting if it is paradoxical and elusive.  But that is for another post.  More important for now is to share my Top Three favourite mapping studies.

1. The Scots are world leaders in mapping and supporting social enterprises.  Their last census included provision of a “technical report” that provided background detail on the definitions, boundaries,methods and assumptions in undertaking the survey.  It’s truly a nerd’s paradise.
2. From the Social Enterprise Network of Nova Scotia – the 2017 sector report updates their previous “catalogues” and also expressly sets out to find organisations that may have been missed in previous surveys.  It is this continual broadening of the search horizon that endears.
3. The British Council’s survey of Social Enterprises in Bangladesh, Ghana, India and Pakistan opens up a very different terrain, where the civil society norms that influence how many of us in Ireland view social enterprise just don’t apply.

Keep watching this blog the TCSI pages for news of publication of True Places.