Succesfull business models in Denmark – Case 1
ByBi is a danish social enterprise based in Copenhagen, that produces honney products.
The company was established in 2010 as an association. Today the company employes 10-12 people.
ByBi cooperates with more than 50 companies, and since 2010 ByBi has moved 15 million bees up on rooftops in Copenhagen.
The compagny produce honney and other products based on honney. ByBi rents beehives to the city’s businesses and afterwards ByBi takes care of everything else.
Bybi believes that their production should enrich both society and environment.
That’s why the company work with social organisations to create new opportunities in beekeeping and honey production for homeless and long term unemployed within ByBis honey industry.
The company makes sure that the bees pay as much as possible back to the businesses that rent biihives. The rent agreement includes an inspiring CSR package, exciting events and lots of delicious, local and unique honey from the city!
Bybis also runs different eventprograms, which invites invites to enter a blossoming city, one can actually taste. The company do both private and public tours.
The company also run a project ’My City My Bee’ that is about giving schoolchildren the opportunity to discover the city from the bees perspective. The project teaches them, why humans and bees need eachother and how that can be turned into entrepreneurship.
ByBi works with Activity center Sundholm (for homeless people) to create new opportunities for their users. Their wood workshop produces frames and wooden beehives for the company. In that ByBi also secure an income for the workshop and meaningfull activities for the workshops users.
Together with the Danish Red Cross, 3B and KAB ByBi has made social housing projects buzz with life and trained the inhabitants in beekeeping and honeyproduction.
Bybis honey products are produced in small batches from the companys apiaries across the city. Every district has its own flavour and colour. The honey contains neither pesticides or pollution from the air. Just clean honey from the city of Copenhagen
Read more at bybi.dk/en/
New Danish Dialogue Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Growth
Danish Minister for Business and Growth, Troels Lund Poulsen, launched the new Dialogue Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Growth on February 23 2016.
The Dialogue Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Growth is surposed to organize the dialogue between companies and stakeholders within the field of social responsibility and social economy and contribute to danish government policy development in the area.
The Dialog Forum’s purpose is to support companies’ efforts to take social responsibility and social enterprises work to create growth in a way that creates maximum value for eth individual company and for the community as a whole.
Dialogue Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Growth will perform the following tasks:
- Obtain, develop and disseminate international and national knowledge on trends within social responsibility and social enterprises.
- Encourage corporate commitment to follow up on the UN World sustainable development objectives.
- Promote partnerships for social responsibility and growth and social investments.
- Host a series of roundtables to bring together companies and relevant stakeholders themed dialogues.
- Contribute to government policy development in the area.
• Organise an annual conference in collaboration with relevant stakeholders on developments in the field. - Develop a yearly status to the Minister on developments in responsible corporate behavior and social enterprises as well as on the work of the Forum.
The new Dialogue Forum is composed of a total of 14 members incl. Chairman Dan Boyter who is a board member of Pressalit A / S and chairman of the Danish National Opera.
See members of the Dialogue Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Growth here
Source: Danish Business Authority
Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation
“Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation—International Case Studies and Practice” is a new book by Ashoka Fellow and Tech Awards Laureate Ken Banks. The book is published 3th March 2016.
In the book thirteen entrepreneurs tell their stories with a brutal, refreshing honesty.
From a life-saving project that brings solar-powered lighting to midwives in Nigeria, tools to help activists spread democracy, a massage to relieve the effects of autism and empowering conservation in North Africa, to a news dissemination service that’s grown from small beginnings to have a global impact, each case study in the book draws out the lessons learnt by the innovators, providing guidance and advice for those looking to follow in their footsteps.
According to Ken Banks the key objective of the book is to inspire people by ‘humanizing’ entrepreneurs and democratizing social change. Although the individuals achieved great things, there’s no reason why many others can’t follow their path.
The book hopes to make their successes feel realistic and accessible to others—especially younger generations.
You can buy the book here
For social impact analysis fans: EU consultation on non financial reporting
The EU has just released a consultation (Deadline: 15th April 2016) in light of a Directive on non-financial reporting, which came into force in December 2014 and can be seen here in full.
The Directive aims to improve the transparency of large EU companies regarding their environmental and social impacts.
This is an excellent opportunity to promote social enterprise sector´s traditions of accountability and transparency to all stakeholders. Anyone with an interest in social and environmental impact reporting is encouraged to take a look and contribute their views.
Paragraph 17 in the Non-Financial Reporting Directive specifies that the Commission should draw up non-binding guidelines in order to facilitate the reporting of non-financial information.
The consultation takes the form of a questionnaire, and can be accessed on the website of the European Commission here.
The objective of the consultation
The purpose of this public consultation is to collect views from stakeholders on non-binding guidance on methodology for reporting of non-financial information by certain large companies across all sectors following article 2 of Directive 2014/95/EU on disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by certain large undertakings and groups.
Target groups of the consultation
All citizens, companies, investors, organisations and public authorities are welcome to contribute to this consultation. Contributions are particularly sought from respondents which have an interest and/or expertise in the reporting of non-financial information by companies.
What’s happening in the field of social entrepreneurship in Finland at the moment?
If I’d need to say it in one word, it would be this: buzz.
There is definitely a positive buzz at the moment in the field of organizations that are wanting to make a positive impact to the society. For instance, there are all kinds of happenings and events organised by support organisations, students, networks – you name it. In addition to events and such, as Sitra has aimed to introduce the impact investing model in Finland, Sitra has now launched the first Social Impact Bond (SIB) in Finland together with Me-säätiö. Sitra has also held the first Impact Accelerator program and is now conducting the second program already. Tekes has been active as well together with Ministry for Foreign Affairs’ and they have now a program called BEAM – Business with impact. The program aims to generate new, sustainable business in developing countries.
New Social Enterprise Marks have been given to social enterprises making it in total 68 organizations that have the Finnish Social Enterprise Mark. However there was a new research published by ETLA that says that there is already over 19 000 social enterprises in Finland.
In addition to these, there’s different informal networks – for example Impact Finland. Impact Finland describes itself as a group “for all identifying themselves as impact-minded / mission-driven / social entrepreneurs in Finland”. Impact Iglu is a community that is also doing a lot of interesting things at the moment – it describes itself as a “community for value-driven entrepreneurs”.
From the event side, I believe many of us #socent people are already waiting for the next Slush where there will be Slush Impact track again that is meant for social impact ventures, startup-minded non-profits and impact investors. There are also more places to bump in to like-minded people – especially in Helsinki area – co-working places such as Helsinki Think Company or Aalto Design Factory.
The overall feeling in the field seems to be that the term social entrepreneurship in Finnish has not truly conquered the whole of Finland. However, I see even more often than a few years ago people who are passionate about making a positive impact. I’ve personally come to terms with the term and the discussion surrounding it: who cares what the term is as long as there are positive impacts!
Top Collaboration Software products and how to choose them
What Exactly is Online Collaboration Software?
Collaboration software can take many forms, from simple instant messaging, to conferencing and telephony, to video conferencing. Some applications may focus on a specific element while others try to incorporate more than one capability.
Wikipedia defines Collaboration Software as: “An application software designed to help people involved in a common task to achieve goals.” And for benefits, it goes on to say: “A collaborative working environment supports people in both their individual and cooperative work thus evolving into a new class of professionals, e-professionals, who can work together irrespective of their geographical location.”
There are many tools that might fall in this category, but for the purposes of this article, we define Online Collaboration Software as a software application, platform or tool that is delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), or cloud, and contains a number of capabilities within one platform, either built directly in, or integrated with other applications.
Choosing the Right Tool for You
Online collaboration software isn’t just for companies who have people working in different locations; it’s also a valuable tool for any business that wants to be more efficient and effective. But with so many choices, how do you choose the right collaboration tool for your organization?
To make it easier for you, we’ve created this list of five essential areas to evaluate when researching online collaboration tools. We hope it helps you narrow down your selection and choose the best option for your company or your team.
Business software database Capterra has aggregated data on most popular collaboration software that you can use on their website: http://www.capterra.com/collaboration-software/.
The Global Social Entrepreneurship Network – GSEN
The GSEN is a new platform intending to facilitate collaboration between social entrepreneurs and to create more support for grass roots social entrepreneurs. It will become a peer to peer support network for the incubation, development and growth of early stage social entrepreneurs support around the world.
GSEN brings organisations together to share what works in supporting social entrepreneurs. As a result, our members can provide higher quality support to social entrepreneurs – empowering even more of them to create lasting change in our world.
GSEN is a values led network:
- We believe that every community and every country will find its own path to support social entrepreneurs
- We believe that the sharing of methods, tools and results will contribute to strengthening social entrepreneurship in all countries
- We act and learn from results to improve our approach
- We believe that there are individuals everywhere who have the potential to make positive change in the world
- We believe in the value of social entrepreneurs across the spectrum who bring about change from local to global levels
- We put people at the heart of what we do, backing people first because it is people who lead ventures
- We support people in their own ideas for improving their world, dedicated to peaceful paths to social and environmental improvement
- We reach out and find people who can tackle the key issues facing society and the environment
- We believe that people in communities which face problems are part of the solution and they are most likely to create the most relevant solutions
- We are committed to respect and equal opportunity for all people of the world
Find more at: www.gsen.global
