Welcome to Balance!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Social Enterprise?

• Social Enterprise are financially non-profit distributing organisations where the main aims are to address 'social' ('community' or 'environmental') needs, innovatively driven to achieve these goals via the resources available to them through a variety of income stream opportunities.

What is balance?

• balance is both a diagnostic and a strategic development tool
• balance is a organisation performance indicator
• balance is a concept that takes an overview of the whole business
• balance encourages organisations to take small steps to learning and organisation development
• balance addresses many organisational issues including multi-bottom line, stakeholder perspective, internal activities, learning and visioning.

Who should use it?

• balance is for any of the following:
  • Charities Trading Arm
  • Community Enterprise
  • Co-operative
  • Development Trust
  • Employee Owned Company
  • Incorporated Society
  • Intermediate Labour Market (ILM)
  • Multi-Stakeholder Enterprise
  • Registered Charity
  • Social Enterprise
  • Social Firm
  • Voluntary Organisation
     
• balance is for managers, teams of managers or boards of directors

Why should we use it?

• balance is a tool to support organisational development
• balance offers a way of viewing current business practice and encourages thinking and reflection

How does it work and how long does it take?

• balance presents a number of business scenarios and uses self-assessment to identify current business practice
• balance takes about an hour to complete online
• balance generates:
  • an instant snapshot of strengths and weaknesses
  • a Strategic Action Plan outlining steps for development
  • sector focused benchmarking indicators

When should we use it?

• balance is an annual performance development tool
• balance stores (privately and securely) previous results offering a comparative benchmarking analysis, year-on-year.