SiiWA are excited to announce a new initiative with Social Traders designed to help put WA well and truly on the social enterprise map. Over the past year SiiWA has represented WA at numerous interstate social enterprise forums and functions one of the rather alarming but popular misconceptions that we encounter from our colleagues is “I guess there’s not a lot happening over there in WA”, SiiWA would like to challenge this by identifying and registering the West Australian social enterprise sector in order to rightfully fly the flag for all the great social businesses that exist across our state.

It is SiiWA’s belief that not only does Western Australia have a great diversity of established and new social enterprise operators but we also have some the most sustainable and successful in the whole of Australia. Many West Australian social entrepreneur practitioners do not identify with the term “Social Entrepreneur” or consider themselves to be in the “Social Enterprise sector”. For many hard working West Australian’s they are simply getting down to the business of running organisations that provide support, training, employment for those disadvantaged members of their community. Its now SiiWA’s mission to find these businesses and promote them accordingly.

By partnering to map the West Australian market SiiWA & Social Traders will help to raise the profile of Social Enterprise in Western Australia by clearly identifying what businesses exist, identifying their products and services and providing full contact details via the Social Traders “Social Enterprise Finder“ tool. This tool is the first of its kind in Australia and will ultimately provide a National Directory of social enterprise products and services.

To list a social enterprise, you must meet certain criteria.In relation to the business you would like to list on the Social Enterprise Finder, tick the boxes if you agree with the statements -

	The business principally exist to provide a social, environmental or local economic benefit
	The business trades fo fulfil their mission1
	The business derives a substantial portion of their income from trade2
	The business reinvests the majority of your profit into furthering its social mission

The business is a social enterprise

1. Where trade is defined as the organised exchange of goods and services, including:
• monetary, non-monetary and alternative currency transactions, where these are sustained activities of an enterprise; contractual sales to governments, where there has been an open tender process ; and
• trade within member-based organisations, where membership is open and voluntary or where membership serves a traditionally marginalised social group.
2. Operationalised as 50% or more for ventures that are more than five years from start-up, 25% or more for ventures that are three to five years from start-up, and demonstrable intention to trade for ventures that are less than two years from start-up.

To register you interest in being listed on the “Finder” please provide your details below: