Do we experience the same ‘busy’?

The stock answer among charity and social enterprise leaders to the question, “how are you?”, delivered with a forced smile or a grim shrug, is almost always the same: “Busy.”

It’s an acceptance of our lot—a badge of honour, perhaps, but also a ubiquitous sign of overwhelm. In the midst of unprecedented societal challenges, the question ‘How are you?’ can feel profoundly irrelevant unless the person asking is offering some answers, a cheque or a holiday, perhaps, where they transplant your brain so you don’t even have to do a handover.

New thoughts on busyness were sparked after reading a recent report on the mental health of leaders running small charities. It got me wondering: are there meaningful distinctions between the experience of charity leaders and social enterprise leaders when they utter that all-too-familiar word?

The Shared Burden and the Subtle Difference

From my own lived experience running a small social enterprise, I know the physiological sensations of overwhelm are real. The report was a welcome articulation of those feelings, not least the reassurance that you are not alone. It was circulated in a leadership WhatsApp group I’ve started and I think we shared an almost tearful acknowledgement of feeling both seen and sad. 

But let's examine that 'busy' answer in the context of the social economy.

To be clear, the world of charities and social enterprises is a Venn diagram—many organisations are both - one is a legal form and one is not. The distinction I'm using here is the one promoted by Social Enterprise UK: a social enterprise is an organisation that reinvests most of its profits into its mission and by definition of having profits, likely has significant traded income.

When a Charity Says 'Busy'

When a charity that relies heavily on restricted funding and grants says they’re busy and stretched, it usually means they are experiencing:

• Increasing need in their communities due to growing societal pressures.
• A specific resource hungry moment in time (vacancies, project mobilisation, change programmes).
• A lack of additional, unrestricted funding to meet that need with full cost recovery allowing capacity building.

Unsurprisingly, this scenario piles immense pressure onto their people. They are doing more mission with often the same or fewer resources. Their 'busyness' is a measure of increasing community deficit and personal sacrifice. No wonder that report says what it does.

When a Social Enterprise Says 'Busy'

When a social enterprise says they’re busy as let’s say, your local coffee shop might, it could mean the same as above, but unlike the above, could also mean:

• More sales and higher traded (unrestricted) income (which they can reinvest).

In this simplistic analysis I recognise that more sales is likely also to mean increased demands and the operational challenges that come with growth (and a social mission). Both are busy and stretched and working in the social economy always brings with it unique challenges that the coffee shop doesn’t face.  

For both, breaking the cycle of inching forward to the next successful funding bid which will keep you just as busy or planning for a sale large enough to provide developmental capacity to take your organisation up a gear, remains a common challenge.  

Could this be where social investment comes in?  

While all these challenges are real and aren’t going to go away overnight - hiring, scaling, new partnerships etc to say nothing of the process of securing social investment, investing in our organisational capacity brings new opportunities.  From restricted to unrestricted funding, I’ve yet to see an opportunity come close to social investment in terms of the support available, (including grants, enterprise support programmes, investment readiness consultancy to name a few), alongside the opportunity to truly invest in the organisation and not just plug a gap with donations or do more a restricted grant that doesn't actually cover the outgoings.

For charities that think like social enterprises, consider social investment and can find their way to more profit-generating income, this is an almost unique opportunity to reinvest back into their mission and capacity building. 

Their 'busyness' becomes a measure of increasing market demand, revenue and surplus or profit and not the unmet needs of their wider community.

If you’re thinking of exploring social investment so that you can experience a different kind of busy, you can visit Good Finance. Their mission is to be the single trusted source of information on social investment for charities and social enterprises.

Learn more about the Good Finance Ambassadors here.