It’s been an incredibly busy year for us at ESEN, we’re a team of 3 making sure we make the most of every second of the year and want to take a second to celebrate everything we and the network has achieved over the last 12 months.
Membership
With a variety of incredible new members working across different fields and celebrating our longstanding members continuing their incredible work in the city.
- 28 new social enterprises joined the network this year, taking us to 259 active members and a 20% increase in growth.
- 4 members have now ‘graduated’ to sustainable Full Members of our community company.
- 3 new members became Full members straight away upon joining, showing the strength of the social enterprise sector which has been so collaborative in the face of turbulent times!
Social Media & Marketing
Using social media platforms to make sure the stories of social enterprises in Edinburgh are shared and celebrated. Free interviews, member events highlighted, reels, news, funding, success stories & more
- 27 Interviews Filmed with Members
- 594,083 Views across all platforms
- 14,373 Interactions
Some big numbers, a lot of awareness and we’ll keep pushing and promoting these amazing businesses in every way we can.
Meetings
The best results come from connecting and working with partners who dream as big as we do. From meetings with the Regional Enterprise Council to awards ceremonies to casual coffees with members, Steve represented, promoted and advocated for ESEN & their members at over 250 external meetings and events in 2025.
Our member engagement officer Becca had a busy year with 94 new/potential member meetings, 57 current member meetings and 31 partner meetings.
Year Highlights
We attend alot of events and curate/help setting up programmes to help social enterprises in Edinburgh, whilst there’s alot more to this list we thought we’d just highlight a few of the special ones from this year.
February – Promoting the network at a joint table with Social Enterprise Scotland at SCVO The Gathering
March – AGM and welcoming new board members
April – Edinburgh University Students as Change Agents event, The Challenge Finale with Glasgow Social Enterprise Network & TSI Edinburgh all staff meeting with Volunteer Edinburgh & EVOC
June – Sold out ESEN Summer Networking Event at Edinburgh Printmakers
October – Meeting hundreds of students at Edinburgh University Discover Careers Fair
November – Buy Social Market with City of Edinburgh Council at Waverley Court, Sold out Winter Networking Event & Attending and being hired to film at the TSI Scotland Conference at SEC in Glasgow
Our own Events
Hosted and catered by social enterprises to ensure money stays in the sector, this years networking events were held at Edinburgh Printmakers & Edinburgh Open Workshop, catered by Whale Arts & Edinburgh Printmakers
- We held 8 Events organised for Social Enterprises
- Had 72 summer networking event attendees
- 86 Winter Networking event attendees
Life isn’t just about work, whilst we did provide opportunities and training events, we also took the time twice this year to celebrate all of your hard work with our summer networking events to allow everyone to speak, eat, drink and relax with other social enterprises.
Christmas Campaign – Gift for Good
Gift for good is our new way of promoting social enterprises at Christmas. Launched on the 8th of December, Gift for Good is the Edinburgh guide of presents for a purpose with our members offerings.
Despite only running for 1 week so far it’s had a reach of 140,434 across Edinburgh & has also been shared by The Edinburgh Minute (Thanks Michael) & more organisations across the city and will continue to be promoted throughout this week.
Assistance, Voice and Promotion
We’re very proud to have helped introduce Social Enterprises to the Council and NHS with Scran Academy moving into Royal Hospital for Children And Young People & Space at Broomhouse Hub into Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion.
This year we’ve advertised over 250 jobs from social enterprises & partners and promoted over 1000 events on a weekly basis.
From the three of us at Edinburgh Social Enterprise Network, we hope everyone has a great Christmas break and takes the time to recharge for next year!
ESEN
