Social Enterprises Editing and Proofreading Services

A social enterprise trades, which means it has customers who may not care about the mission and funders who care about little else. Writing for both from one organisation is genuinely difficult, and the two failure modes are symmetrical: a café that leads with its social purpose and never says the coffee is good attracts sympathy purchases that do not sustain a business, while one that hides the purpose entirely cannot explain why it is priced as it is or access the support available to it.

We edit what social enterprises and trading charities produce — customer-facing website and product copy, sales and tender material for commercial buyers, social value statements for public sector procurement, investment and social finance applications, business plans and financial narratives, theory of change and impact documentation, employment and training programme material for the people the enterprise supports, governance documents including asset locks and community interest statements, funding applications combining trading and grant income, partnership and supply agreements, annual reports for a mixed audience, and internal material explaining the model to staff. Our editors check that the commercial and mission accounts are compatible rather than aimed at different readers.

Explaining the trading model is the piece of writing that resolves the tension, and most enterprises never attempt it. Customers who understand that buying this thing at this price is what pays the wages of the people the enterprise employs are buying a product with a reason, not a charitable gesture — and that distinction determines whether they return. We write these so the mechanism is stated in one or two concrete sentences rather than as a claim about profits going to a good cause, which is vague enough that most readers assume a small percentage; so the quality claim comes first and stands on its own, because a customer choosing on sympathy is a customer who does not come back; so the price is explained where it is above market, since the honest reason is usually persuasive and the silence is not; and so the social value narrative for a public sector buyer says what the contract itself delivers rather than describing the enterprise's general good works, which is what procurement is actually scoring.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including business plans, financial information and material in draft. We are editors rather than business, legal or investment advisers, and we offer no view on your model, structure, pricing or any procurement requirement. What we can do is make both halves of the story clear and consistent with each other.