Social Enterprise: choosing the right legal structure

CIC, CLG, CIO… what is the right legal structure for your social enterprise?

CIC, company limited by guarantee, CIO, registered charity, company limited by shares, Cooperative Society and Community Benefit Society are just a few of the bewildering array of options available as legal structures for social enterprises.

What do these mean?

Which is the right one for your budding social enterprise?

Getting it right at the start is really important. It is usually difficult and expensive (or even impossible) to change structure later.

In partnership with the British Library Business and IP Centre, our Director, Julian Lomas, presented a free webinar on the subject of choosing the right structure for a social enterprise. Julian is a qualified expert in the governance of not-for-profit organisations, including social enterprises, with over 15 years’ experience advising clients in this field.

In this one hour webinar, Julian sought to demystify the issue of choosing the right legal structure for a social enterprise, including:

- explaining the key features of the main options;
- exploring the pros and cons of each; and
- explaining how structures can (or cannot) be changed

You can view a recording of the webinar here and download the slides here. The presentation is about half an hour and then Julian took questions for a further 30 minutes.