On 4th July, 9am-2pm, join fellow founders of social impact organisations at our annual Social Founders Forum, hosted by EY in their beautiful Vista Suite looking over the Thames, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.

Our half day morning Forum, in-person and including a light lunch and networking, will bring together 40 social impact founders to share solutions, stories and learnings in a friendly and safe space.

Our theme this year is ‘Building a positive Culture’ - how we, as the founders of our organisations, can best build, enable, inspire and lead a culture that maximises wellbeing, kindness, respect and equity - for all who interact with our organisation.

We believe that a culture of kindness, led by us as founders, is also the key to delivering impact, sustainable business models, scale (if you want scale), and resilience - resilience for you, your team and organisation, and the communities you support.

We’ll follow our usual format, with speakers, panel and audience discussions, small group discussions and lots of networking time.

Our Summer Forum is for Founders of social impact organisations - current and past founders.

Be sure to book your place soon as numbers are limited and sell out fast.

Use your founder profile to drive the sustainability agenda in your organisation.

This central London in-person free event, held in partnership with Green Business Action, will include inspirational founder speakers, and a practical workshop.

Social Founders and Green Business Action are hosting a joint event, focusing on the founder’s leadership role in the transition to net zero.

From engaging and getting buy-in from the board, empowering staff to set up green teams, setting a realistic budget for planned improvements, there's a wealth of solutions and actions to help drive this mission forward.

Our speakers will share learnings from their own journeys, on how they advocate for this crucial agenda in their own organisations. They will speak to a combination of personal, practical and strategic considerations when it comes to net zero transition.

The event will include a facilitated workshop to create an action plan for you as founder to kickstart this work.

Our theme for this event was 'founder profile' - how, and when, to use your social founder profile to grow your impact, income and influence.

30 Hackney-based social founders joined us to hear from three fellow founders, all with deep expertise in media, communications, story-telling and brand profile - as well as in building their own organisations, social impact, personal and organisational profile.

Our three brilliant speakers, pictured alongside Caroline in this photo, were:

Alvin Carpio, Founder & CEO of the School for Social Justice.

Nigel Clarke, Founder of DadVengers, and Presenter of The Babyclub on CBeebies.

Beatrice Ngalula Kabutakapua, Founder and Business Storytelling Coach.

"Thank you for having us today, it was a real space for reflection on us as Founders and leaders but also about how to translate our journey into THE journey - of our organisation, teams, beneficiaries, stakeholders etc."

"Really good selection of speakers, brilliantly presented (clear, focused, good time keeping and relevant). For me, a lot of what they said is common sense (market to different audiences, know yourself and your organisation, have a brand running throgh what you do etc) but their strength lay in who they were and their social proof - they were of such a high calibre in terms of their life achivements I was in awe and learnt so much about their journey and drivers that THAT was inspiring - to be in a room alongside them meant so much." Rachel Woolf, Founder & CEO, Street Storage.

"Brilliant event, I appreciate the opportunity to attend and network with amazing founders with such amazing missions to help others." Dannii Hadaway, Founder & CEO, IDGO

"Really helpful around why it’s important to share our stories. And also about marketing and having the right person who could do this. Very useful also about sticking to perhaps only one or two platforms for social media rather than so many as I realised it’s too much to manage at once. So many things learnt today, I found this very helpful." Melissa Francis, Founder & CEO, Bridge the Gap - Digital Poverty CIC.

Contact us if you're interested in setting up a local branch of Social Founders in your area or city.

Hackney-based founders and support organisations joined us for an inspirational and informative day. Our lead speaker in the morning was Henry Stewart, Founder and Chief Happiness Officer of Happy Ltd, a highly successful business that he founded in his Hackney bedroom 30 years ago. Henry engaged our audience in a lively discussion around strategies for enabling growth - of both income and impact.

Happy has been rated among the top 20 workplaces in the UK, in the Financial Times/Great Place to Work institute Best Workplaces awards, for five successive years – as well as the very best company in the country for health and well-being.

In 2022 Happy was top 2 in the Best Workplaces (small business section) and top 15 inEurope.

During the afternoon we had presentations from Hackney Impact, Hackney Giving, Hackney CVS, Compass Wellbeing and the Federation of Small Businesses.

Social founders from across London, and even from California, joined us in person for our fourth London Social Founders Forum in May.

Our three powerful speakers were

• Sara Nathan, Founder & Trustee, Refugees at Home
• Nathaniel Peat, Founder & CEO, The Safety Box, and
• Margaret McCabe, Founder & Group CEO, Debate Mate

Hosted in EY's iconic Vista Suite, looking out over the River Thames, the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, the event brought together 40 social founders in person for inspiration and connections, resilience and renewal - and a delicious breakfast!

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Places were free thanks to our Hackney sponsors Hackney CVS, Urban MBA and SWIM Enterprises.

Are you a Hackney Founder?

Book now to join our 26th October Forum

Hackney-based founders talked passionately about their founder journeys, sharing their impact, learnings and advice with other Hackney founders. Our speakers in November were Joyclen Buffong, founder and CEO of Rise:365 and Rachel Woolf, founder and CEO of Street Storage. Our speakers in June were Peter Merrifield, Founder and CEO of SWIM: Support When it Matters, and Abdi Hassan, Founder Director of Coffee Afrik.

Read more about Hackney Social Founders in our News section, including the report on our Hackney research, and the wonderful support to our founders from local Hackney businesses.

Be inspired by Joyclen Buffong's feature interview, Peter Merrifield's founder story, and Rachel Woolf's guest blog.

Hackney Social Founders is sponsored by Hackney CVS, Support When It Matters (SWIM) and Urban MBA.

Read about Kofi Oppong's vision and founder story as Founder & CEO of Urban MBA.

Thank you to all our supporters and donors to the first local branch of our global Social Founders network.

Are you a Hackney Founder?

Book now to join our 26th October Forum

Contact Caroline if you are interested in creating a local branch in your area.

We enjoyed breakfast, networking, inspirational speakers, debate and connections. Our speakers were Dr. Hany El-Banna OBE, co-founder of Islamic Relief, and Sarah Corbett, founder of the Craftivist Collective, author, campaigner, social media guru - and craftivist.

Three inspirational social founders - Virginia Castello Castro from Musica en Vena, Alex Pastrana from Hemper, and Maria Luisa Fresno from Soulem - talked about their founder journeys to an audience of Spanish social founders, funders and friends at our Madrid launch in the stunning Impact Hub Picasso.

60 Japanese social founders, charity leaders, impact investors and interested friends came to our launch event at EdgeOf in Shibuya, Tokyo to hear from fascinating Japanese social founders, to debate founder issues and network over drinks and delicious food.

Our guest speakers were Mie Kajikawa, founder of Sport for Smile, and Aiko Odachi and Makoto Goda, co-founders of Nippon Biodiesel Fuel and Green Image Film Festival.

We were thrilled that EY hosted our first event in their iconic London HQ. 45 social founders, at all stages of their founder journeys, came together to share their stories, hear from inspirational speakers: Saeeda Ahmed, founder of Educations Partnerships UK; James Partridge OBE, Founder of Changing Faces; Gordon D'Silva OBE, founder of the Hoxton Apprentice and Training for Life; and Victoria Thornton OBE HonFRIBA, founder of Open House.

We developed key themes to take forward, and priorities for the new network.

Contact us if you would like to discuss being involved in, speaking at, creating or sponsoring an event around a particular theme, or in your local area, city or country.