​We are joined this month by Sadaffe Abid, Founder and CEO of CIRCLE Women, interviewed by Noel Mathias, Founder and Managing Director of WEvolution.

Sadaffe Abid is a social entrepreneur passionate about unlocking women’s potential through digital and financial inclusion. She founded CIRCLE Women Association, a tech-enabled nonprofit that’s empowered over 200,000 lives across Pakistan, helping women gain digital skills, financial literacy, and career readiness.

Sadaffe was previously CEO of Kashf Foundation, Pakistan's biggest microfinance bank for women. She's a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School and an INSEAD Entrepreneur in Residence.

CIRCLE uses technology to help women thrive. From basic digital literacy to tech skills like coding and digital marketing through their TechKaro programme, they equip women—especially from underserved areas—with tools to access learning, jobs, and entrepreneurship.

​Noel Mathias is the Founder and Managing Director of WEvolution. The organisation nurtures collectives called Small, Powerful Groups: meaningful, resourceful and accountable communities where everyone can be a change-maker and an entrepreneur. Together they've established 350 Small, Powerful Groups empowering over 1,500 women to find their voice. They've ignited the entrepreneurial spark in 500 women and generated £26 million in social and economic value, revitalising communities typically overlooked.

​The concept for the now 14-year organisation stemmed from an eye-opening trip to India which Noel had arranged for himself and 13 Glaswegian women to visit and learn about the Self-Help Group (SHG) model in India. Specifically how communities used it to lift people out of poverty and provide economic opportunities for others.

Engage with our speakers and fellow founders, and gain practical advice and guidance in an open, honest, and confidential environment.

This interactive session will offer:

- Insightful stories from a seasoned social founder and leader.

- Practical lessons and tips you can apply to your own journey.

- Space for honest conversations with fellow social founders who understand the unique challenges you face.

​This free event (on Zoom) is for social founders - founders of social enterprises, charities, CICs and social impact organisations only.

​We will start the meeting early at 12:45 and end it at 14:30 to allow for time for you to connect with fellow social founders.

Join us for our September ‘Social Founders Talk’, where we invite two social founders to engage in a meaningful and honest conversation about their experiences along their founder journey. Followed by an audience Q&A.

In ​this session, Yvonne Field OBE, Founder & CEO, The Ubele Initiative will be interviewed by Jake Ferguson, Founder, The Baobab Foundation and Black Men 4 Change. They will dive into the joys and the complexities of founding and growing social justice organisations. The two will speak about the resilience and skills acquired as founders who fight for equity and representation for minoritised groups. They’ll share their experience moving through the key founder stages.

Engage with our speakers and fellow founders, and gain practical advice and guidance in an open, honest, and confidential environment.

This interactive session will offer:

• Insightful stories from two seasoned social founders and leaders.
• Practical lessons and tips you can apply to your own founder journey.
• Space for honest conversations and connections with fellow social founders who understand the unique challenges you face.

This online event is only for social impact founders - founders of social enterprises, charities, CICs and social impact organisations.

Join us in person for our next Social Founders Forum on 24th September - in London, 9.30am-2.30pm BST.

We’re excited to announce that our next Social Founders Forum is taking place in one of the most dynamic and innovative areas of London, in Bethnal Green, 10 minutes from Oxford Circus on the Central Line.

Our Forum theme is Founder Transition and Succession - how do we adapt, change our roles and teams? How and when do we decide to step down? How do we ‘leave well’? We know this is a huge challenge for us as social founders, and many of you have asked us to hold a forum to discuss this.

We’ll be joined by fascinating social founder speakers, who will share their experience of transition and succession, and we want to hear from YOU as well, both in the speakers discussion, and in our round table discussions.

We’ll kick off at 9.30am with coffee and pastries from the best social enterprise bakery in East London, for a 10am prompt start, and then at 1.00 we’ll have a delicious British Bangladeshi lunch prepared by one of the best women-led social enterprises in London, with networking time with your fellow Social Founders until 2.30pm.

We are being hosted by the visionary creative arts charity, Proposition Studios, in their new home 2 minutes from Bethnal Green tube station - we’ll be sure to organise a tour of the Studios for you after the forum lunch, and a visit to their exhibition.

We’re also delighted to be running our Forum in partnership with CIVA, the Centre for Innovation in Voluntary Action, whose founder CEO, Michael Norton, alongside CIVA's chair Nicola Pollock, will both be joining us.

And if you want a bit of East London creativity in the afternoon, the Young V&A Museum Is across the road. https://www.vam.ac.uk/young

"An absolutely brilliant session that had my mind fizzing with ideas. It was deeply reassuring and helped me lean into my power as a founder - thanks so much to the speakers and to the Social Founder Network for such a great resource!" Saskia, Founder, The Mizizi Project.

In this session, Jem Stein, founder of Daring Capital and The Bike Project, was interviewed by Ann-Marie Kinlock, founder of KindHaus. Our two speakers shared the joys and the complexities of founding and growing impact-led organisations.

They discussed Jem’s unique route from 10 years as founder and CEO of a refugee bike charity, to heading up a group of angel impact investors in his latest venture, Daring Capital. Ann-Marie shared her own founder story, at an early stage, and her perspective as one of the founders that Daring Capital has invested in.

"This event gave me the clarity and calm I didn’t know I needed. As a founder, it’s rare to feel both inspired and understood, but this session did both."

“I loved the openness of the conversation. It wasn’t surface level. It felt real and deeply human. Hearing other people’s struggles and breakthroughs reminded me that I’m not alone in this journey. Sarah and Ali’s insights made me feel grounded and reconnected to my ‘why'.”

In the inaugural session of the series, Sarah Wren OBE, Founder and CEO of HILS - Health and Independent Living Support, shared her story of taking HILS from an idea "to solve a problem", to a £10million UK charity. Sarah was interviewed by Ali Kakande, Founder & CEO of Carib Eats, a grassroots London-based CIC, set up by Ali 5 years ago, during the pandemic. Sarah shares a special relationship with Ali, as her Social Founders mentor.

Our 2 speakers shared the joys and the complexities of founding and growing an organisation, the resilience and skills the founder acquires as they embark on this journey and go through the key founder stages.

32 participants joined the event, from across the UK, and also from Rome, Lahore and Tokyo.

We want founders to be leaders, to use their founder profile to drive the sustainability agenda in their organisations.

This central London in-person free event, held in partnership with Green Business Action, involved 4 funders talking with inspirational founders about how best to access funding for sustainability initiatives.

Social Founders and Green Business Action hosting a second 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. But where do you access the funds to make change happen?

Our speakers shared learnings from their own journeys about how they have accessed funding to drive this agenda, alongside funders and corporate sponsors who have supported London-based organisations and businesses around net zero transition.

This was a free event for London-based founders and business owners.

On 4th July, we held 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 Forum brought together 3 inspirational speakers and 40 social impact founders, in person, to share solutions, stories and learnings in a friendly and safe space, including lunch and networking and amazing views.

Our theme this year was ‘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 organisations.

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.

Huge thanks to our three brilliant speakers, to EY for hosting us so generously, and to all the founders who joined us.

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.