Leading with Purpose: The Role of Social Enterprises in Early Years Education

In this blog our CEO looks at Raised In’s social enterprise model – what this means for Raised In, our wider social benefit, and how early years social enterprises can safeguard the future of the sector for everyone.

From day one, Raised In has proudly operated as a social enterprise with a clear purpose: to run a professional, sustainable business that delivers genuine public benefit. Based in Bristol, we’re a community interest company with a mission to protect, sustain, and strengthen community spaces by providing high-quality early years education.

Our dual-purpose model ensures that Raised In nurseries not only serve children and families, but also safeguard the long-term future of the vital community assets in which they are based. Our settings are in areas of historic disadvantage, places where major childcare chains typically do not operate. For families in these communities, access to full-day, year-round care is essential. Without it, parents are unable to work or train, deepening existing inequalities. Raised In proves that it is possible to run a sustainable early years business that works for local communities – not just in them.

To date, we’ve paid over £600,000 in rent to our community partners and begun distributing unrestricted grants from in-year profits. In the last financial year alone, we donated £20,000 to Eastside Community Trust. Each week, more than 300 children access our provision, enabling over 200 parents to work or study. Our circular economy model reinvests up to £1 million per nursery into local communities, supporting local businesses and keeping wealth where it’s generated, rather than flowing to offshore or private interests.

Raised In also employs 100 people, trains up to 16 apprentices annually, and is committed to paying at least the Real Living Wage across the board. Being a social enterprise doesn’t mean compromising on quality or on fair pay. In fact, it gives us the freedom to challenge the narrative that Early Years Education is undervalued and underpaid. With no shareholders extracting profits, we can reinvest in our people, our settings, and our communities.

Raised In is a founding member of the Early Years Social Enterprise Collective, a group working to raise the profile of this powerful model. Recent research presented in Westminster highlighted the unique strengths of early years social enterprises: a commitment to quality, sustainability, equity, and public value. In a fragmented sector, social enterprises offer a resilient, values-led alternative – especially at a time when government investment in early years entitlement funding is at an all-time high. Ensuring that public money delivers public benefit – not shareholder returns – is a win for taxpayers and, most importantly, a win for our youngest children and their families.

Yet, in a market increasingly dominated by private equity-backed chains, social enterprises face real challenges in scaling to meet demand. Encouragingly, the Department for Education’s recent strategy, Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life, recognised the positive impact of the social enterprise sector. It’s heartening to see providers like Raised In acknowledged for the difference we make and an indication that the government wants to continue to support this model in a mixed market. It would also be wrong to shy away from the very real financial challenges facing the sector, in part due to long-standing under-funding of the early years entitlement funded (or should it be subsidised?) hours. This is a challenge not unique to social enterprise nurseries, but for smaller settings or groups without a wealthy parent group or high-value assets, the margins are small and the risks higher the longer government underfunding persists.

Looking ahead, we remain committed to championing the role of early years social enterprises. We’re here to show that it’s not only possible to run a sustainable and profitable early years business, it’s possible to do so in a way that delivers lasting public benefit. Because what you do with profit matters. And we’re excited to keep growing our impact for families, communities, and our community partners in the months and years to come.