Guest post by Fiona Descoteaux and Dr Clodagh O'Reilly
Ireland has more than 4,000 social enterprises employing over 25,000 people, according to Ireland's National Social Enterprise Policy 2024–2027. Across Europe, the European Commission's Social Economy Action Plan (2021) puts the social economy at 13.6 million jobs, roughly 6% of total EU employment. Recent research (Quaye, 2024) has identified social enterprise as an ideal model for delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goals. By any measure, social enterprise should be considered as a serious part of the economy.
So why are so many of these organisations being quietly set up to fail?
Both Ireland's National Social Enterprise Policy 2024–2027 and Northern Ireland's Social Enterprise Action Plan 2023–2026 make the same demand: diversify revenue, reduce grant dependency, and build sustainable trading models. Highlighting the importance of using successful commercial models to sustain the delivery of social impact.
The problem is that most social enterprises were built around grant funding, not traded income. The commercial infrastructure, pricing models, financial systems, governance for growth, and the core infrastructure for scaling were not put in place, and the ecosystem has been slow to address them.
The structural gaps we see repeatedly
Between us, we have spent more than four decades working in and around social enterprise leadership, research and policy. Across that time, the same structural challenges appear with striking consistency.
Social enterprises are hybrid organisations, pursuing social or environmental missions while trading in competitive markets. That dual mandate requires leaders to balance purpose with financial sustainability, often without the commercial infrastructure to do either well.
The most persistent gap is commercial strategy. Many organisations have strong missions and genuine impact but lack defined trading strategies or the operational plans required to support scaling. Without a clear commercial direction, scaling becomes reactive rather than deliberate.
This is compounded by limited market analysis. Competitor positioning and market opportunities are not always assessed systematically, making it difficult to identify where and how an organisation can realistically scale.
Revenue models present another challenge. Where services have historically been grant-funded, pricing structures often don't reflect the full cost of delivery or the value being created. Organisations end up quietly subsidising their users and undermining their own sustainability in the process.
Operational systems can also lag behind ambition. Without reliable financial dashboards and performance data, leaders making significant strategic decisions lack the visibility that would be standard in any comparable commercial organisation. Increasingly, the tools to address this, including practical applications of artificial intelligence, are accessible to organisations of all sizes, but few social enterprise leaders have had the opportunity to explore what's relevant to their context.
In effect, many social enterprises are attempting to scale impact without the commercial architecture that enables scaling in any enterprise. None of this reflects badly on the leaders involved. It reflects a sector that has been asked to change faster than the support ecosystem around it.
Who is behind the programme?
Led by InterTradeIreland, the programme is delivered in partnership with two practitioners whose combined experience spans research, enterprise leadership, financial systems and policy development across Ireland's social enterprise ecosystem.

Fiona Descoteaux leads Unravel Complexity Ltd, a consultancy specialising in commercial architecture, governance systems and blended-finance models for social innovation, place-based regeneration and social economy development. Her career in the sector spans more than two decades, beginning in Glasgow in 2004.
She has held senior leade...

Scaling Social Enterprise: The Commercial Capability Gap That's Holding the Sector Back