Oasis Community Housing are widely respected for the compassionate and consistent support they offer to people experiencing homelessness. With deep roots in the North East, as well as projects around London, they are constantly striving to improve lives. Goodlabs were invited to tender to support the charity in an exciting social enterprise feasibility project, and were delighted to win the work.
Like all charities OCH exists in a challenging funding environment and in order to ensure its long-term sustainability must spread risk by operating a mixed-income model combining both fundraising and revenue-generation. Our feasibility study needed to account for dual objectives of generating unrestricted income as well as delivering social value and employability progression for those the charity serves. In order to deliver on the objectives of the work Goodlabs brought on board Jessie Joe Jacobs as an associate consultant. As a prior winner of the Sunday Times Social Entrepreneur of the Year award Jessie brought important insight and know-how to the project.
The project proceeded in three phases, firstly exploring a wide range of opportunities that OCH might want to consider, then narrowing down to a smaller range of options to evaluate in more detail, before finally working up costed business plans for two new social enterprises.
We look forward to continuing to advise the charity as they secure the necessary start up funding and begin to push ahead with the plans.