Our commitment as a social enterprise

We are proud to announce that Women in Tech SEO is officially a certified SEUK Social Enterprise.

We have been operating as a social enterprise for a long time, but we wanted to ensure we continue operating as such by legally committing to it. So, we put the time and effort to apply to become an SEUK Social Enterprise member, and our application was successful.

What does a social enterprise mean?

From the Social Enterprise UK website: Social enterprises are businesses. Like any other business, we seek to make a profit and succeed commercially. But how we operate, who we employ, how we use our profits and where we work helps transform lives and communities across the UK and around the world.

We work to demonstrate a better way to do business, one that prioritises benefit to people and planet and uses the majority of our profit to further our mission.

There are currently more than 131,000 social enterprises in the UK, and Women in Tech SEO is now officially one of them.

What does being a social enterprise mean for WTS?

To become a certified SEUK social enterprise, we had to commit and provide evidence for the following:

1) Have a clear social mission set out in our governing documents.

We updated the company's legal articles of association to have a clear Social Responsibility section that highlights our social mission.

2) Be independent and earn more than half our income through trading.

Our organisation operates independently, and our community is free for members to join. Our income comes from our WTSPartner program, and WTSFest ticket sales and sponsorship.

3) Be controlled or owned in the interests of our social mission.

We are controlled and owned in the interests of our social mission through a combination of governance, ownership structures, and legal frameworks. Key decisions are made with our social mission in mind, and the personal identity and values of our leadership team align directly with our social mission.

4) Reinvest or give away at least half our profits or surpluses towards our social purpose.

We are committed to reinvesting at least half of our profits back into our organisation to further our mission, and we formalised this commitment legally in our governing documents. Here are a few examples of how we currently re-invest our funds back into our social mission:

• We run a free mentorship program, WTSMentorship, twice a year, and pay our trainer for conducting training and guidance
• We pay our authors and editor for publishing on our WTSKnowledge Hub
• We pay our speakers a speaker fee and cover their expenses for WTSFest
• We pay our Slack Community Heroes for helping keep our community engaged
• We offer hundreds of WTSFest scholarship tickets through our scholarship fund
• We sponsor several initiatives and events that share a similar mission
• We prioritise hiring freelancers and suppliers who are people of marginalised genders

5) Be transparent about how we operate and the impact we have.

We are transparent about how we operate and the impact we have through publishing a comprehensive community annual impact report as part of our ongoing B Corp certification process. It is our intention to build on this report year after year and make it even more comprehensive as time goes on.

Our next steps

Becoming a certified SEUK Social Enterprise was only the first step for us. We are currently in the Verification stage of our B Corp certification. We are committed to continue growing our community and organisation in alignment with our social mission and values.

A massive thank you to all our community members and partners for their continuous support.