Our Economic Impact

Following on from the publication earlier in the year of our first Environmental Impact Report we have recently produced a similar report but this time looking at our economic impact.

A lot of the monitoring and evaluation that we do relates to the social impacts and the difference our work makes to people’s lives. However as an Environment Trust we are very aware that both our environmental and economic impacts also contribute to our vision of vibrant, thriving and resilient communities and our mission to protect and enhance the local environment and to increase the wellbeing and resilience of local people and communities.

So we have, for the first time, produced a report which begins to quantify our economic impact and, in particular, how we support the social economy (other social enterprises and non-profit organisaitons) and the local economy (other local businesses).

The new economics foundation established a project called Plugging the Leaks which “was created to support people in communities to take a different approach to local economic development, one that can have a greater, more sustainable impact on their local economies than traditional regeneration initiatives…It re-generates the local economy from within, and takes advantage of the resources that a community already possesses.”

For the financial year 2011-12 we had a turnover of approximately £214,000 and once you have removed ring-fenced monies and staff salaries and wages we were left with approximately £38,000 which we had full control of how to spend.

Our report shows that we spent over 46% of this on the social economy and over 20% on other local businesses – or in cash terms a combined total of £25,639. We still spent 25% on national and multi-nationals (this includes phone and IT services, fuel for the van, etc) however even for a relatively small organisation it can be seen that we currently spend more than 65% of our available budget in supporting the social economy and the local economy. This is a great starting point for us and we will look to build on this as we move forward.

You can download the report here DRCET_EconomicImpactReport_2011-12_Dec12