Tammy Darcy On Opportunities For Social Enterprise Growth And Recognition In Ireland

In 2020, Tammy Darcy was announced as Interim CEO of SERI: Social Enterprise Republic of Ireland, a new representative body for social enterprise in Ireland. In her new role, she aims to unite the growing social enterprise sector in Ireland, ensuring an inclusive, practitioner-led approach.

Tammy has first-hand experience of creating and scaling a successful social enterprise. She is the Founder and CEO of The Shona Project, a multi-award winning social enterprise that aims to educate, empower and inspire today’s Irish girls to become tomorrow’s strong confident and curious young women. Founded in 2016, The Shona Project provides Ireland's teen girls with information, advice and a safe place to share their stories, through their school workshops, events, and online community. The organisation is a tribute to her sister, Shona, who was diagnosed with a brain injury at 15, and now requires full time nursing care.

Tammy holds a BA in Human Resources, an MA in Business Management and is currently studying an MA in Education. Tammy is a Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Awardee (2017; Social Innovation Fund Awardee (2018 & 2019); winner of CEO of the Year Irish Women's Awards (2018) and Image Magazine Social Entrepreneur of the Year finalist (2018 & 2019).

Tammy discusses the newly formed social enterprise Republic of Ireland (seri), and ireland’s response to the covid-19 pandemic.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - To kick things off, could you please share a little bit about your background and what led to your passion in social enterprise?

[Tammy Darcy] - You've already mentioned quite a bit of my background there, and I guess like a lot of social entrepreneurs, I was one before I really understood what it meant or even heard of the term.

I launched The Shona Project in 2016. It’s a story that actually goes back a very long time. It was inspired by my experience as a teen and also that of my sister Shona. When we were 14 and 15, we had a tricky year as a family. Her illness obviously was really challenging for us, but we also had family troubles and I experienced bullying in school.

As an adult, I was really inspired by her. Those negative teenage experiences can turn confident girls with big dreams, into anxious, young women, who really lack self-belief and confidence. That's the area that we set up the organisation to work in, and we've been really growing at a very rapid rate over the last four years.

During those four years, I've become embedded in this amazing, but emerging, social enterprise sector in Ireland. I've just become so passionate about it.

My dad was an inventor and an entrepreneur, and I guess it’s in my blood, but to be able to put that social slant on it is something that I've really enjoyed.

I've really been interested in, and I've been taking part in national conversations about what the future could look like for the sector in Ireland. I suppose that's what's led me to where we are now.

Wonderful. You're the Interim CEO at the Social Enterprise Republic of Ireland. I’m really keen to hear about one of the world's most newly formed networks and the sort of work that you're doing there, its purpose, and why it was set up?

We're [really] only babies. We were launched on the 10th of July, to be that representative body for social enterprise in Ireland. It was born from a call within the sector for a united voice. I was approached a number of months ago by a group of practitioners and supporters of social enterprise, who I really respect. People who have been instrumental in building the sector and I just admire so much of what they've done. When I was asked to become involved, I really felt that it was first of all an amazing opportunity for me, but also to be a practitioner and to be able to represent the voice of my colleagues in the sector.

I thought it was a really nice opportunity. our intention is for the organisation to be really involved in the growth of social enterprises, and for our members to be represented in the conversations about what our collective needs are.

At the moment, we're consulting with them and creating channels to capture that feedback and inform our work going forward. Inclusiveness is one of our key values and making sure that social enterprise is such a broad sector in Ireland as well.

We've got large organisations, both urban and rural, and just getting to know them all is going to be our immediate challenge. There seems to be a general consensus so far in our conversations that a big priority is going to be to raise awareness of social enterprise and the impact that we create, but also to collect data, which will help us to share that story.

As both the leader of The Shona Project and now very much a voice for the sector and many of your colleagues, what sort of observations do you have in general of the social enterprise sector in Ireland?

Well in both roles as a practitioner and in this new role as Interim CEO of SERI, I'm so excited about social enterprise in Ireland. I think it's really a start of a new era for a sector. We have such a rich history in social enterprises, but we just haven't been recognised. Previously, I'm not sure if you're aware of the GGA, which is our Gaelic Games Association, [but it’s] a huge part of our culture. It was founded in 1884 and it's only now being recognised as a social enterprise. I think we have more credit unions per capita, we're amongst the highest in the world, if not the highest.

Now we see the emergence of social enterprises who are of all shapes and sizes, which are creating all sorts of different impact.

There's lots of diversity, and just in October last year, the Department of Rural and Community Affairs, which is where a social enterprise sits, launched Ireland's first ever social enterprise policy, which we've never had before. Even for that level of recognition, the policy just means that as SERI is now being launched, we really look forward to working with government and with the other stakeholders to build on the brilliant work that's being done and to make sure that we help to and we contribute to the delivery of that policy.

What a better time than now, where a large part of the world or globe in general is really seeing some huge changes as a result of COVID-19. What sort of changes have you seen in the way that social enterprises operate and in their response to this pandemic?

It's obviously been very difficult, and we've had to adapt very quickly to find new ways to reach our beneficiaries, many of whom I would say would need us now more than ever before. In terms of revenue, I don't think there's many social enterprises I've come across that haven't been directly impacted, and to just use The Shona Project as an example, the majority of our earned revenue came from the work that we did in schools, and we would have had a number of big conferences every year.

But they've all obviously been cancelled for the entire year with no idea of if and when it may come back to some sort of ‘business as usual’.

But, what has happened is that so many of us have been forced to take those ideas that we might have scribbled in a notebook somewhere and meant to get around to developing or meant to get around to seeing if there was other ways that we could add to that business as usual.

I've seen social enterprises that have been very innovative and were very resilient, and we've seen some amazing solutions emerge, some great partnerships, some new brilliant innovations. While it's really been a challenging time and quite stressful for a lot of us who run a social enterprise or are involved in the sector, I can see a lot of positives as well have come out of it.

A lot of promise for the future if we just get through this next few months or year or so.

If you talk about those positives, obviously with challenge comes opportunity, where do you see some strong opportunities then for the social enterprise sector in Ireland, and what do you believe is needed to build on the current momentum that you're seeing?

I think our first step is to measure where we are right now, to measure the value that we contribute, and the impact that we create, how many jobs we sustain, how we contribute not just to the economy, but also to society.

It's only then that we can measure where we go from here, where we can measure growth and we can defend the need for the supports that we require. I think there is a wealth of knowledge, there's experiences and goodwill within the sector. It's been shared very informally through informal networks over the last few years, but I'd like to see that grow.

I'd like to see the story being told more formally. Things like education have to be more integrated in the more traditional business communities as well. Loads of opportunities, and those are areas where we look forward to adding value.

You spoke a little bit earlier about that strategy being released, which is hugely exciting, but how else do you see that government might best support impact led businesses or social enterprises? Are there any opportunities there?

There's never going to be a lack of opportunities to do more. I think the department that we sit in have done really great work in quite a short amount of time, but obviously there's more to be done. One of the things that I'd like to see is to have us work towards a legal entity for social enterprise, which we don't currently have.

I'd like to see the enterprise side of social enterprises being able to get more supports, then we can invest in these innovations which are emerging or have been emerging, even pre-COVID. We could be given support to scale and to take more risks, because in order to scale, you need to be able to take more risks to grow, and to create more jobs to scale into other countries. Lots of ways that we could grow our existing social enterprises, but also share that knowledge to inspire more social enterprises to start. I think we'll get there, and I really believe that there's a great momentum on this great goodwill belief in the future for us.

You're doing some fantastic work with The Shona Project, Tammy. I'm keen to hear what other inspiring projects or initiatives you've come across recently, which you believe are creating some brilliant social change?

[There's been] so many, even pre my role in SERI. We've been quite a close network of social enterprises. There's so many that I really admire, but I guess one to give as an example would be FoodCloud, who would be probably one of the biggest social enterprises in Ireland. They redistribute un-needed food from retailers to charities. It was started by two amazing women who I believe started in college, they were studying in Trinity.

I just looked up yesterday that to date they've redistributed the equivalent of 80 million meals. What I love about the two founders, Aoibheann and Iseult, is that they make no apologies for the fact that they're running a business, and they adopt brilliant business strategies.

It's something that I used to struggle with myself, when people expect you to provide services for free or for less, because you're an impact-led business. I think they're a great example of how important the enterprise part of social enterprise actually is.

I think here in Ireland we should be really proud of everything they've achieved.

To finish off then Tammy, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

You might regret asking me this question because I think you saw my bookshelves behind me, which are quite substantial! It's never a good question to ask, but one of the books that I think is really relevant now is a book called Work Like A Woman by Mary Portas, who is a real leader from the retail industry in Britain.

She's always been a great advocate for flexible working, and the need to change terms in the way that we work. I think that in recent months we've seen the need to rewrite those rules and look at how we empower those who work with us to integrate our family lives and our professional lives in a way that works for us.

I think this will allow for great change in terms of diversity and equality in the workplace, which is really relevant. Also, I'm a huge believer in storytelling, and using social media to do that. Some of the books which helped me, one I just read, which was also one of the first books I read when I started, The Social CEO by Damian Corbet, and Social Media For Social Good by Heather Mansfield. I think telling our story is such a huge part which is often overlooked by social enterprise, and those were two really good tools that I always refer back to.

Tammy, no doubt you'll be attending the Social Enterprise World Forum, Digital this year from 21st-25th of September. Are you going to be there?

Of course I will! I can't wait.

It will be great to see you there alongside many of the members of your network too. We'll certainly look forward to tracking your progress and touching base in the future. Thank you so much for your generous insights and time today.