Young entrepreneurs – whether social or commercial – get a lot of attention. There are charities and quangos dedicated to supporting them and all sorts of awards and competitions designed to encourage students and new graduates to set up their own business.

When it comes to older entrepreneurs, however, there’s much less out there; perhaps strangely, given how much they have to offer. “There’s a preconception that entrepreneurs are young, dynamic graduates but really they are older, experienced and very aware of what’s needed in their communities,” said Laurie South, the chief executive of Prime, a charity that helps would-be entrepreneurs aged 50 and older.

Research by the Plunkett Foundation, a charity that supports co-operative and social enterprises in rural communities, suggests that this is particularly true in the countryside. “Retired people are often the driving force behind the establishment and ongoing management of rural social enterprises,” said Mike Perry, the foundation’s research manager. “They are using skills and experience developed over a number of years to help establish social enterprises for the benefit of their community.”

There are a couple of main reasons for this. For a start, rural areas tend to have relatively more older people that cities; secondly, these areas often lack good quality infrastructure due to market failures. That’s one of the reasons that Jill Evans, 54, and her husband Alun, 59, now help to run the Almondsbury community shop committee. Without the community shop, villagers would have to drive several miles to buy groceries and other essentials. “We are not aiming to be a shop that will compete with Tesco but we don’t want to be expensive like a garage shop,” Jill Evans said “We are looking to provide a valuable alternative to Tesco Express.”

One of the things helping them to keep prices down is that at least half of the people on the committee and most of those who work in the shop have retired. The shop’s manager and deputy manager are paid but everyone else is a volunteer, which means that it is under less financial pressure than a commercial equivalent would be.

Older social entrepreneurs also bring a great deal of business acumen to the table. “They have all sorts of valuable experience,” South said. “They have all sorts of bits of knowledge – people they know, things that they have done – that they can pull into the mix but that younger people just don’t have.”

Pat Bowie, 56, is one of those people. She worked in the private sector for many years, ultimately becoming the general manager of a manufacturing company before moving into social enterprise. She joined her current employer, Re-Union Canal Boats, on an interim basis last summer before taking over as its full time general manager in September.

“If you have been in the private sector you know how to get things done,” Bowie said. “Social enterprises have to operate on a business footing. They don’t have to take on every aspect of business but they have to do their HR, their customs and revenue and so on.” Experienced managers can help social entrepreneurs to keep their feet on the ground and to approach problems optimistically. “There’s definitely something that comes with age,” Bowie said. “You become more confident and you realise that if you make a mistake no one is going to die.”

And older people often set up social enterprises simply because they’ve realised that there’s no point waiting around for someone else to do something if you can do it yourself. “I realised that if you are going to sit and wait for the council to do something it will never happen so it’s up to us to go and get the money and get things going and do things ourselves,” Bowie said. South added: “As people get older they realise that they can make a difference to communities simply by working together with other people and that that joint effort will make a difference to people’s lives.”

www.re-union.org.uk
www.almondsburycommunityshop.org.uk