Charity that reinvented itself as social enterprise

THERE ARE very few chief executives in Northern Ireland who preside over an organisation with an annual turnover in excess of £30 million.

Of these, there is probably only one who can get away with calling people “decent souls” on a daily basis – and that’s probably only because he genuinely means it – John McMullan is not your average corporate chief executive.

McMullan is head of Belfast- based Bryson Charitable Group. The term “charitable group” may conjure up certain expectations about how it operates and what it does, but Bryson is a little different than most.

Although it has been helping people in Northern Ireland since 1906, there is nothing traditional about how it goes about its business today.

In the last 10 years, the organisation has been transformed from a simple hard- working charity into the North’s leading social enterprise. The group runs seven social business units which last year helped in the region of 400,000 people in the North and Donegal.

Its business units include Bryson Recycling, one of the North’s largest providers of recycling services. More than 200,000 households in the North receive its kerbside box service and it also provides a commercial collection service to 650-plus businesses.

Last year, Bryson recycled close to 50,000 tonnes of materials and refurbished nearly 4,000 electrical goods. The figures alone highlight the success of the operation and, because of Bryson’s social business model, the organisation is committed to finding local customers for the domestic recycled material it collects.

It sells it to local companies which use it in the production of a whole range of new products – from glass containers to moulded fibre packaging and plastic piping.

Not only is Bryson helping to dispose of waste responsibly, it is also helping to create jobs and support local economies.

This particular business unit alone employs 240 people across four sites and the charity also manages three recycling centres in Donegal at Letterkenny, Milford and Stranorlar.

The Bryson Charitable Group’s other business units all reflect its overall mission to tackle major social and economic issues by changing peoples lives for the better.

It delivers social services to help young and old, provides care services in the northwest and Donegal and helps to deal with fuel poverty issues in Northern Ireland.

Bryson is also a key provider of a range of employment and training initiatives and, through its intercultural unit, helps a growing number of people from across the world make a new home in Northern Ireland.

In addition to what might be termed its more serious business units, it also provides inner city fun and developmental water sport activities based around the river Lagan in the heart of Belfast.

The success of these seven business units is one of the reasons Bryson has just been named as the UK Social Enterprise of the Year. The group beat 600 other organisations from across the UK to win the category in the Private Business Awards which were sponsored by PwC.

The awards are designed to celebrate the “best in the private sector” in the UK.

“We have a very mixed bag economy in Northern Ireland,” McMullan says, “and social enterprises play a vital role in economic regeneration and social inclusion – we all need to lean on each other.

“Our success has come from our ability to grow our organisation. We are now the sixth biggest social enterprise in the UK – delivering over 22,000 services on a typical day. How big a company would you have to be to do that?”

McMullan believes social enterprises are sometimes viewed as the “great unknown” in Northern Ireland.

“Social enterprises play a vital role in economic regeneration and social inclusion and in bridging the gap between public sector provision and private sector delivery.”

He believes Bryson could play an even bigger role in the local economy and that its ability to adapt and change over the last 106 years is ultimately down to the people who have been involved through the years with the organisation.

“Our people are our greatest asset – our staff, our volunteers and supporters – the core of our success.”

McMullan has no intention of stepping back from ambitious growth plans.

“Our view is that if a company can take a business model and use it to maximise profits, we can use that same business model to maximise the social impact of what we do – social enterprises can compete with the best of the private sector.”