Yes and No. In the UK, the majority of social enterprises listed on Companies House (in a different highly governed section) tend to be set-up to trade, but rules prohibit them from awarding shareholder dividends from profits or to sell-on their assets, or sell equity for investment. These social enterprises can (and do) hedge their income bets by also seeking and receiving donation/grants/funding from official or charitable sources. Like us, there are a growing number of commerce-first businesses (led by owners/leaders who run them as profit for purpose social enterprises) who trade to survive and do not seek or accept grants/funding. These operate with equal (often more) probity and governance, but retain full autonomy to build profits and deliver impact they want - against clear impact targets.

We are not registered as a Community Impact Company (CIC), so we don't have constrictions on how we grow and expand to meet community needs and demands we identify. We operate as a not-for-profit but we trade to sustain, not to serve shareholder dividends. Our net profit is re-invested into the running of all our operations, development and technology.

Our founding and major shareholder Jaysco fully funded the start-up until January 2025. These operating costs are classified internally as start-up loans and accounted for until year-end June 2025. The entity entered full stand-alone commercial status in financial year 25/26.

Since 2014, we have been pioneering the way to harness the power of buying and market forces, business use of digital marketing and societal demand for socio-economic change. In the UK, there was a need to better harness social value within £330 billion of public procurement from businesses. So, we engineered our ecosystem and Pluggin model to create a social value marketplace through which our public procurement partners could drive social value into strategic objectives - and businesses be seen publicly for how effectively they engage with this. 

Above our core running and development costs, which enables us to offer FREE access to and use of the ecosystem, all net profit is re-directed into our scale-up and technology development projects, including core funding of our Pluggin Research Hub and Pluggin Studios. 

No. Jaysco funded the first 4 years of our start-up and early-stage growth (establishing the technology, public sector collaborations, UK market testing and operationalisation, then enhancement of technology). The commercial model is designed to financially underpin the entity and its growth going forwards, with adequate provisions for working capital moving forwards (a self-sufficiency many community organisations are now being helped to replicate).