About Us

About Us

Camberwell seek to implement lasting change for social benefit through undertaking property development, high growth business consultancy and enterprise programmes in disadvantaged areas. We aim to change perceptions of social business, offering a successful alternative to traditional enterprise with the product of our work ending up in the control of social and community organisations.

Camberwell was formed in March 2006 by four individuals bringing a range of ideas from the public, voluntary, and private sector. We felt that applying a disciplined market-savvy approach to social enterprise would help increase its ambition and impact.

We also wanted to spread the word. We believe in leadership and mobilising people around a common goal. The economic crisis of 2008 has shown what happens when financial returns are prioritised over social ones.

What’s our goal?

We have three big goals for the foreseeable future:

• Expand the scale of social business. We aim for £1bn of value to be created in our projects in the next 10 years
• Expand the spectrum of social business into housing, regeneration, food, health and ‘mainstream’ businesses, measured by the investment going into establishing those businesses
• Generate sufficient profits to create our own £1m. risk capital fund for social businesses that we can then match with other funds.

Why?

As Camberwell grew from the original 4 to 20+ persons in its first 2 years, we were often asked, “Why is a private company, with some of the directors leaving large salaries and prospects in the private sector, concerned with building social businesses?”

We all have slightly different reasons for embarking on this mission, but the common theme is a disenchantment with the “me” culture of traditional business. Of course, there are examples of fantastic private firms producing social benefit, but there are not enough of them.

At Camberwell we have a passion to involve more people and we have the skills to help them deliver.