‘We are mighty’: SE100 2026 award winners revealed

Social entrepreneurs from across the UK gathered in Manchester’s iconic Band on the Wall venue last night to celebrate the SE100 awards, the annual event recognising the country’s most inspiring social ventures and impact leaders.

The annual SE100 Index and Impact Pioneer Awards, now in their 16th year, were created by Pioneers Post in partnership with NatWest Social & Community Capital – the independent social investment charity funded by NatWest bank.

Vicki Papworth (pictured), CEO of NatWest Social & Community Capital, said: “It's such an honour to be a sponsor for these awards.”

She added: “Sometimes we hear the criticism that social enterprise is niche. We are not niche. We are spanning healthcare and housing, and food and water, and tech and energy and finance.

“There are 100,000 social enterprises in the UK, adding £60bn to the UK economy and employing 2m people. So we are not niche. We are everywhere, and we are mighty. These are not radical ideas. These are absolutely necessary ones.”

 

Header photo: the SE100 winners in Manchester. Event photography by Mi Kelly.

 

And the winners are...

	PUBLIC SECTOR PIONEER Recognising social enterprises or enterprising charities working with ‘bold commissioners’ to deliver innovative solutions and next level social impact in public services.
	WINNER ◆ Turning Point   HIGHLY COMMENDED ◆ Forward Carers

The judges for this category were Buzzacott and E3M.

A key innovation health and social care enterprise Turning Point has piloted in the past year is a partnership with Leicester City Council Public Health Team and Leicestershire Police to provide ​​frontline police officers with an opiate overdose antidote, naloxone, and this is what caught the attention of the SE100 judges.

Turning Point specialises in mental health, substance use, sexual health, learning disability and autism. It provides services at 270 sites across England, last year supporting 202,000 people. The majority of the social enterprise’s revenue comes from the NHS and local authority contracts. 

To date, over 35 naloxone training sessions have been carried out, with almost 200 officers carrying the antidote. Naloxone was administered 14 times in the first 12 months of the initiative. The judges found the partnership to be an impressive example of an innovative service model with high impact, which could be replicated in other locations.

We don’t just deliver, we aggregate, we connect, we bring relationships together

Andrew O’Mara, head of communications at Turning Point, said partnerships like the one with Leicester City Council and Leicestershire Police took significant time and resources to cultivate. “It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s about understanding need,” he said. 

“It’s about people talking the same language, convening people around the room. And of course, that’s what social enterprises and people in impact do every day. We don’t just deliver, we aggregate, we connect, we bring relationships together. That’s a crucial part of being able to get projects like this, not only from an idea, but to take flight and make impact.”

 

	IMPACT STORYTELLER To recognise organisations using storytelling and communications most effectively to support their mission.
	WINNER ◆ Belu   HIGHLY COMMENDED ◆ Medics for Rare Disease

The judges for this category were Myra Anubi, BBC World Service and Anna Patton, Pioneers Post.

Social enterprise Belu says its purpose is to “change the way the world sees water”. To support that purpose, over the past year Belu has run a storytelling platform called Served with Purpose, distributing stories about how purpose and profit can reinforce one another to Belu’s existing and potential hospitality partners.

The enterprise offers still and sparkling mineral water, as well as water filtration systems for hospitality and workplaces. Its net profits are split between reducing carbon emissions throughout its supply chain, supporting UK water stewardship and biodiversity projects, and donations to the charity WaterAid to fund water, sanitation and hygiene projects. Belu has donated a total of £6.1m to WaterAid since the partnership started in 2011. 

Judge Myra Anubi, host of BBC World Service show People Fixing the World, praised Belu’s clear communication of strategy, branding and how its revenue model delivers impact. Anna Patton, Pioneers Post associate editor and training lead, highlighted the social enterprise’s efforts to influence the hospitality sector and the transparency in its communications.

Sunakshi Shetty, brand experience producer at Belu, said: “We recently changed the title of our impact report to ‘Purpose and Progress’. We were trying to explain that this is progress we’re going to make, not a report that’s end and final. It’s very important for us as a team to be extremely transparent in terms of the decisions we make internally, and to share it with everyone around.”

 

	SOCIAL BUSINESS PIONEER For established social ventures (trading for at least five years) that have experienced positive financial growth and delivered strong social impact over the past year.
	WINNER ◆ Forward Carers   HIGHLY COMMENDED ◆ Micro Rainbow

The judges for this category were the team from Buzzacott.

Unpaid carers provide essential care to family members and friends who could not manage without them, and often do this at enormous cost to their own health and wellbeing. Birmingham-based Forward Carers, which began in 2014, aims to create ‘carer friendly communities’ across the nation – places that understand, value and support unpaid carers so that they can live well alongside their caring role. Forward Carers runs in-person and online support for carers, helps employers to be carer-friendly, runs an ID card for carers to get local discounts, and offers consultancy services.

The organisation is growing rapidly, with turnover increasing to £4.5m in its most recent accounts from just under £3m the previous year. It delivers contracts for the NHS and local authorities and partners with local voluntary organisations too. The judges highlighted the enterprise as an excellent example of a business that is growing carefully and sustainably.

Accepting the award on stage, CEO Simon Fenton spoke alongside programme director Chantell Marler, who is a carer herself. She said: “Being able to take that personal perspective into the services that we deliver is really important, and it means that I can have really honest and transparent conversations with our service users and our carers, as well as our commissioners and delivery partners that we work with.”

Looking to the future she said she would like to see much better recognition of the country’s unpaid carers. And, she added, being a carer didn’t mean that “you have to stop living your own life, that you can continue with your dreams and aspirations and still achieve everything that you want, but also enable yourself to be able to provide that level of care that's needed.”

 

	PIONEERING NEWCOMER For a social business start-up (up to five years trading) with a clear mission and entrepreneurial flair who can demonstrate growth and impact.
	WINNER ◆ Rise Community Jiu Jitsu   HIGHLY COMMENDED ◆ Amplify Goods

The judges for this category were the team from Buzzacott.

Since being founded in 2024 as the UK’s first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu-focused social enterprise, Rise now reaches more than 100 children each week in Bristol and London. Founder Tom Hague believes that he can use the UK’s fastest growing martial art to develop children’s physical and mental health – as well as their employability – through providing fun, active classes alongside positive role-modelling and pathways into work experience. Hague and his team now have their sights set on moving into Manchester.

Although the start-up is still in its very early stages, the judges believe that the team’s ambitions for growth are well founded, with a diversified income stream and early evidence of positive social impact.

Accepting his award, Hughes said: “Young people have a tough time of it at the moment. I think life’s more complicated than ever. Physical activity levels are stagnating, 50% of young people experience some kind of mental health issue. I don’t think that martial arts is the full extent of the solution, but I think it can be part of it. It can help young people find a positive focus, find confidence, find a sense of community.” 

He also outlined his big ambition for the future: “In the long term, we want to be one of the UK's biggest open access martial arts clubs.”

 

	CLIMATE PIONEER For pioneering organisations leading by example and inspiring others to work against climate change.
	WINNER ◆ Finance Earth   HIGHLY COMMENDED ◆ Belu Water ◆ Radio City Association

The judges for this category were the Hogan Lovells team.

Finance Earth is a social enterprise working to mobilise private investment into nature-based solutions. Employee-owned, it was founded in 2016, and provides fund management and financial advisory services to nonprofits, the private sector, investors and governments to help them design investable nature and climate projects that can attract private capital. 

They have worked on more than 150 projects across 40 countries, and designed impact investment structures worth an aggregated £1bn.

• Read more about Finance Earth in our feature: Building a market for nature: the finance innovators racing to save our ecosystems

Alison Mansbach, team coordinator at Finance Earth, joining the event virtually, said: “We were set up to figure out ways to scale up investment in nature and climate, looking not just from the philanthropic or public sector, where a lot of investment has already come, but the private sector, and trying to make nature more of an investable class.

“So it’s a really big honour to work with organisations across sectors and governments, environmental NGOs and private investors too, to help them come together and find the right solutions to the nature and climate crisis, and it's such an honour to win this.”

Jodi Coffman, from law firm Hogan Lovells, said: “We were really impressed by Finance Earth’s multi-layered impact. They’ve had great success in mobilising capital into some amazing nature and climate solutions in order to address one of the biggest challenges of transition finance. 

“But what we were so impressed with is that their impact doesn’t stop there. They reinvest over half their profits into environmental and social impact sectors. And the organisation itself is an employee owned, mission-led B Corp with its own internal climate agenda. Their mission is so clearly at the core of their business and culture which has allowed them to make an impact on so many levels.”

 

	SOCIAL INVESTMENT PIONEER For groundbreaking or innovative deals or funds in social / impact investment.
	WINNER ◆ The Skill Mill   HIGHLY COMMENDED ◆ Micro Rainbow ◆ Oasis

The judges for this category were Olivia McLoughlin and Melanie Mills (Good Finance and Better Society Capital)

The social investment deal that really caught the judges’ eye this year was one secured in February 2026 by the Skill Mill. It is a social outcomes partnership with Bridges Outcomes Partnerships (and associated impact capital providers including Better Society Capital) and 22 local authorities which will allow the enterprise to scale its model. This will involve £2m in social investment, which will enable the delivery of a £10m project in 22 local authorities across the country.

The Skill Mill provides paid employment opportunities for ex-offenders aged between 16 and 18 to deliver environment management services, including maintaining urban green spaces and rural land, and flood prevention through tree planting and habitat restoration. Young people develop skills and experience and gain a nationally accredited qualification, while the social enterprise works with partners to support them into follow-on employment in the wider labour market. It has employed 450 young people in the UK since its launch in 2014, with a reoffending rate of under 8%.

Accepting the award, David Parks, managing director of the Skill Mill, said that while the investment deal was large in its scale, it was not transactional. “For us, it’s about those relationships that we’ve built with those 22 different authorities and other organisations that are also involved in helping to support it.”

He added: “That does take time, but you have to really commit to it. There are lots of ups and downs, but you have to keep going, because you have, as far as we’re concerned, a huge opportunity to turn around the lives of some of those young people who otherwise just wouldn't get that chance.”

Melanie Mills, of Good Finance and Better Society Capital, said: “It isn’t the investment, or the instrument, that is the driver. It’s the impact and the scale that it creates…You need to have nerves of steel, a heart of gold, an unwavering belief that you can do this.”

She added the social investment enabled Skill Mill to scale a proven successful model, and “that’s where we always hope that social investment can play a part”.

 

	DIVERSITY PIONEER For social enterprises leading by example and inspiring others to embed equality, diversity and inclusion.
	WINNER ◆ Six Degrees Social Enterprise   HIGHLY COMMENDED ◆ Forward Carers

The judge for this category was Devi Clark, social enterprise specialist and former managing director at Impact Hub London.

Our Diversity Pioneer award went to Six Degrees Social Enterprise, which works with the NHS to provide mental health services in Salford and Greater Manchester. By addressing emotional distress early and holistically – always with an intersectional lens – Six Degrees aims to improve wellbeing, strengthen relationships, and reduce long-term pressure on health and social care services. 

One example of Six Degrees’ intersectional approach is in its work with the Greater Manchester Bereavement Service. Data showed that callers were predominantly white British, so the enterprise explored why people from Farsi and Cantonese-speaking communities were not accessing support. It then recruited and trained 14 consultants from these communities, and trained its own frontline staff on cultural nuances in grief and mourning rituals, and on stigma around suicide.

It was the community supporting the community

Presenting the award, guest judge Devi Clark highlighted Six Degrees’ efforts to go beyond simply hiring interpreters to engage therapists from different communities. “That’s what I really felt from what you were doing, that it was inclusive in the most inclusive way, because people were doing for one another, rather than it being an external lens brought to a community. It was the community supporting the community.”

Kelly Hilton, managing director at Six Degrees, said: “There is quite a push, really, to put people into boxes – and as humans, we just don’t operate that way. We’re much more complex and nuanced… And so we want to look at the intersections of identity, but also the intersections of how social psychology, the politics of things, impact on people and impact on their mental health.”

 

	PIONEERING LEADER For social enterprise bosses demonstrating excellent leadership, effectiveness and inspiration in taking the team on a mission-driven journey to success.
	WINNERS ◆ Simon Glenister, Noise Solution ◆ Georgina Wilson, BUD Leaders

The judges for this category were the team from NatWest Social and Community Capital.

Simon Glenister is founder and CEO of Noise Solution and he has been at the forefront of the social enterprise’s adoption of AI. 

Noise Solution is a social enterprise working across the east of England which delivers specialist music mentoring for children and young people who need support to re-enter education, training or positive pathways, including those at risk of exclusion or persistent absence. 

Under Glenister’s leadership, Noise Solution has developed a small-scale AI system capable of analysing thousands of minutes of video and audio recordings to track and analyse the social enterprise’s impact. The system has been designed around ethical safeguards, transparency and human oversight and has strengthened Noise Solution’s position within public systems, supported new partnerships, contributed to repeat commissioning and increased financial resilience.

Glenister said: “I think the thing I’ve learned about leadership over the last year or two is the importance of allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and to be able to admit that there are things that you are great at and things that you are not so great at.

“To mitigate that,” he added, “you need to surround yourself with people who are better at you at those things, and be open to that and not think you can do everything.”

• Listen: Simon Glenister joins our Good Experts podcast to discuss how to do AI – the social enterprise way

Georgina Wilson is founder & CEO of BUD Leaders, a Black and female-led social enterprise that provides training and consultancy for female business owners of colour. Since it was founded in 2014, BUD Leaders has championed access to opportunities for Black and Global Majority-led SMEs in supply chains, finance, networks and skills, in a landscape where less than 1% of corporate spending goes to Global Majority-led enterprises.

In the past year Wilson was responsible for the creation of the ChallengeX2 digital dashboard, providing Global Majority women-led organisations with live tracking of revenue growth, progression indicators and partner accountability. Wilson also led the launch of the Springboard Academy, creating structured pathways for SMEs to receive mentorship and insight directly from senior leaders within large corporations. Outside of her work at BUD Leaders, Wilson was appointed as a trustee of the Tudor Trust. 

Delivering a keynote speech at the end of the event, Wilson said: “I am blown away by the innovation and the creativity that I've seen here tonight...What I want us to do is to think about the doors that we need to open for other people.”

• Read more: Georgina Wilson among social entrepreneurs and impact leaders celebrated in UK New Year Honours list 2026

Category judge Jon Neil, interim managing director, business banking & international retail at NatWest, said: “Simon Glenister and Georgina Wilson stood out for very different but equally compelling reasons — from Simon’s truly pioneering, values‑driven approach that builds with communities and reimagines impact measurement, to Georgina’s data‑led, mission‑focused leadership creating strong ripple effects and scalable impact. Both exemplify leadership rooted in purpose, innovation and authenticity.”

 

	PIONEERING WOMAN (WISE) For leading women in social business and impact investing who are not only impressive leaders themselves, but who are also championing and/or mentoring women either in their team or elsewhere in the impact sector.
	WINNER ◆ Keely Dalfen, The Brick   HIGHLY COMMENDED ◆ Chantell Marler, Forward Carers

The judges for this category were Vicky Papworth and Tracy Thomson from NatWest Social & Community Capital, and Tara Askham from TKA Finance Training.

Keely Dalfen became the CEO of anti-poverty charity the Brick in Wigan three years ago. The Brick has been operating for over a century, supporting people at risk of, or experiencing homelessness and financial hardship. Over the year 2024/25, the charity supported 17,000 people.

The judges said they were impressed with Dalfen’s passion for her work, her generosity in helping younger generations and systems-change approach to tackling an issue.

Tara Askham, director at TKA Finance Training and a judge for this category, said: “Keely Dalfen stood out as a values‑driven, lived‑experience leader delivering genuine system‑level change, combining strong operational and financial rigour with compassion and measurable impact for women and vulnerable communities. 

Leadership, for me, is true collaboration...It takes us all to sit around the table and work out what problems there are

“We also want to congratulate all the nominees in this category, whose commitment to lifting others as they lead is shaping a stronger, more inclusive social enterprise sector.”

Upon receiving the award, Dalfen said: “Leadership, for me, is true collaboration. It doesn't just take a village. It actually takes a town. It takes a city. It takes us all to sit around the table and work out what problems there are.”

She added: “Systemic problems can only be fixed where the power is held, and I think there’s a real need to relinquish that power…and saying to people, you can do this yourself, you've got agency.”

 

	PIONEER OF THE FUTURE For newer founders or leaders whose trajectory marks them out as the impact leading stars of the future. They are already proving themselves as highly effective leaders, inspiring their teams and stakeholders, and creating both revenue and impact in their organisation.
	WINNER ◆ Annabel Thomas MacGregor, Raised In CIC   HIGHLY COMMENDED ◆ Amanda Bronkhorst, Just One Tree ◆ Tiwa King, Beyond a Song

The judges for this category were Julia Spencer, Libbie Mowbray, Sam Crème, Tiwa Akinlemibola.

Annabel Thomas McGregor is the CEO of social enterprise nursery group Raised In which runs nurseries in community spaces in Bristol, supporting crucial community hubs that would otherwise be at risk of closure while providing good quality early years education. It now plans to expand beyond the city.

She said: “I think leadership is all about relationships. The lesson for me, coming in, not as a founder, but as the first CEO taking over from a founder, was all about getting those relationships right, internally and externally, and really getting to understand the cadence of the business and what people needed and wanted at different points in the business’s journey.” 

She added it was important to “invest in people and make sure that that’s the first thing at the forefront of everything that we do”.

Category judge Tiwa Akinlemibola, founder and managing director at Mino Capital, said: “Annabel MacGregor stood out as a leader combining strong commercial acumen with a deep commitment to social value - transforming the organisation’s challenging financial position into one of long-term sustainability, expanding community‑rooted early years provision through people‑centred, ethical leadership, and championing sector reform.”

 

 

 

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The NatWest SE100 Impact Pioneer Awards, including the SE100 Index and Pioneers100 List, are part of an annual programme created and delivered by Pioneers Post in partnership with NatWest Social & Community Capital - and supported by Buzzacott, E3M, Hogan Lovells and Good Finance. The programme aims to list, celebrate and learn from the UK’s 100 most impressive social enterprises, and the top 100 pioneering leaders, every year.