Winners named in social enterprise 'experiment'

A social enterprise that aims to get people across the country exercising outdoors is one of three new ventures that aim to raise £10m for Cancer Research UK.

Open Gym was announced as one of the three finalists at an awards ceremony in London on Friday, which was the culmination of a ten month competition called the Open Ventures Challenge.

The organisers of the challenge described it as an 'experiment' in getting people to use their ideas and energy to develop entrepreneurial responses to tackling cancer.

The challenge saw Cancer Research UK (CRUK) work with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) on a fundraising model whereby people would be encouraged to develop ideas to raise millions of pounds a year for the charity.

Open Gym founder Jo Hill said she was already looking for a way for her enterprise to generate more social impact when she heard about the challenge.

'This is a brilliant opportunity to create partnerships and that's the key for small businesses and small social enterprises because one way of creating larger social impact is to find established partners,' she said.

'There's no way I, as an individual, could roll out lots of open gyms around the country, but they [CRUK] could because they've got the infrastructure and the marketing machine.'

Hill said the Open Gym business model would also benefit from the added motivation people would have to turn up to their gym class, particularly when it's raining, if they know they are not only benefiting themselves but also benefiting CRUK.

The challenge attracted around 600 people who submitted and voted for the best ideas. From these, over 150 new ideas were formed by this community of entrepreneurially-spirited people, who merged into teams and shared their ideas via the web.

The six best ideas formed during the Open Ventures Challenge were shortlisted and received consulting support from Deloitte, the business advisory firm, on a pro bono basis.

Kevin Waudby, head of radical innovation at CRUK, said: 'We are delighted by the results that this challenge has yielded and have no doubt that the winning ideas will help raise vital funds for our work to beat cancer.'

The other winners were Extraordinary Experiences, a national raffle venture promising entrants the chance to win an experience of their lifetime and Project Rose which, started by 15-year-old Lizze McLean when she was 13 years old and her mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, organises silk flower deliveries on Valentine's Day.

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