Seeking to make a significant impact beyond the academy, founder directors established Substance as a worker cooperative. Substance placed people, ethical values and accountability at its core and tapped into the rich history of Greater Manchester’s co-operative movement, where the principles of modern co-operative enterprise have their foundations.
History
Substance was founded in 2005 by four academics hailing from backgrounds in economics, social history, sociology, criminology and cultural theory at leading academic institutions.
When first established, Substance had one national contract evaluating the Home Office Positive Futures programme. Yet Directors had the vision and ambition to significantly extend the portfolio and use their collective experience to empower the individuals and organisations they work with to affect progressive policy reform.
As years one, two and three flew by, Substance attracted and built a team of impressive professionals who were committed to Substance’s organisational values and hailed from backgrounds in IT, creative arts, youth development, social enterprise and the Civil Service.
Today, with a core team of twelve, a trusted team of associates and several large scale national contracts, we still retain our commitment to these founding values.
Substance is a member of Co-operatives UK, the union of co-operative enterprises.