A confidence and entrepreneurial spirit runs thorough Emmaus - the social enterprise that provides homes and employment for homeless people - so much so, it commissioned Cambridge University to evaluate its business.

It was a risky strategy - the figures may not have been as rosy as expected - but it paid off. According to the researchers, Emmaus Village Carlton, a community in Bedfordshire, has saved the British taxpayer more than £800,000 in one year - more than £31,000 per community resident.

Emmaus communities enable people to move out of homelessness by providing work and a home in a supportive environment. Residents are known as “companions” and work full time in businesses set up by the community. In return, companions give up all income-related benefits.

Emmaus's Carlton community was analysed by the researchers to calculate economic benefits as well as to create an evaluation tool that the organisation can use to measure economic benefit across all 15 such communities. “We can use this tool into the future and it will save us the cost of commissioning surveys in the future,” Tim Page, the director of Emmaus UK, said.

The concept of solidarity is at the heart of the worldwide Emmaus Movement, which started in France in 1949. Solidarity is shown in many ways - not least in its sharing of surpluses and offering of household goods at a discount to low-income households and support of other local community projects.

Emmaus calls itself a social enterprise. Although these are generally considered to be profit-making organisations with a social objective, Mr Page said that some organisations abused the label by not being “social enough” or by using the name as a marketing tool. Emmaus has financial and social objectives. Mr Page described this tricky dual objective as: “Our communities have to balance a social imperative - the companions' rehabilitation - and a financial imperative - supporting the community. If we only took people who can make money, then we have failed.”

The communities generate profits through a variety of activities, such as recycling, bric-a-brac sales or making “the kind of bijou stuff that sells for a bomb in smart shops around the country,” he said.

However, a charity is only as secure as the funding and donations it can get, and Mr Page makes a virtue of the fact that once an Emmaus community has been established it is no longer a charity. “We generate money to run ourselves and then become organisations with a charitable purpose,” he said.

The big challenge for the organisation is securing the seed funding that allows it to set up new communities and further the activities of existing communities. “Emmaus has realised that it is necessary for us to demonstrate success - this economic evaluation is one way of doing it,” he said.

What they want to do next is the rather trickier business of demonstrating the non-tangible qualitative benefits that the organisation generates.

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