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In the last decade, the Singapore government began promoting social enterprises as an alternative organisational form for charities and other non-profit organisations. Like a for–profit business entity, a social enterprise was expected to create surpluses in the long run and to reinvest these surpluses to achieve social objectives. However, for many decades, the not-for-profit landscape in Singapore had been dominated by Voluntary Welfare Organisations (VWOs), many of whom were structured as companies limited by guarantee, societies or co-operatives. The raison d'etre of the VWOs, was to alleviate social or environmental problems and/or to improve the welfare of the disadvantaged or other special interest groups in the community. Few saw themselves as operating businesses, and the creation of surpluses was not regarded as central to their mission of fulfilling social goals. The issues of developing sustainable business models present new challenges for social enterprises, as current business models have been mostly developed for organisations set up primarily to generate profits and pursue capital accumulation. Hence this case examines the operations of a co-operative through the lens of a social enterprise model to explore: issues and challenges VWOs might encounter in developing sustainable business models under the social enterprise framework; and building organisational capabilities and managing growth in social enterprises.