John Bird (entrepreneur)

John Anthony Bird, Baron BirdMBE (born 30 January 1946) is a British social entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder of The Big Issue, a magazine that is edited by professional journalists and sold by street vendors affected by homelessness. As a Crossbencher in the House of Lords, he is seeking to dismantle the root causes of poverty in the UK.

Bird was born in Notting Hill, London to a poor London Irish family. He became homeless at the age of five, resided in an orphanage between the ages of seven and ten, and was excluded from school. He became a butcher's boy after leaving the orphanage, but supplemented his income by stealing. He spent several spells in prison during his teens and twenties where he learnt reading, writing and the basics of printing.

Bird attended Chelsea School of Art, but was homeless again by 1967, this time sleeping rough in Edinburgh while being sought by the police for petty offences. In the early 1970s, he started to build upon his limited prison education and set up a small-scale printing and publishing business in London.

For two weeks in 1970 he worked in the House of Lords washing dishes – a venue he would later return to as a life peer.

In September 1991, Bird launched The Big Issue with Gordon Roddick, co-founder of The Body Shop. In November 1995, he launched The Big Issue Foundation to further aid the homeless and support vendors of The Big Issue. He is currently on the Board of Directors for the company. The Big Issue magazine started as a local London venture, but expanded with specific editions and services to other British cities, and then to other countries.

In 2001, with The Big Issue Group chairman, Nigel Kershaw OBE, Bird helped found The Big Issue Invest, a provider of finance for businesses, charities and NGOs with the aim of creating social change. It is the social investment arm of The Big Issue Group, and initially only dealt in loan finance. In 2009, The Big Issue Invest launched a social investment fund, and has since invested more than £30 million in hundreds of social enterprises making a positive impact across the UK.

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