Today sees the official launch of the Enterprise Ready Fund, a Scottish Government funded programme which will offer funds to help develop, maintain and grow Scotland\u2019s enterprising third sector.<\/p>\n
This new fund will provide grants of up to \u00a3250K across four strands to support long term development objectives of new, emerging and established enterprising third sector organisations in Scotland.<\/p>\n
The fund aims to invest in those enterprising third sector organisations that demonstrate the greatest potential for sustainability and growth.<\/p>\n
Scotland has a strong social enterprise movement that we should be proud of and they bring many benefits to our communities. Social enterprises make an important contribution to our social and economic well-being. They help create employment and skills opportunities, improve public services and support some of our hardest to reach communities.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important that we build strong social enterprises that can play a full part in society. To do that we need to build the sector\u2019s capacity and capability. That is why the Enterprise Ready Fund is so important as it is open to new and emerging enterprising third sector organisations, those that are already established and those in need of small grant investment.<\/p>\n
The key features of the Fund, which I think will be of interest and benefit to Social Enterprise Networks (SEN) members, is the segmentation of funds across three categories making it attractive to many organisations.\u00a0 I can see benefits of a range of SEN members including emerging social enterprises and equally those more established being eligible and interested in the funds.\u00a0 Senscot will definitely be actively promoting the fund to SEN members and encourage them to apply as early as possible.<\/p>\n