A guide to third sector trading - WCVA

It’s an idea, but is it business? A guide to third sector trading
1: Getting
started
2: First steps 3: Business
planning
4: Legal and
governance
5: Funding
and
resourcing
6: Financial
controls
7: Managing
growth
8: Management
and
governance
9: Social
enterprise
10: Sources
of support
• Perhaps the best known and oldest of these is the brand of
shops which are to be found throughout the UK but which
started in Oxford with an overseas development charity called
Oxfam. It was a good idea which travelled extremely well and
has been imitated many times over.
• It is not necessary for an organisation to own a franchise. Time
banking has evolved radical ways and spread throughout
the country, and time banks are typically local organisations
with their own structures and arrangements designed to fit
local circumstances. Sometimes, as in the case of Creation
Development Trust in Blaengarw, Bridgend, they become part
of another social enterprise organisation. Meanwhile the ‘brand’
is assisted by national promotion and support by the Timebank
charity.
Growing to survive: Another interesting evolution in social
enterprise can be found in credit unions which took off in
the UK with efforts to emulate their success in small towns in
places such as Ireland and Canada. It became clear early on
that a very local model was wrong for the UK, and that credit
unions would fail unless they were allowed to operate over
much larger geographical areas – counties and cities rather than
neighbourhoods.
Intermediate Labour Market schemes: Intermediate labour
markets are an entirely different model of third sector enterprise,
often operated by much larger organisations. Here the core
objective is to help people who have difficulties getting into the
labour market to gain the kind of experience of employment
which will equip them to move into jobs in the mainstream
economy. They are heavily grant funded for fixed contract
periods (for instance, by the European Social Fund), and do
not have the same compulsion to grow in size as other versions
of social enterprise. Perhaps because they are usually run by
substantial bodies, they do not suffer from the same stigma of
unsustainability as community-based groups and charities. But
they are not necessarily any longer-lived.
Ways to grow your business
Value Wales and procurement for small enterprise: Welsh
Assembly Government has actively promoted the concept of local
government procuring services from small businesses in Wales
under the Value Wales scheme.
• Tendering: Under Value Wales third sector enterprises have
access to local authority contract tendering. This includes the
outsourcing by public bodies of personal social care services,
training, consultancy and research, and can have direct benefits
for charities and community-based enterprises.
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