Community Sector Trading - Trading to create new income streams

It aims to support both front-line organisations who are currently developing a social enterprise project and Third Sector development support providers. This goes way beyond a traditional training course as it provides participants with additional business planning support, introduces a varied set of critical friends and is partly delivered through online conferencing technology.

 Delivery and Learning Style

We believe that people learn best from exploring real examples and practicing their own probing and problem-solving skills with inspiration and experience on tap. Understanding enterprise is like art or sport – you need to practice and you need to reflect, preferably with the encouraging input of someone with far more experience in an environment structured for learning.

 Each learning programme consists of a two day residential followed by four online Action Learning Sessions over the following couple of weeks. Each of these sessions will explore real examples of community organisations that have developed trading and give participants an opportunity to practice developing and selling their ideas.

 Who should participate?

 National, regional and local VCS infrastructure organisations

CVSs and local Change Up partnerships

Business Link franchise holders

Regional social enterprise agencies

SKiLD (Skills & Knowledge in Local Development)

Trustees of small community groups

Lead managers of small community groups

Non-finance specialist managers and generic workers

We are particularly seeking participation from BME and rural community groups