SENSCOT

Late in 1998, the Big Issue in Scotland hosted a gathering of community activists – which identified the potential benefit of some mechanism to keep them in touch with each other. This remains the core purpose of Senscot today – a national network to connect and support community activists and their social enterprises. Along with informing, connecting and facilitating the development of social enterprise networks (SENs) – ever since 1999 – Senscot has also been working to put in place a support infrastructure for a strong and sustainable social enterprise community in Scotland. But in pursuing this mission there has been a conscious determination not to create a large centralised ‘intermediary’ organisation – and certain key principles have been applied: to let the ‘network’ determine what’s required next; to only take and develop initiatives in areas with no existing players; coalitions and partnerships wherever possible; relinquish ownership and control of new initiatives ASAP; unrestricted access to our materials on Open Source principles. Senscot has consistently sought to resist growth beyond a maximum of ten persons; this reputation greatly assists our role in co-ordination of new developments. Senscot’s activities are summarised under three headings: Developing Support Infrastructure Facilitating Social Enterprise Networks (the SENs) Connecting and Informing