As a young CIC, Bedminster Down Community Farm had been struggling to build a strong foundation for its operations, with a new team with limited resources struggling to manage the farm’s finances, volunteer inductions and strategic partnerships.
In January 2024, members of the Farm team attended Voscur’s 'Unlocking Social Enterprise' event, part of the Local Access Programme. The event included financial skills development, which the team found to be extremely useful, giving them a greater sense of energy for their work.
Following the event, in Spring 2024, Bedminster Down Community Farm received two days of enterprise consultancy from a Social Enterprise Associate who is also part of the leadership team at Redcatch Community Garden.
The associate provided guidance on setting up template documents, processes and procedures to help streamline the farm’s operations, and introduced the team to various strategic organisations and contacts, resulting in funding grants, corporate support relationships and more volunteering opportunitites.
The farm’s directors and team members then came together to develop an action plan, which included reviewing the constitution document, creating a funding costing template and setting up a system for tracking restricted funding projects.
Bedminster Down Community Farm now has improved financial management, enhanced volunteer schemes and established partnerships with organisations such as Feeding Bristol, Burgess Salmon and UWE. It has increased visibility and credibility through the farm’s development of its business connections, and now plans to offer corporate volunteering days and community events.
Lizzie Stephens, director at Bedminster Down Community Farm, said: “The input has been invaluable, really amazing, we’ve made new connections, increased our resilience and gained so much confidence in running our CIC.”
The story above was from Voscur’s social enterprise support programme, which offers tailored advice, peer support and consultancy to voluntary, community and social enterprise sector organisations who wish to grow their reach and effectiveness. Examples of some of the areas of consultancy and support on offer are business planning, governance, organisational development, impact evaluation, finance, communication and community engagement.
If you would like to find out more about one-to-one advice, peer support, training, and discounted expert consultancy for social enterprises, please contact us.