Community Development

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Community development in 60 seconds

Empowering communities across the Scottish Borders

"Community development is a way of bringing people together to take action on what's important to them. At its heart, community development is rooted in the belief that all people should have access to health, wellbeing, wealth, justice and opportunity." Scottish Community Development Trust

As the Third Sector Interface (TSI) for the Scottish Borders, one of the primary functions of Borders Community Action is to provide support to third sector organisations to enable them to be well-managed and deliver quality services. Our community development leads can provide a range of organisational support, whether you are commencing the start-up process or already a fully formed organisation seeking grant funding or exploring the possibilities of changing legal structure.

We can assist with a range of support needs including:

Capacity building

  • Supporting governance matters for community groups, charities, social enterprises enterprises
  • Helping with legal structure/incorporation: Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO), Company Limited by Guarantee with charitable status, Voluntary Association, Trusts, Community Interest Company (CIC), Co-operative: for the mutual benefit of members, Community Benefit Society (BenCom)
  • Annual reporting requirements to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) and Companies House 
  • Improving governance practices 
  • Identifying potential funding opportunities and revising funding applications 
  • Support your community group or organisation with monitoring and evaluation methods

Source of intelligence

  • Understanding common Third Sector legal structures to enable you to make an informed choice of structure for your organisation 
  • Providing up-to-date information on the latest policy changes
  • Understanding charity law including trustee roles and responsibilities and trustee remuneration 
  • Accessing relevant training opportunities in the BCA training calendar 
  • Bridging the gap between the third sector and statutory partners through forums

Connecting partners

We ensure that we maintain local knowledge and connections with our communities. We do this through various ways:

  • Surgeries are held regularly in various locations where we can provide 1:1 support to organisations and discuss their needs and ideas.   
  • Networking events enable communities to get together, share their work for best practise, work collaboratively and create lasting connections.  
  • Forums are where we connect our communities to regional and national bodies to discuss common themes to ensure the voices of those with local knowledge can express their views well and conversations can be facilitated. 

Occasionally, we may hold special events. Details of these will be shared with our members, available on our training and events calendar and in our monthly newsletter. 

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