We are excited by the growing movement of organisations interested in owning, leasing or managing woodlands on a social enterprise basis.
We’re trying to secure some new support and investment for woodland social enterprises but we need help in gathering some information that will help us to develop our proposal. If you are a community organisation or social enterprise that owns, leases or manages woodland we’d like to hear from you!
We know of some who are just starting out, some who are already delivering a wide range of different services, and others who are ambitious to expand the range of services and activities they deliver.
In particular we know that a number of community woodland organisations and woodland social enterprises have ambitions to secure contracts with the public sector to deliver services including: woodland and green space management, education, training, health etc.
However it has become clear that there is not much information available about what makes a commercially successful woodland social enterprise. This means it can be difficult for new entrants, or even established organisations, to understand their income potential, investment requirements, or options for growth.
This lack of information can also act as a barrier to those wishing to invest in woodland social enterprises.
We are exploring a number of opportunities to secure high quality business support for woodland social enterprises, and to develop robust business and financial models that will enable them to attract investment and compete effectively for public sector contracts.
In order to develop these proposals we need a little more information about the value of public sector contracts that woodland social enterprises already have, or the level of ambition to secure new contracts over the next couple of years.
That’s where you can help. If you are a community organisation or social enterprise that owns, leases or manages woodland, and if you currently have contracts to deliver public services or are hoping to bid for such contracts in the next year or two we’d love to hear from you.
Please download this very brief questionnaire and return it to Mark Walton at mark@sharedassets.org.uk.
Your help in providing this information is very much appreciated. All data will treated with the utmost confidentiality and will be anonymised before being used in any application documents.