Action In Rural Sussex

Social Enterprise Support

What We Do

We provide support to individuals and groups who want to develop projects that benefit their community. We can offer project development advice and business planning guidance to encourage community projects to flourish. We work with rural community projects and social enterprises, i.e. businesses that trade with a social aim.

Why is the work important for rural communities?

Rural communities often find that key services are inaccessible to them and they have to travel a long distance for things such as health provision, youth activities or leisure. Many communities or individuals therefore identify a need locally and decide to set something up themselves to fill a gap in service provision. The Action Planning process often provides communities with the evidence that projects need to be developed to address specific issues. However, resources in communities usually rely heavily on volunteer involvement and they may need support in getting their plans off the ground.

Social enterprises can offer the following benefits for rural areas; they meet an identified need, e.g. social care services for older people; they contribute to the locally economy as a principle of social enterprise is to reinvest any surplus back into the community; they can create jobs for local people.

How we work

Social Enterprise Support:

Our work is funded by West Sussex County Council and we take referrals from agencies such as the County Council and Business Link, or from individuals and other partners to work specifically with social enterprises which we can support with the following issues:

Pre-start development
Business Planning
Business Review
Advice on legal formats
Governance

If you want to talk to us and arrange an appointment, please get in touch.

Project Development Support:

Our team can also offer support to develop community projects, offering the following services:

Project planning guidance
Support with fundraising, filling in grant applications
Support to committees and boards of trustees

Guidance on how to develop your community project and information and links to available grants is located below. However, if you want to talk to our team directly, please get in touch