3SC Chair’s Blog: Build A Better Future

Welcome to 3SC’s new website, which marks our fresh start and our renewed vigour.

It’s been a long haul since 2009, when 3SC was first established. 3SC was created for the purpose of enabling small and medium voluntary, community and social enterprises (VCSEs) to win and deliver major government contracts.

But 2009, the year immediately following the crash, was not a good year in which to start a new socially responsible vehicle. Since then, although 3SC has delivered more than £65 million of contracts, and linked together a network of more than 3,000 different organisations, the imposition of austerity measures has seen public sector spending slashed.

We think a corner is being turned. The fiscal austerity of the past decade – whether or not it has been successful in restoring some stability – cannot be endured for much longer. Any government that imposes the kind of cuts on the public sector that we have seen risks its political future. Wherever one looks – in education, employment, health and our prisons, to name only those areas in which 3SC has hitherto specialised – conditions of the service have deteriorated so severely that questions are now regularly posed about their sustainability.

3SC is rigorously apolitical, and rightly so. Our aim is to benefit those sectors of our society that most need help, and to help those – public and private – sectors who wish to effect lasting and beneficial change. 3SC is not the only entity that is doing this kind of work, and more power to everyone’s elbow.

But we hope to enthuse more to join our network, for the simple reason that more members mean more muscle, more expertise, more local power, from which platform we can become more successful.

Thank you for reading. Keep returning to the website, which will have regular updates. To keep abreast of third sector developments, read our news and views in our online magazine, 3SC Impact, available via this website.

Join 3SC and help to build a better future.

John Swinney, Chair