Deputy Chief Executive

About Firstport

Firstport is a registered charity and started work in 2007 to help social entrepreneurs bring forward their ideas and to make them happen. Our vision is for social enterprises to play a key role in society, transforming lives, communities, and the economy.

Our key services include:

Free Business Advice and Training. We are the start up delivery partner for Just Enterprise, a Scottish Government-funded business support programme for the enterprising third sector.

Seed Funding. Firstport delivers an awards programme, which distributes money from the Scottish Government’s Social Entrepreneurs Fund. Since 2009, the Social Entrepreneurs Fund has made over 900 awards and distributed almost £8.5 million across Scotland.

Investment Readiness. LaunchMe is our investment readiness programme. It prepares ambitious social enterprises and community organisations for growth so they can achieve social impact at scale.

Social Investment. In 2021 Firstport launched the Catalyst Fund, the first revenue-based social investment fund in Scotland. The Catalyst Fund is part of the Scottish Government’s £30m Third Sector Growth Fund, designed to respond to a need for third sector organisations to access loans to help grow and explore new forms of social investment and finance.

In 2019 we released our strategy Increasing Social Impact Through Entrepreneurship. You can read more about it and the five principles that guide our work here: https://www.firstport.org.uk/publications/publications-about-firstport-and-social-enterprise/

More information about what we do is available on our website www.firstport.org.uk and you can get inspired by the social entrepreneurs we support by watching our videos on Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/user109098293