Who we are

TSDG proposes expanding the volunteering offer it currently delivers (currently one P/T Development Officer is supporting charities and only occasional individuals) to create a new agency style approach better promoting and connecting people to third sector volunteering opportunities.

This project (funding dependant) focuses on increasing the regional visibility of volunteering through a coordinated communication strategy, including targeted outreach campaigns, and partnerships with public partners, community groups, and businesses. Enhancing visibility will reduce barriers to participation, broaden engagement among underrepresented groups, and ultimately strengthen our region’s social cohesion and resilience.

The three-year project would connect and match people to charities and volunteering opportunities, whilst strengthening and expanding our services to individuals and third sector organisations (TSO’s) within Dumfries and Galloway. We plan to expand our services to additional TSO’s offering support through our Volunteer Ready training programme which trains third sector staff and volunteers in matters relating to good practice, legislation, recruitment and the volunteer code. For the first time, we plan to offer a volunteer matching service directly to individuals to find a suitable volunteer placement which matches their skills and experience and addresses any barriers they may face to becoming a volunteer. To undertake this effectively TSDG would:

• Ensure TSO’s participate in the Volunteer Ready training programme to ensure the organisation could deliver meaningful, safe, legal, and fair volunteering opportunities, prior to TSDG connecting a volunteer.
• Carry out Volunteer Opportunity Audits with third sector organisations and promote identified opportunities and vacancies through our networks, social media, and local press, direct to individuals.
• Carry out Personal Skills, Experience, and Support Audits directly with people to understand their situation, any support or training required, and their longer term aims when considering volunteering. (first step to employment, reduce isolation, gradual return to work after ill-health, learning English language, etc.)
• Match volunteers to potential volunteering opportunities, from board members to retail opportunities.
• Annually review both the volunteer and the organisation to ensure satisfaction, compliance, and success and seek to address any challenges.
• Promote positive volunteering stories throughout the region to encourage and motivate others to become involved.

We want to:

1. Expand the Volunteer Ready training programme for TSOs.
2. Offer a volunteer person-centred matching service for individuals.
3. Conduct skills and support audits for both volunteers and organisations.
4. Promote opportunities and success stories across the region.
5. Review placements annually for satisfaction and compliance.

TSDG are seeking funding to deliver a three-year project which will strengthen Dumfries and Galloway’s employability and skills ecosystem by developing a coordinated, evidence-based, and sustainable approach to third sector involvement in employability delivery. It will establish a Third Sector Plus (TS+) Employability and Skills Consortium — a collaborative structure bringing together voluntary and community organisations (Third Sector Organisations TSOs), statutory partners including Scottish Government, DWP and DG LEP, and local employers to co-design and deliver inclusive employability solutions.

TSDG will act as the lead organisation and strategic backbone, responsible for coordination, research, partnership building, governance, fund holding and accountability to the Dumfries and Galloway Local Employability and Skills Partnership (DG LEP). The work will align with the region’s Employability, Skills and Learning objectives, promoting fair work, working to eliminate child poverty, community-led delivery, capacity building and community wealth building, and system-wide collaboration.

By embedding the Scottish model of service design, the project will deliver outcomes that are not only measurable but meaningful to the people and communities of Dumfries & Galloway. These outcomes will demonstrate a shift from top-down employability delivery toward an inclusive, sustainable, and community-driven system.

We want to:

• Build a clear, evidence-based understanding of third sector capacity, gaps, and opportunities in employability and skills delivery across Dumfries and Galloway.
• Establish sustainable cross-sector collaborations (Action Collabs) that develop and test partnership delivery models.
• Form and empower the DG Third Sector Plus Consortium (DG TS+ Consortium) as a regional vehicle for third sector-led employability development.
• Embed and mainstream effective approaches through the DG Local Employability & Skills Partnership, ensuring long-term sustainability beyond the project’s lifespan.
• Involve and empower individuals experiencing worklessness within the decision-making process and the collaborative efforts.
• Decrease economic inactivity in target groups.
• Reduce poverty, isolation and barriers to employment.

Target Groups
The project will focus on groups facing the greatest barriers to work, training, and economic participation, including:

• Economically inactive adults (particularly those with health/mental health issues, care-experienced, and other multiple barriers).
• Young people (16–25) not in education, employment, or training (NEETs).
• Individuals with multiple barriers to participation, including mental health challenges, disabilities, asylum seekers, care experienced, children in poverty, individuals, experience of the justice system, rural isolation, low skills & work experience.
• Residents in rural and economically deprived areas of Dumfries and Galloway (e.g. DG2, Killcolm & Kelloholm, Sanquhar, Annan, Stranraer).
• A multi-agency, whole-system approach will ensure that support is integrated, person-centred, and community-based, appropriate to place.

TSDG are seeking funding to create a three-year project which will reimagine and regenerate both coastal and inland communities by embedding community wealth building (CWB) and social enterprise at the centre of local prosperity.

The project will help change the way our economy works, by helping local people to own, control, and benefit from the wealth they help to create.

It will focus on working collaboratively with the community to ensure that they understand what community wealth building means for their community and together developing a shared understanding of how it can become a solution to the complex social and financial challenges which they face.

Community Wealth Building and Social Enterprise redirect wealth into local economies to benefit residents; promoting local economic development and stability which meets local needs, creating an empowering, sustainable local trading system which is organic and iterative. Social effort supporting social goals.

The project will embed in a local context the five pillars of Community Wealth Building (CWB) which are:

Spending – using public procurement, commissioning and investment to develop local businesses, create jobs, build shorter supply chains and maximise community benefit.

Workforce – promoting fair work, developing local labour markets and supporting resilient communities.

Land & Property – growing social, ecological, financial and economic value that local communities gain from land and property assets.

Inclusive Ownership – encouraging business models like co-operatives, employee-ownership and community enterprises so that more of the ownership and control of the economy lies locally.

Finance – making financial powers work for local places (for example local investment, community-based finance, ensuring that finance flows locally).

We Want to:

• Build local resilience through community-led economic action.
• Empower people with the skills, confidence, and connections to lead regeneration through social enterprises.
• Create sustainable jobs through social enterprises rooted in local assets.
• Reduce poverty and isolation, strengthening community health and wellbeing and belonging.
• Fill gaps in supply and services, through the creation of social enterprises.

We will work on the ground with residents, community groups, and local businesses to:

• Map assets and opportunities.
• Co-design new social enterprises.
• Support community ownership of local assets.
• Build leadership and enterprise skills.
• Connect communities to procurement, funding, and digital innovation.

The Third Sector Dumfries and Galloway (TSDG) seeks funding to deliver Evidencing Impact & Real-Life Stories, a pioneering data analysis and storytelling project designed to illuminate, strengthen, and sustain the contribution of the third sector, its people and its beneficiaries, across Dumfries and Galloway. Stories will focus on personal journeys, which have positively impacted the lives of individuals in Dumfries and Galloway.

Through the appointment of a dedicated Data Analyst & Narrator the project will deliver a structured programme of data collection, analysis, and narrative reporting, which will produce accessible evidence of how third sector organisations tackle poverty, isolation, poor mental health, unemployment, and social inequality.

This project will ensure that people living in Dumfries and Galloway who experience multiple disadvantage are seen, heard, and supported, by enabling community organisations, funders, and policymakers to make better-informed, fairer decisions based on evidence and lived experience.