Ruskin Lane Consulting 2013 | Page 6

ACHIEVEMENTS AND ACTIVITY April 2012 – July 2013 ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT We submitted a successful bid to Historic Scotland for ongoing funding to April 2015. This involved agreeing a set of targets and outcomes to deliver the role of the strategic intermediary body for the historic environment in Scotland. We appointed a fundraising and strategy consultant to help with the development of BEFS and, in particular, sourcing additional forms of revenue. We were part of a successful consortium Stage One bid to the HLF Catalyst Heritage: Building Fundraising Capacity grants programme, which was devised to enable heritage organisations, large and small, to build financial resilience by attracting private investment through a range of targeted programmes. Above: Participants in our workshop on capacity building. OUTREACH Our Chairman visited 6 Scottish small towns as part of the BEFS Small Towns Initiative. Meetings were held with local representatives and informal ‘health checks’ were carried out. The six towns visited were: Dumfries, Arbroath, Kilsyth, Elgin, Stornoway and Campbeltown. We are working to produce a publication and staging an event in autumn 2013. Reports on all the visits are available on the BEFS website. We met and shared ideas for collaboration and partnership with a wide range of organisations including: Architecture and Design Scotland; Planning Aid for Scotland; Carnegie UK and many of our member and associate organisations. Below: Arbroath, one of the towns visited as part of our Small Towns Initiative.