What is the Community Benefits Gateway?
NHS Scotland’s Community Benefits Gateway is an easy-to-use online service that works to match willing NHS Scotland suppliers with Scottish third sector organisations who are looking for assistance with a variety of needs. This can be anything from supporting training and development via knowledge transfer initiatives, donation of equipment, or volunteering support. Watch this short video to find out more.
Here is a case study from East Lothian Carefree Kids who received a successful bid on the Gateway:
“Carefree Kids East Lothian posted a need on the Community Benefit Gateway in February and received a bid in June which we gratefully accepted.
One of the services that we offer is a Safety Equipment Loan Scheme and this is what we had asked for as the amount of referrals we have been receiving has increased in the past year or so. We received a cash bid which will enable us to purchase equipment as and when it is needed. This is a huge boost to our Project in a time when more and more families are requiring the use of our services.
We used to get funding from NHS through the health improvement fund and when this was stopped, Lorna (our HIF link worker) advised us to put our need on the gateway. With the help of Lorna, and reading some of the other needs before posting ours, I found adding the need to be quite straightforward as was the process after receiving our bid.
I would definitely recommend this to other charities/community groups (in fact I already have done with another local charity) and we are currently looking to post another need for one of the other services that our project offers.”
Access the Community Benefits Gateway here.