Scottish Social Enterprise Awarded £100,000

Edinburgh’s sanctuary of social innovation, The Melting Pot has been awarded £100,000 from the Scottish Government’s Third Sector Enterprise Fund. The Scottish Government invested £12 million (offering awards between £25,000 to £100,000) in the Third Sector Enterprise Fund to aid progressive nonprofits and has identified The Melting Pot as a key component of third sector success.

The Melting Pot, headed by eco-social entrepreneur Claire Carpenter, is a social venture space to help “under the radar” social entrepreneurs come together and spur new and existing social initiatives into action.

After two years in operation, there are plenty of areas the awarded money will support. “We’re delighted that the Third Sector Enterprise Fund has recognized our success and future potential with this award,” said Carpenter.

The award will fund new initiatives like a volunteering program that will help young people develop their skills in social enterprise event management, marketing and communications and a new “Assisted Places” scheme that will offer subsidized membership of The Melting Pot to low-income social entrepreneurs. The award will also be allocated to support staffing, governance, IT equipment and software.

The Melting Pot was started in 2007 when Carpenter realized innovative thinkers were in coffee shops, restaurants, homes and houseboats, (much like Portland or San Francisco) but their ideas went unrecognized and without positive reinforcement. The problem was that these idealists needed a place to collaborate. Thus, a low-carbon space in a four-story building in downtown Edinburgh filled the void and The Melting Pot was created (much like CubeSpace and Idea Village in Portland and New Orleans)

Social Entrepreneurship hotbeds like The Melting Pot (and The HUB; The Idea Village) are exciting places to witness success. I look forward to seeing more collaborative efforts in social innovation meet-ups, as well as radically more effective solutions.

• The Melting Pot is an incubator for new and emerging social initiatives – a place to plant seeds, branch out, get together and grow.
• Organization Type: Non-Profit
• Website: www.themeltingpotedinburgh.org.uk
• Founder(s): Claire Carpenter
• Founded: 2007
• Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
• See complete company list here