Tendering for Public Sector Contracts is a practical guide for social enterprises and voluntary organisations in Scotland that want to enter the public service delivery market

The Scottish Executive has commissioned this guide to support social enterprises and voluntary organisations that want to tender for public sector contracts.

This guide is for staff and directors in social enterprises and voluntary organisations in Scotland. The guide has been developed with a wide target audience in mind, including organisations that want to:

• Consider public sector procurement contracts as an option.
• Prepare for delivering public procurement contracts.
• Diversify their range of services and include public sector contracts.
• Continue to deliver contracts but improve their performance in tendering.
• Expand to deliver more contracts.
• Replace current grant funding with public procurement contracts.

The purpose of the guide is to help your organisation to make the right choices. It is recognised that some social enterprises and voluntary organisations will continue to deliver public services that are funded through grants or service level agreements. In many cases this is the best option for those organisations because of the nature of the services that are delivered.

It is also recognised that the social enterprise and voluntary sectors have within them wide differences and disparity between organisations. There are large, multi-million pound organisations and small community groups or individual social entrepreneurs. The guide attempts to cover relevant information for this diversity of sub sectors.

The guide can be downloaded by following the link above

Related to the above guide is the “Better Value – Purchasing public services from the social economy” guide.

This guide is aimed at all those who direct and influence the shape of public services in Scotland and those who procure services on a daily basis. It’s purpose is to raise awareness of the social economy and highlight the advantages of purchasing services from the social economy.

The guide is accompanied by the “Better value – the social economy delivering public sector contracts” booklet. This shows examples of good practice in public sector procurers working effectively with social economy organisations within the European Union and best value frameworks, to gain high-quality services and the added value that social economy organisations provide.

Both guides can be downloaded by following the link above