As 2023 winds to a close, The Circle team is reflecting on another year of challenges and excitement. With an early-year restructuring and the ongoing battle with the cost-of-living crisis and energy costs, we have had our hands full.
For our final day in the office for 2023, we are reflecting on our top highlights for the year…
The Circle’s Top 20 of 2023
1. Our building occupancy has increased with 13 new tenants joining our community. This leaves our hubs at 87% occupancy.
2. We reopened a valuable service to Dundee, providing mobility vehicles to members of the public so they can have improved access to the city. The service is now named The Circle Mobility and will be accessible in the city centre.
3. Wellbeing has still been a priority as we continue to work a 4-day week and pay the Living Wage.
4. Though we sadly said goodbye to our Chairperson, Donald McPherson, we welcomed Campbell Archibald into the role.
5. We continued to provide invaluable support to the third sector through our Consultancy service including working with 23 Just Enterprise clients.
6. Funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, we hosted 6 Social Enterprise Essentials workshops.
7. We worked with Dundee International Women’s Centre to deliver a 6-week programme on Excel, budgeting and bookkeeping.
8. With support from Elevator we hosted a 6-week programme in Aberdeenshire focused on Community Wealth Building.
9. We hosted our first-ever Board Matchmaker event at Dudhope Castle, where we arranged for organisations to meet individuals who wanted to become board members.
10. We had many visits to The Circle this year! The Scottish Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance visited The Circle in Dundee to hear more about what we do and the challenges social enterprises continue to face.
11. Our volunteers have dedicated over 4000 hours to The Circle this year!
12. 8 of our volunteers have secured jobs this year, with 5 in the last two months. In June, we worked with Social Security Scotland to help job-seeking volunteers gain confidence with a Work Preparation Day.
13. Our group outing to HMS Unicorn for Volunteers’ Week was our first volunteer social event.
14. We worked with 25 high school pupils and university students across Scotland.
15. We now have a group of volunteers dedicated to researching the historic 13th century Dudhope Castle, where The Circle has its headquarters.
16. It was our first year participating in Doors Open Days, held in Dudhope Castle, Dundee and Easterhouse, Glasgow.
17. We launched our 6th Social Impact report with a hybrid event in our Dundee and Glasgow hubs and online.
18. The Circle got involved with the local community in Dundee by supporting Friends of Dudhope Park with a free meeting space at Dudhope Castle, litter picks of the surrounding park, and involvement with their annual fun day.
19. We got involved with the local community in Glasgow by arranging regular litter picks and by becoming a litter picker pick-up spot.
20. We have been supported by many organisations this year – thank you in particular to:
Reflections from The Circle’s Founder and CEO, Kirsty Thomson
2023 has been a year of ups and downs for all of us. Here at The Circle, we started our year in a tough position, with soaring energy costs leading us to restructure the business to keep our doors open. Despite all the challenges thrown at us this year and having a smaller team, we have been determined to keep delivering quality services and meet the needs of our community. I’m proud of what we have been able to achieve this year through the teamwork, resilience and sheer determination of our team. Even in such a tough year, we have been able to expand our services: reaching 87% occupancy rate across Dundee and Glasgow, delivering 2 new series of workshops in Dundee and Aberdeenshire, supporting 75 volunteers and placements and reviving a vital service in Dundee with The Circle Mobility.
No doubt we will all have more challenges to overcome. The cost of living crisis and energy crisis are rumbling on, funding is harder to come by than ever and we are still seeing the effects of the covid pandemic. We need to build a strong, resilient third sector that works together collaboratively and can be flexible in the face of whatever is thrown at us. I hope to see more socially minded organisations taking a More Than Profit® approach to their work, building multiple income streams into their work to become sustainable so they can keep supporting their communities in the long term.
I want to thank my team who have really pulled together this year and shown immense resilience; our achievements this year would not have been possible without them. Our board of directors have been a tremendous support while we navigated this challenging year and I can’t thank them enough. Lastly, I want to thank our tenants, clients, funders and our community for their ongoing support.
It is important in such difficult times that we all take a step back to recognise our achievements and find time to look after ourselves. From one person driving forward social change to another – well done for everything you are doing to support our communities and in case no one else has said it THANK YOU!! I hope you’re able to take some time to properly rest over the break and come back feeling refreshed. We will see on the 3rd of January 2024!
