Benefits of trading

Trading has a number of benefits:

• Income from trading is unrestricted – it can be used to meet an organisation’s needs rather than being specific to an individual grant funded project
• Increased independence – can help to drive growth and further an organisation’s independence
• Adopt new approaches to running your organisation and foster an entrepreneurial culture
• Refreshment of skills – such as marketing, negotiation and financial management
• User involvement – often allows service users to be involved in planning of service delivery