About

Jim Bennett

Throughout his life, Jim’s drive has been social change.

Over the past 35+ years, he has provided leadership in social change organisations, delivering at UK, Scottish and regional levels. He is a specialist in social enterprise, community asset acquisition and community heritage.

Experience

His experience includes being a founding senior member of staff of the £100 million charity, UnLtd. He was also a co-founder, and Director, of the Social Enterprise Academy and the Scottish Social Enterprise Coalition. Additionally, he was co-founder and Director of Freedom Bakery CIC and a Director of social enterprise consultancy, SKS Scotland CIC. Following his leadership of the community land buy out team, Jim recently completed a five-year tenure as the CEO at Bannockburn House Trust.

Previously, he has also been:
– A Non-Executive Director of Resilient Scotland
– A Consortia Expert with Scottish Enterprise
– A community organisation support specialist with Highlands & Islands Enterprise
– A Sector Expert with Social Investment Scotland
– A Specialist advisor with Cooperative Development Scotland
– A Highlands and Island Enterprise SME specialist advisor

“Jim Bennet broke new ground as CEO (Scotland) at UnLtd and provided me and other with valuable support and advice for our developing social enterprises. I particularly valued his personal attention to the businesses he helped to support and would recommend him as someone who cares deeply about the betterment of society and as a professional who gets things done.”

“Jim was working on a very complex Capital Appeal and Development plan for CBD at the time when I came on board. The work he did with planning, research and strategy has provided excellent groundwork for me to get running with raising a daunting £10m for the Appeal! It's not an easy task and without Jim's expertise and groundwork I would consider it to have been an especially daunting one. He also helped put together a lot of the background paperwork, business plans and projections needed to secure funding for a relatively unknown charity.”