The Factory Skatepark in Dundee came to life in 1998 after a local church, The Gate, invested £43,000 building a skateboarding facility in the city as a way of developing sporting and community needs under one roof. It soon became clear that the facility would not be big enough to meet demand and a new, purpose-built facility opened in 2004. In the same year, The Gate passed over ownership to a new charity – The Factory Skatepark.
Foster carer Agnes Neish considers The Factory Skatepark an integral part of the protective network she provides to the young people passing through her care. She remembers a nine-year-old boy who came to her with extreme behaviour issues: “He had hardly been at school in the previous year and had anger issues and poor social skills. He started beginner’s sessions at The Factory Skatepark and was soon going several times a week. He had many falls and bruises but showed a strong determination to progress as a skater and skateboarder. He received encouragement and practical advice from the coaches and the other young people. The Factory made him feel a success, developed his co-ordination and increased his levels of fitness. He has now moved on to a permanent placement and is coping with secondary school.”
As well as running a skatepark, the charity hosts a skate shop, a restaurant, an IT suite/internet café and also runs youth and homework clubs. Funding was secured to build a new children’s indoor play centre which opened in December 2012 creating 18 new jobs. Levels of deprivation are high in Dundee and the ethos of this charity is to engage with young people aged six to 12 to provide a safe and secure environment and give them the opportunity to express themselves through different activities. The park has 15,200 registered users, with between 40,000-50,000 visits per year. Just over half those children come from Dundee city itself.
Chief Executive Derek Marshall says, “We wanted a 21st century community centre. Skateboarding is the catalyst but it is much wider than that.” Unlike many charities, The Factory was not desperate for funding and came to Pilotlight as a confident business. “We wanted to go from a small company to a medium-sized one, so we were looking for strategic policies and a three-year plan to grow the organisation.”
The Pilotlight team of four powerful business people started the process by dismantling the organisation on paper and examining the core business, management and employee structures, analysing if there were new markets The Factory could reach and succession planning.
“The process focused my attention away from running the business on a daily basis, to work at a strategic level. One suggestion from the Pilotlighters was to change my title from operations manager to chief executive. They said that would drive what I was meant to be about and that I should be working at a strategic level.
“They were right and now we have an operations manager. It meant recognising that I couldn’t have hands-on control of everything; that I should be responsible for strategic planning, the management team and the future goals of the organisation.”
One of the biggest changes for Derek was stepping down from the interview panels for new members of staff. This responsibility passed to departmental heads instead.
The trading side of the charity rose by 31 per cent last year, bringing its total income for 2011 to about £550,000, and while Derek says the Pilotlight process doesn’t entirely account for this, “it was a significant contributor”. The Factory Skatepark went on to win Social Enterprise Scotland's Social Enterprise of the Year 2012 award.
He recommends the Pilotlight process because, “it can help charities with long-term sustainability and increasing their trading capacity”.