Benefits of Membership - Invitation from the Chair

I would like to invite you to join the TSNLA. Your membership will support us in being able to operate as a small national membership organisation working effectively and strategically on behalf of third sector learning and skills providers and of the many disadvantaged people, groups and communities who benefit from these services.

TSNLA progress in the last year

• We have consistently represented the interests of providers at the highest levels e.g. at both Skills Funding Agency and Young people's Learning Agency advisory forums
• The TSNLA lobbied successfully to remove the 51% Rule which was causing real problems for some consortia and lead partners
• In April we met with the Minister for FE, Skills and Lifelong Learning to open up a dialogue - receiving the assurance of John Hayes that if Minimum Contract Values policy threatens provision there will be discretion in applying this

What are our plans for this year?

• The Minister has indicated that he and his department want to develop the relationship and we will explore ‘learning co-operatives' jointly
• We will be taking a very active role in the consultation on Informal Adult and Community Learning and will be consulting with members - John Hayes was keen to stress that the third sector was ‘absolutely critical to IACL'
• With support from the Learning and Skills Service we will be identifying and capturing the views of sector providers and leaders so that these can inform the future shaping of support services to providers

We believe that we are making excellent progress and that to support third sector providers and their learners we need to sustain this.

Membership for 2012 and 2013

Given that we are all going through difficult times we would like to offer new members a discount for membership in 2012 - to join now will attract a discount of 10%. On top of this if you join for 2013 as well we will increase the discount to 20%. We are also changing the way membership fees are calculated. Previously this was based on overall turnover - now this will be based on turnover on learning and skills work provided.

We hope that a consideration of the successes of the TSNLA in furthering the cause of third sector providers will illustrate the benefits of membership - particularly in these challenging times for the third sector and the communities it serves.

Tim Ward - Chair TSNLA

TSNLA 'reach'

With investing members and network subscribing members the TSNLA reaches directly to around 700 organisations and networks focussing on learning and skills in the third sector.

Many of these cascade the information and good practice to their own networks and members - which makes for a significant multiplier effect - meaning that our messages reach thousands of interested organisations and networks.