Enterprise Grants: Application guidance

Transcription

1 Enterprise Grants: Application guidance The Enterprise Development Programme is a five year, 40m programme funded by Access The Foundation for Social Investment and managed by a coalition of partners. The Enterprise Grants element of the programme is being managed by Social Investment Business (SIB). The initiative will provide a broad range of support for charities and social enterprises in England, helping them make a transition to new enterprise models, or grow existing ones. Ultimately the aim of the programme is to help organisations become more financially resilient so that they are better able to maintain or create additional social impact. The programme began with grant and learning pilots in September This guidance provides an overview of the grants pilot. For more information about Enterprise Learning, please visit School for Social Entrepreneurs website. Who is it for? Organisations that are thinking of exploring new models of trading to help them become more financially resilient and require financial or business support to make the transition. There may also be an ultimate aim of taking on social investment at some point in the future. Initially the programme will be aimed at organisations that; Are charities or social enterprises Are based and working in England Have a desire to generate income through enterprise Have a clear enterprise idea Can demonstrate that the enterprise would help achieve social impact whilst also increasing financial resilience, and Are operating in the Homelessness and Youth Services sectors, and where the majority of beneficiaries of the organisation are either homeless or young people. Please note that eligible organisations must not be working for religious or political purpose. Faith based organisations can apply, but your services must be open to people of all or no faith. Additionally, our funding cannot be used to help promote any religion. What can I apply for? Two different types of grant are available 1) Feasibility Grants 1

2 Grants of between 5-10k (with the average award expected to be 7,500) to enable organisations to investigate and develop an enterprise proposition from an early stage into a proposed delivery plan. These grants will help you to establish whether your idea is realistic, and whether it is practical for you to develop it further. Grants can be used for: Developing internal capacity and knowledge relating to trading activity Developing an enterprise proposition from early stage through to proposed delivery/implementation plan Testing viability Developing action plans. 2) Development Grants More substantial grants of up to 50k (with the average grant award expected to be around 35,000) available for organisations who have established that their enterprise proposition is achievable but require further development or scaling for it to become a reality. We would expect that organisations applying for a development grant already have some idea about the business model they wish to develop, and the impact the trading would have on the organisation financially as well as how impact would be created for homeless or young people. There may also be an eventual potential requirement for investment. Grants can be used for: Additional internal capacity to work on developing the enterprise proposition Buying in external expertise Testing and refining the proposition Direct funding to start trading, e.g. equipment or stock purchase, cashflow or the initial costs of employing staff. For both types of grant, any internal costs must be for additional staff time, either for part time staff to work increased hours or additional staff to backfill existing staff. For Development Grants we will also consider the initial costs of employing new staff to start trading. However, we will not fund existing staff costs. If you are requesting funding for the initial costs of employing staff, this should only be as part of a wider project and only be for a short and finite period of time. You will also need to demonstrate how you would continue to fund the positions once the grant has ended. Organisations applying for funding should be looking to change the make-up of their income so that more income comes from trading. We want to help organisations 2

3 create a step-change in terms of the amount of traded income they have. If you are not trading at all, then a small amount of traded income will provide this step change. If you are already trading, you will need to demonstrate how what you want funded will create this change. The Enterprise Grants pilot has a budget of 1.8m and is expecting to make around 100 grants during the pilot phase, with the majority of these being Feasibility Grants; the budget will be split equally between the homelessness and youth sectors. Deadline If you want to apply for an Enterprise Grant during the pilot phase of the programme you will need to have submitted your Expression of Interest by midday on Thursday 4th April. Applicants will then be able to book their 1-1 appointment, with the aim that all 1-1s will be completed in the 6 weeks after this, by 16th May. Applicants will continue to have 4 weeks to return their Feasibility grant applications, and 8 weeks to return their Development Grant applications. The final deadline for all Feasibility applications to be returned will be midday 13th June. The final deadline for all Development applications to be returned will be midday 15th July. Why are we closing the Enterprise Grants application process? This phase of the Enterprise Development Programme has always been a pilot phase. We are pausing the programme so that we can review what has worked, and also to reflect on what we have learned. Once we have done this, the intention is to have a further grant window open later in the year. We will provide more details about this as soon as they are available. If you would like to be notified when we have more news, please sign up to our newsletter here. What is an enterprise proposition? By enterprise proposition, we essentially mean the sale of goods or services to generate income. This could be, trading with other businesses, such as providing IT services to other charities Renting space to individuals or businesses (charitable or commercial) Selling goods in a retail outlet, whether that be selling donations or making goods to sell Receiving income for delivering contracted services, such as care services or training. Whatever the type of trading you want to undertake, it must be clear that you have thought about how it will help you to become more financially resilient and how it will help to maintain/increase the social impact you have with either homeless or young people. 3

4 The purpose of these grants is to help you to develop your ideas and plans into products and services that you can sell to someone. That someone could be other charities or social enterprises, individuals, or public bodies such as local authorities or schools. However, these grants are not about providing you with contract readiness support that would get you ready to respond to tender opportunities, or about helping you to raise grant funding. The grants are also not intended to provide support to directly help you raise investment. If you are looking for support to help you raise investment, please visit the Reach Fund website. Grants cannot be used towards building purchase costs or as a contribution towards large refurbishment projects; if you are considering taking on property as part of developing your trading and you need to think through the implications of this, the grant can help with that The service that you want to sell must also be designed to make you more financially resilient, with the intention that you can better maintain or create additional social impact within either homelessness or youth services as defined here. How do I apply? Before you apply, you should clearly have in mind what the trading activity is that you want to develop, Know what work you want to do to develop this and what you would spend a grant on, Have some idea about how it will make you more financially resilient, and how it will ultimately help homeless and/or young people. The grants are not to help you come up with an idea, and you must know how you would spend a grant before you apply and complete the Expression of Interest. The first thing you should do is decide what type of grant you think you need. If you aren t sure, call us on and we can give you some advice. To help you decide whether or not you should apply to the fund, and to help you establish what type of grant might be right for you we have put together a decision tree. By answering yes or no to a series of questions, it will help you to better understand what stage you are at. Simply start at the top and follow the questions. 4

5 You re too early stage to apply for a grant. Once you re clear what your idea for trading is, then you can apply. No Do you have a clear trading activity in mind? Feasibility Grants are to help create a delivery plan for your trading idea. This is likely the type of grant that will suit you best. No Yes Are you clear how this trading activity will help you maintain/create impact for homeless or young people? Yes Have you done any work yet to test the viability of your idea? Yes No You re too early stage to apply. Once you ve thought about and can describe this to us, then you can apply. Have you thought about what work you need to do and how you would spend a grant? No You need to know this before you start the application process. Once you have this information please get in touch. Yes Please complete the online EOI and start the application process. No Do you have a plan for delivering your trading idea, and do you know what steps you need to take to be able to start trading? Yes Do you have the internal capacity, experience and knowledge to be able to start your trading activity? Yes The Enterprise Development Programme is for organisations who don t have these skills. It is unlikely we would be able to offer you a grant No Development Grants are to help you finalise your plans, so that at the end of the grant you should be able to start trading. This is likely the type of grant that will suit you best Have you thought about what work you need to do and how you would spend a grant? No You need to know this before you start the application process. Once you have this information please get in touch. Yes Please complete the online EOI and start the application process. 5

6 Once you know what type of grant you want to apply for, you should complete the online Expression of Interest Form. This will confirm whether you are eligible for the programme. If you are eligible, you will then be able to book a 1-1 with a member of the SIB team. For Feasibility Grants, there is no application form to complete and your 1-1 will effectively be your grant application, so you need to have some key information in place before you speak to us. You can see the questions we will ask you during your 1-1, and the information we will need from you on page 5. It is important that you have read this before you speak to us and that you are able to answer these questions. If you aren t able to answer the questions, we won t be able to progress your application and we will need to arrange to speak to you again when you have all of the information to hand. For those applying for Development Grant, the 1-1 will allow us to talk through your plans with you before you complete the online application form. The 1-1 will not only help us to understand what you want to do and give you an opportunity to ask us questions, but it will also help us to get to know each other. For the majority of grant applicants, the person you have your 1-1 with will be your main point of contact at SIB throughout the life of your grant. If at any point you have any questions about whether or not you should apply, or what you should apply for just give us a call so that we can talk your proposal through with us. We are available on every weekday, You can also contact the sector specialist for your sector for further support. For the homelessness sector this is Homeless Link, and for the youth services sector this is UK Youth and Centre for Youth Impact. 6

7 The application process 1. Expression of Interest & eligibility check Online form 2. Book 1-1 with SIB team Online booking system 3. Have your 1-1 Talk through your proposal & ask us questions. If applying for a feasibility grant, answer key questions about your plans. 4. Grant application For feasibility grants, the phone call will be your application Development grants: online form 7

8 1. Expression of Interest The Expression of Interest (EOI) form asks you for some information about you and your organisation, as well as asking for a description of the trading activity that you want a grant to help you develop. You will also need to give us some information about where your income currently comes from, so it might be worth having a copy of your accounts to hand. Based on your answers to these questions, if you are eligible you will be invited to book a 1-1 with a member of the SIB team. 2. Book a 1-1 with the SIB team If you are eligible for the programme, you will be ed a link to our online booking system. This will allow you to book a time that is convenient for you to speak to us. Your 1-1 will last no more than 1 hour and will usually take place over the phone. If you would prefer the 1-1 to be via a video conference, we can arrange this, and you will need to let us know when booking your 1-1 (you will not need any particular software for the 1-1 to be via video conference). Your 1-1 can be any time in the 6 weeks after you have completed your EOI. At your 1-1 we can just speak with you, or if you wish, you can have another member of your organisation with you it is entirely up to you. Once you have booked your 1-1 you will receive an confirming the time of the meeting, and who from the SIB team you will be speaking to. The will also give you an overview of what we will be asking you when we speak to you. 3. Have your 1-1 Whatever type of grant are you applying for, your 1-1 is a chance for you to talk through your proposal with us and for you to ask us questions. We will advise you during this call whether or not we think your application should progress. 4. Grant application Feasibility Grants For Feasibility Grants there is no application form for you to complete. During your 1-1 we will ask you about what you want to do and will record information about your proposal on our systems. The questions we will be asking you will include; Asking you to tell us a bit more about your income. This will include asking about the different income streams you have, how secure they are, and whether there have been any changes in these. 8

9 Why do you want to develop the trading activity you ve identified? How has this idea come about? How long have you been thinking about this idea? Are you doing something completely new, or replicating something already being done elsewhere? How will the trading activity help your mission/purpose? Is the trading activity directly related to your mission? How will it help young people or people who are homeless? How have you come to these conclusions? How will this trading activity help you to become more financially resilient? Will this trading activity generate a surplus which will help the finances of your organisation? Will it help you to diversify your income streams? How have you come to these conclusions? Is there support for developing this trading activity across your organisation, including at board level? It is important that there is support for what you are doing across the organisation. We will be asking you to tell us a little about what discussions have been had across your organisation about this idea. Is the board fully engaged and supportive? Are staff supportive? If discussions have not been held across all levels of the organisation, what plans do you have to do this? What do you want funding for? You need to know what you want to spend the grant on, and who would do any work you need before you speak to us. We will ask you to tell us specifically what work you want to do, who is going to do the work, whether they are internal or external to your organisation, how many days the work will take and the cost of the work. You need to have this information collated before your 1-1 takes place. How will what you propose to do help you to achieve your aims? We need to know why this is the right work for you to do and why you think it will make the difference to being able to move forward with developing your enterprise proposition. 9

10 How will you learn from this work, and how will you share what you learn? It is important to us that you learn from the work that is undertaken, particularly if you are using external support to help you undertake it. We will want to know how you will embed what you learn to help you as you move forward with developing your enterprise proposition and how you will share this with others. How much are you able to contribute to the cost of the project? We understand that not everyone may be able to contribute towards the cost of their project. But if you can we will want you to tell us about how you will. We will also ask you some questions about what policies and procedures you have in place. After your phone call has taken place, we will you a copy of the information we have recorded. You will then have an opportunity to review and confirm this as well as add any final comments you would like to add before sending it back to us. All this information together will become your grant application. You will have 4 weeks to send us back your completed information. 10

11 Development Grants If you are applying for a Development Grant, after your phone call you will receive an inviting you to complete and submit your grant application. In completing your application please provide us with as much information as possible as this will help us to review your application and give you a decision as quickly as possible. You will need to return your completed Development Grant application to us within 8 weeks of your 1-1 phone call. Completing the application To complete your application, you will be invited to log on to the Social Investment Business Community Platform. This platform is linked to our internal systems and enables us to be able to see all of the information you provide us quickly and easily. The you receive from us will provide you with a link the log in to the community. But if lose this link for any reason don t worry. You can log in to the community at any time from our website. From the homepage, just select the community option in the top right; Once you have logged into the community you will see a home page with a number of options. The My Account option allows you to see the information we hold about your organisation. The My Contact info options allows you to see the information we hold about you as an individual. If you need to edit this information at any point you can. To complete your application, click on the Application option. 11

12 You will then see your application; Click on the application number to see the application questions. And to edit your application click on the Edit button on the right of the screen; 12

13 Application Questions You now need to complete the questions in the form. You can save your application at any time by clicking the blue save button in the bottom right of the screen; Additional information about what we would like to tell us in your answers is provided below. 1. Your impact to date & how measured We would like you to tell us about the impact your organisation has had to date and how you measure this. What positive change has your organisation achieved for its beneficiaries? Do you use a particular system or method to track and measure this? Do you report on your impact? Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 13

14 2. Skills of your senior staff team You should name the people in your senior management team, tell us what position they hold and briefly describe what skills/experience they have in relation to their work and your sector. We need this information so that we can see how well your plan fits with the skills you currently have. Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 3. Skills of your board of trustees/directors? You should name the people on your board of trustees/directors, and detail what skills we have in relation to your sector. Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 4. How is your organisation managed? We need you to tell us how your organisation is managed on a day to day basis? How are decisions made within your organisation? How often do you have board meetings and what information is reviewed by your board? We need this information so that we can understand a little about your governance. Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 5. Why develop this trading activity? Why do you want to develop the trading activity you have identified? How has this idea come about? How long have you been thinking about this idea? Are you doing something completely new, or replicating something already being done elsewhere? Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 6. How will trading help your mission/purpose? How will this trading activity help you achieve your mission/purpose? Will this trading activity generate a surplus which will help the finances of your organisation? Will it help you to diversify your income streams? Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 7. How will trading help you financially? 14

15 Have you thought about the business model for your trading activity and how it will help you to become more financially resilient? What difference will the trading activity make to your finances overall? Will this make you more resilient and better able to serve your beneficiaries? Have you got a business plan/ financial forecasts to help you demonstrate how the trading will help your finances? We need to ask these questions to better understand how far you have got with developing your trading plans. Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 8. Support across the organisation Is there support for developing this trading activity across your organisation, including at board level? It is important that there is support for what you are doing across the organisation. We will be asking you to tell us a little about what discussions have been had across your organisation about this idea. Is the board fully engaged and supportive? Are staff supportive? If discussions have not been held across all levels of the organisation, what plans do you have to do this? Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 9. How much grant are you requesting? Please tell us how much grant you are asking for. You will only be able to enter numbers in this box. 10. What do you want funding for? Summarise your project and what you want to achieve by undertaking it, by giving a brief description of the work you want to do. You will be asked to list the individual items you wish to undertake a little later, so you do not need to do that here. Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 11. How will this help achieve your aim? How will what you propose to do help you to achieve your aims and why is this the right work for you to do? We need to know why this is the right work for you to do and why you think that it will make the difference to being able to move forward with developing your enterprise proposition. 15

16 Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 12. How will you learn and share this? It is important to us that you learn from the work that is undertaken, particularly if you are using external support to help you undertake it. We will want to know how you will embed what you learn to help you as you move forward with developing your enterprise proposition, and how you will share this learning with others. Please use no more than 300 words when writing your answer. 13. Contribution towards the cost of project How much are you able to contribute towards the cost of the project and what are your reasons for this? We understand that not everyone may be able to contribute towards the cost of their project. But if you can we will want you to tell us about how you will. Please tell us what you have considered in reaching a decision about how much you can contribute towards the project. If you unable to commit any of your own resources or reserves to the project, please tell us why. Please use no more than 200 words when writing your answer. 14. Reasons for the contribution Please tell us what you have considered in reaching a decision about how much you can contribute towards the project. If you unable to commit any of your own resources or reserves to the project, please tell us why. Please use no more than 200 words when writing your answer. 15. Which policies do you have in place? Please tell us which policies and procedures you have in place. Simply highlight each one that you have and then click on the arrow pointing right to select those that you have; 16

17 Grant Budget This is where you list the individual items that you would like us to fund. 17

18 You are able to list up to 12 tasks as part of your grant budget. For each task you need to detail; Work to be undertaken; this is where you name what is to be done. Internal/External; select an option so that we know whether the work is for, or being carried out by, an internal employee, or whether it is someone of something external. When; please indicate which quarter, the work will be done. The first 3 months of any project is Q1, the second 3 months Q2, the third 3 months Q3 and the fourth 3 months Q4. No. of days; Please indicate the number of days the task will take. Day Rate; please indicate the day rate for the work. If you are asking for costs towards equipment purchase, you need to enter 1 in the number of days, and then the cost of the item in the day rate box. The total 18

19 cost for each task, and the total grant budget will be calculated for you when you save your application. Please remember that if you must pay VAT on any of the items you are asking us to fund, please make sure that the costs you list are inclusive of VAT. An example showing 2 completed budget items is below; Financial Information This is where you tell us a little about your finances to date. Y1 is the last full financial year that you have audited accounts for. Y2 is the full year before that. For both years, you should provide us with the figures as listed in your accounts; we may check the information against public records, so it is important that the information is accurate. Current management year figures are your most recent figures from your management accounts. Projected full year figures are what you are expecting and forecasting for the full financial year we are currently in. Forecast YR is 19

20 what you are predicting and forecasting for the full next financial year after the one we are currently in. Any amounts that you do not have to enter (e.g. surplus/deficit and total funds) will be automatically calculated when you save your application. Other information you will need to provide As well as answering the questions listed, we will also ask for other information. Bank account information We will ask for your bank account information so that if your application is successful, we can pay the grant to you. The bank account we pay the grant to must be in the name of your organisation; we cannot pay the grant into any other account. If your application is successful you will need to provide us with a copy of a bank statement for this account. Legally responsible contacts We need the details for the two people that will be legally responsible for the funding from within your organisation. At least one of these must be a Trustee/Director as listed at Companies House/The Charity Commission. These two contacts will be responsible for ensuring that the application is supported by the organisation applying and accepting any grant offer made. If you are successful your grant offer will be sent to you electronically, so please make sure that your legal contacts have a valid address and are comfortable with electronic documents. The legally responsible contacts must be different to the main contact for the grant application. The legally responsible contacts should also be unconnected to each other and the main contact. This means not related by blood, marriage, in a longterm relationship or living together at the same address. We will need the full name, date of birth and home address for both contacts so that we can carry out some basic identity checks. We will also need their address so that we can them your grant offer letter if your application is successful. This is part of our standard fraud prevention process so please check that the information provided is correct. By providing this information you are confirming that you have the permission of the individuals involved to do so. 20

21 Social Investment Business intend to store and process the application data, including the personal details, in order to successfully carry out the fund s management. We will take steps to ensure that your personal information is used in a way that is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation, kept safe and will only be shared with Access the Foundation for Social Investment (who fund the Reach Fund) and the TI Group (who are Access learning partner). You will not be able to submit your application if you do not have the details of the legally responsible contacts so please make sure you have this information to hand. What happens after you have submitted your application? For Feasibility Grants, once you have sent back your application it will be reviewed by us and you will get a decision within 10 working days. For Development Grants, your application will be reviewed by the SIB staff member you had your 1-1 phone call with. If we have any questions, we will get in touch with you. Your application will then be considered by a panel which will contain people from both Social Investment Business and Access the Foundation for Social Investment. You should expect to get a decision within 4-6 weeks of submitting your application. If you are successful, we will send you a Grant Offer Letter which details the terms and conditions of the grant. Your grant offer letter will be sent electronically and will first be sent to the main contact for the grant before being ed in turn to the legally responsible contacts. When returning it you will need to attach a bank statement. This can be either: a) a scan of a physical bank statement or b) an electronic statement downloaded from your online banking The statement must show the sort code, account number and the name of the bank account and be no more than three months old. Once you have uploaded your bank statement, and any other precondition information, your offer will be sent electronically to the two legally responsible contacts that were nominated. More information about how to complete and return the grant offer is available from your Relationship Manager. Once they have signed it electronically, we will be able to release your first grant payment. 21

22 You will need to provide us with monitoring information on your grant. Details of this will be ed to you and you will be able to send this back to us electronically. State Aid Grants from the Enterprise Development Programme have the potential to be State Aid. When reviewing your application, we will carry out a State Aid assessment as part of this. If we require any further information from you to do this, we will let you know. If you would like more information on State Aid detailed guidance is available at Any Questions? If you have any questions at any time, please call us on ; we re here Monday Friday 9.00am to 5.00pm. Or you can us at enterprisegrants@sibgroup.org.uk. 22

23 Frequently asked questions 1. What counts as Youth Services? We will consider you as working in Youth Services if the main or primary beneficiary group your organisation works with is young people (aged between 7 and 25), with provision focused on young people s personal and social development in an informal setting. This provision should be outside of the formal education curriculum and usually the participation of young people will be voluntary. This might include extra-curricular activities in a school setting or organisations working with vulnerable young people in a more structured way, as long as they are not replacing schools or assisting schools through provision of formal education. Any work done in a school setting would be expected to be outside of the main school day; this would mean that voluntary extra curricular services provided after school are eligible, but those provided during core school hours are not. We understand that the work of such organisations will not always be straightforward so if you are not sure about your eligibility please ring or us. 2. What is included in the Fund s definition of working with homeless people? We are looking for organisations that are working to reduce or prevent homelessness across England. This may be your primary area of activity or one of a number of services you deliver. If you deliver services across a range of sectors, (including homelessness), then the trading activity you are seeking to develop must be specifically focussed on homelessness. If you work with people at risk of homelessness and undertake activities focused on prevention you will need to be able to demonstrate that the work, you do has a very direct impact on prevention of homelessness. Examples of this might include specialist housing advice and early intervention. We will need to see clear evidence of how your services help to address or prevent homelessness. 3. How much of my work needs to be with either Homeless or Young People in order for me to be eligible to apply? One of the main aims of the programme is to increase the impact on either homeless and young people, as such organisations applying to the fund need to be able to demonstrate that the majority of their beneficiaries are either homeless or young people. However, we understand that often, when working with one particular group there may also be some benefits to other groups. For this programme, the impact you 23

24 wish to create needs to be focussed specifically on either homeless or young people with any benefits to other groups being incidental. This means that if you are a group delivering services to multiple types of beneficiaries, the focus of either the trading activity you are developing or any surplus you create must be about helping either homeless or young people. We will ask you demonstrate your aims for homeless or young people as part of your application, and each project will be judged on a case by case basis. We may also ask for additional information or evidence to enable us to see that the majority of your work is with either homeless or young people. 4. Is there a particular legal structure required for social enterprises? There is no requirement for organisations to be a particular legal form in order to apply. However, to be an eligible social enterprise, organisations need to Have a clear social mission Distribute less than 50% of post-tax profits and reinvest at least 51% of surpluses into pursuing their social mission, and Have a constitutional or contractual lock on their social mission, dividend and surplus distribution policy (also known as an asset lock). 5. What type of items will you fund? We have deliberately not been prescriptive about what we will and won t fund, because we don t think there will be a typical grant application and because we really want to know what will make a difference to your organisation in developing your enterprise proposition. So, we really will consider a wide range of costs, so long as you can tell us why they are going to be what makes the difference. However, we will not fund items/costs that you have already paid for/incurred (retrospective costs) costs that you must incur as part of the day-to-day running of your organisations, such as existing staff costs of other overheads, or the auditing of your accounts items that have already been funded by another funder. Building purchase costs Large-scale building refurbishment costs. We will also not fund late stage investment readiness work, such as would be paid for by the Reach Fund. 24

25 6. Can I apply for a grant if my organisation is just starting up, or has only recently begun providing services? Enterprise Grants are aimed are organisations who already have a track record of working with homeless or young people. If you have only recently begun operating, but the individuals within your organisation have a track record of working with either homeless or young people we will take this into consideration. If you have no experience of working with either homeless or young people, it is unlikely we would be able to provide you with a grant. 7. What is the relationship between the Enterprise Grants programme and the Reach Fund? The Reach Fund is another element of the support offered by the Access Foundation as part of the Enterprise Development Programme. The Reach Fund is intended to support those organisations who are close to raising repayable finance for a specific purpose and where a social investor has indicated there is some essential information missing which is preventing them from making an investment offer. If this describes your situation you should apply for a Reach Fund grant via one of the Reach Fund Access Points. If we think you are more suited to a Reach Fund grant, we will talk to you about this as part of your Can I have more than 1 grant? If you receive a Feasibility Grant and complete this, you can then apply for a Development Grant. However, before doing so we will need to have all the monitoring information on file for your Feasibility grant. We do not expect that applicants who receive a Development Grant will ordinarily then go on to apply for a Feasibility grant. However, if the Feasibility Grant were for something different and clearly justified, we would consider it. The best thing in this circumstance would be to talk to us about what you are doing. Similarly, we do not expect that an organisation will ordinarily receive more than one grant of the same type particularly during this pilot year. However, it is not something we have ruled out completely and again if you wish to do this then you should talk to us about the support you need. 9. Can I apply for an Enterprise Grant if I have received support from a previous readiness fund? If you have previously received a grant from a previous readiness fund (such as Big Potential or the Reach Fund) then you can apply for an Enterprise Grant. However, we would expect your Enterprise Grant application to be different to what was previously funded, and we would not expect to fund a continuation of 25

26 the work previously funded. This is because what the Enterprise Grants programme is offering is very different from previous programmes. If you have any specific questions, you should call us before submitting an Expression of Interest. 10. How long is the period of time for completion of the work that we want to do with the grant? Feasibility Grants are expected to be completed within 6 months from the date that you receive your grant, and Development Grants within 12 months. Your Relationship Manager will discuss progress with you as part of grant monitoring. 11. Can I apply to both Enterprise Grants and Enterprise Learning? Yes, you can apply to both programmes. For more information about Enterprise Learning, please visit School for Social Entrepreneurs website. If you are taking part in the Enterprise Learning programme and apply for a grant, we will ask you how you will manage both. 12. When is the deadline for Enterprise Grant submissions? If you want to apply for an Enterprise Grant during the pilot phase of the programme you will need to have submitted your Expression of Interest by midday on Thursday 4th April. Applicants will then be able to book their 1-1 appointment, with the aim that all 1-1s will be completed in the 6 weeks after this, by 16th May. Applicants will continue to have 4 weeks to return their Feasibility grant applications, and 8 weeks to return their Development Grant applications. The final deadline for all Feasibility applications to be returned will be midday 13th June. The final deadline for all Development applications to be returned will be midday 15th July. 13. Why are you closing the Enterprise Grants application process? This phase of the Enterprise Development Programme has always been a pilot phase. We are pausing the programme so that we can review what has worked, and also to reflect on what we have learned. Once we have done this, the intention is to have a further grant window open later in the year. We will provide more details about this as soon as they are available. If you would like to be notified when we have more news, please sign up to our newsletter here. 26