The Reach Fund is a grant programme that helps charities and social enterprises raise investment. If your charity or social enterprise requires extra support in areas such as governance, financial modelling or business planning in order to gain investment you may consider applying for a grant.

The team at Rebellion have successfully secured Reach Fund Grants to help social enterprises secure investment. If you are considering raising investment then contact our team today to see if we can help. More information available on The Reach Fund website: https://www.reachfund.org.uk/

Nesta Challenges has launched a £1m fund aimed at charities and social enterprises wanting to develop tech-based solutions to social isolation. 

Submissions to the Tech to Connect Challenge opened today today and entries are accepted until 7 August.

The £1m prize consists of £500,000 in grant funding from the Department for Digital, Media and Sport and £500,000 in business support from Nesta Challenges toward developing prototypes and implementation plans for the winning idea.

The challenge is part of the DCMS Let’s Talk Loneliness campaign launched last week. 

Tech ideas to combat social isolation

Tris Dyson, executive director of Nesta Challenges said: “We know that a wide range of civil society organisations already have great ideas to combat social isolation, but they are often constrained by a lack of funding or resources. 

“By offering tailored guidance and funding to help scale the most impactful solutions, we will help to build more connected communities.

“Often the simplest solutions are the most impactful, and we’re encouraging organisations from across the board to submit their ideas through our short submission form. 

“Whether it’s an idea in its early stages or an operational concept that needs scaling up, we want to hear about your tech-based solutions.”

The challenge 

Challenge applicants will explain a problem within social isolation and provide an idea for a technological solution.

Seven finalists will come out of the initial assessment and follow a programme of guided support over five months.

They will conduct user research, design a prototype and implementation plan and then develop a working prototype.

There will be one winner and two runner ups.

Technology has a positive role

Mims Davies, minister for civil society, said: “Loneliness is one of the biggest public health challenges our country faces. 

“It can affect anyone of any age, at any time, and its health impact is in line with smoking or obesity. 

“We need to do all we can to help people build new and lasting social connections and technology has a positive role to play in this. 

“The ‘Tech To Connect’ Challenge will no doubt inspire new innovative ideas to help tackle loneliness and leave people feeling less isolated.”

The new Space to Connect fund will help community organisations identify, improve and protect spaces where people can connect and co-operate is now open for applications.

Grants of up to £50,000 are available across England through Space to Connect – a new £1.6 million match-funding partnership with government.

Two strands of funding are available:

• ‘Enhance’ – organisations that are using community spaces in innovative and creative ways can apply for grants of £30,000 to £50,000 to help expand activities and embed sustainable ways of working so they can build a more secure future. Revenue and capital funding is available. Applications close at midday (12pm) on Wednesday 31 July.

• ‘Explore’ – organisations that want to help communities start to explore ways that local challenges could be addressed through better use of space, and/or identify potential spaces that could be opened up to community use can apply for grants of up to £10,000. Revenue funding only. Applications close on at midday (12pm) on Monday 12 August 2019

Funding builds on the government’s commitment to unlock the potential of community spaces as part of its Loneliness Strategy. 

For more details and to apply visit www.coopfoundation.org.uk

We’ve had a busy couple of months running 3 events for social entrepreneurs in East Sussex. As part the Connect Fund project, a partnership with Hastings Voluntary Action, we have so far held two events in Eastbourne and one in Hastings.

It’s been great to see a mix of existing social enterprises, start ups and those who are simply interested and have a good idea for social change. We’ve been really heartened to see the interest from people in the events, which tells us that there is a growing interest in social enterprise and doing business for good.

In Eastbourne and Hastings, the room was buzzing with people swapping contact details and talking about their businesses or ideas. We had an excellent presentation from Jason Nuttall at Crowdfunder UK about how to best structure an effective crowdfunding campaign to capitalise on existing networks and communities of interest, turning potential investors into long term supporters and customers of your business.

We collected feedback on the support people were looking for and emerging themes included funding and finance; governance and legal structures; social media marketing; finding space and venues; strategy and planning.  This helps to inform future funded support, but in the meantime, do talk to us about your support needs as we can offer a range of consultancy and coaching services.

We followed up the meetup event in Eastbourne with what we call a “Solution Session” – a small group of social entrepreneurs coming together to find a way forward for business challenges they face. Feedback from this event was very positive, with participants finding it beneficial to work though their challenges and take suggestions from their peers. Everyone wanted to do it again, so something definitely worked!

Talking of which, we are planning further meetups and Solution Sessions in September, watch this space or even better join the growing facebook community here  https://www.facebook.com/groups/socialenterpriseeastsussex/ to keep up to date and also to share your news with fellow social entrepreneurs.

We have a new Facebook group – Social Enterprise East Sussex  that is available for all social enterprises and good businesses to contribute to.

We want it to be a place to catch up on news, but more importantly, a place to connect to each other, share stories, ask for support and build a community of like minded people.

Join the rebellion – a different way of doing business!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/socialenterpriseeastsussex/

 

The Reach Fund is a grant programme that helps charities and social enterprises raise investment. If your charity or social enterprise requires extra support in areas such as governance, financial modelling or business planning in order to gain investment you may consider applying for a grant.

The team at Rebellion have successfully secured Reach Fund Grants to help social enterprises secure investment. If you are considering raising investment then contact our team today to see if we can help. More information available on The Reach Fund website: https://www.reachfund.org.uk/

South East Local Enterprise Partnership (SELEP) has commissioned a piece of work to produce an evidence base for the support needs of social enterprises.  The work is being delivered by Social Enterprise East of England (SEEE).

SEEE will shortly be inviting local social enterprises to participate in interviews and focus groups and will be sending a questionnaire to support organisations.  If you are interested in being involved in any of these activities or would like to know more about the research, please contact SEEE [email protected].

A report will be submitted to SELEP’s Social Enterprise Working Group at the end of October.

A new report from SEUK, The Hidden Revolution, supported by Nationwide and Co-op Group, presents fresh analysis of the size and scale of the social enterprise sector. According to independent analysis, the social enterprise sector makes a £60bn contribution to UK GDP. , compared to £24bn in previous research. The Hidden Revolution also brings together key statistics which show that social enterprises are more competitive than traditional firms, confirmed that social enterprises are the Future of Business.

The Hidden Revolution, supported by Nationwide and Co-op Group, presents fresh analysis of the size and scale of the social enterprise sector. According to independent analysis, the social enterprise sector makes a £60bn contribution to UK GDP, compared to £24bn in previous research. The Hidden Revolution also brings together key statistics which show that social enterprises are more competitive than traditional firms, confirmed that social enterprises are the Future of Business.

For the first time, research has considered the impact of 5,000 larger social enterprises, as well as small and medium-sized social enterprises. Taken together with other data, this means that there are around 100,000 social enterprises, contributing £60bn to the UK economy and employing 2m people.

In total, social enterprises are worth around 3% of UK GDP – three times larger than the agricultural sector – and 5% of all UK employment, employing as many people the entire creative industry sector.

Social Enterprise UK, the Co-op Group and Nationwide Building Society are calling on the government to take greater notice of the growing importance of the sector and back its growth through a comprehensive package of measures. This would build on the Civil Society Strategy published last month and the Industrial Strategy published by government last year. Measures could include:

• Using public procurement policy to support social enterprise through strengthening the Social Value Act
• Amending company law so that businesses have to give more regard to their social and environmental responsibilities
• Consider how the tax system can incentivise businesses which have a social as well as an economic impact on society
• Embedding social enterprise in the school curriculum so that young people are aware of the option of starting or working for a social enterprise

You can download the full report here.

The new Partnerships fund announced in May 2108 is designed to support the development and growth of existing partnerships and also to encourage new types of partnership. Focus is on local cross-sector partnerships and collaboration of local and national organisations.

Partnerships funding could be accessed by social enterprises working in one of the Big Lottery Fund’s three funding priorities:

• bring people together and build strong relationships in and across communities
• improve the places and spaces that matter to communities
• enable more people to fulfil their potential by working to address issues at the earliest possible stage.

If you are looking for potential partners for you idea or would like help preparing a bid contact the team at Rebellion today.

Rebellion and Hastings Voluntary Action are delighted to announce a new 2-year programme of support for social enterprises and charities looking to develop enterprising activities. The East Sussex Social Enterprise Support Service has been supported by The Connect Fund, and launches this autumn  providing a range of support, networking and learning opportunities for the sector.

The aim of the programme is to develop an East Sussex Social Enterprise Support Service and to strengthen relationships between social enterprises and social investment intermediaries and improve financial resilience.

We will create a member-led network of social enterprises to better understand their needs; to create a more supportive and resilient sector that can influence policy makers, such as the Local Enterprise Partnership.

The project will offer four quarterly networking events, training, and capacity building for social enterprises. The project will also recruit and train a network of 12 Social Investment Champions to act as an ongoing local peer resource to promote and build sector confidence in social investment products and services.

Watch this space for news of how to get involved and the first networking event will be on 13th November in Hastings (see our Events for more details)