Deadline: 24-Mar-22
The Social Enterprise Support Fund (SESF) is now open to provide essential financial support to help social enterprises in England to rebuild and grow their income from trading, following the impact of COVID-19.
The Social Enterprise Support Fund is focused on social enterprises supporting people facing increased social and economic challenges as a result of COVID-19. They will support them in evolving and growing sustainable community services, in the face of ongoing disruption from COVID-19, with £16.3m of grants.
The fund is a two-year project, delivered by Big Issue Invest, Key Fund, Resonance, the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) and UnLtd, in partnership with The National Lottery Community Fund.
The funding can be used for:
- Helping you get your social enterprise back on track: This might be the costs of getting trading back up and running, supporting outreach and marketing, supporting your costs while your business gets back to full strength, developing new markets and services etc.
- Helping you work with communities that are recovering: This might be work related to supporting communities that have been hard hit by COVID-19, for example, supporting people to get back to work, helping marginalised children catch up with education, supporting families who have been bereaved, providing services for people affected by long COVID etc.
Funding Information
You can apply for grants from £10,000 to £100,000. Most grants will be between £10,000 and £50,000.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for this fund you need to be able to answer yes to the following criteria:
- In England: The fund is only available to you if the majority of the people and/or organisations you support through your social enterprise live and/or are based in England.
- At least one year old: Your social enterprise must have been incorporated for at least 12 months (i.e. registered with Companies House, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or the Charity Commission).
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An incorporated social purpose organisation with an asset lock: Your social enterprise must be incorporated. It may be a charitable company, a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO), a Community Interest Company (CIC) or a Community Benefit Society (CBS/Registered Society). It may also be a company limited by guarantee (CLG), a company limited by shares (CLS), a co-operative society, or other registered society, if, within its governing document, it has:
- a clear social purpose, such as an Objects or Social Purpose clause
- a restriction on distribution of profits, to the extent that at least 51% of surpluses are reinvested for its social purpose
- an ‘asset lock‘, which is a restriction on the distribution of assets
- Annual income between £20,000 and £1.8 million: This is your income, either in your last financial year or the previous financial year (pre-COVID-19). (Please note that loans, including COVID-19 related loans, do not count as income.) In exceptional circumstances, they may consider organisations that have recently started and have had £20,000 income in the last 12 months (rather than the last financial year).
- Substantially reliant on income from trading: Your social enterprise must be substantially reliant on income from trading to deliver social impact. By ‘income from trading’, they mean both sales of goods and/or services and delivery of contracts to supply goods or services. They will prioritise social enterprises where income has previously come mostly through trading, and which need support to rebuild trading income to enable you to deliver your social impact.
- Financially resilient: They must be confident that with our support, your social enterprise will survive at least the next 12 months. If you have a negative balance on your balance sheet, or significant debts, you will need to explain how you will continue to trade.
- Dual authority bank account: This means that at least two unrelated people are required to release payments. You don’t have to have this now, but must have this in place before receiving the grant.
For more information, visit SESF.
For more information, visit https://socialenterprisesupportfund.org.uk/