5 September 2018
UK Youth will be driving Access’ new Enterprise Development Programme with the youth sector. We will work closely with The Centre of Youth Impact to inspire organisations working with young people to become more financially resilient and support those who want to transition into new enterprise models with grant funding and a training programme.
The Enterprise Development Programme is a five-year £40m programme that provides 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. There will be a particular focus on the enterprise models which are best enabled by access to finance, and on enabling organisations to utilise the tool of social investment as part of that transition.
Kayleigh Wainwright, Head of Membership and Policy at UK Youth said: “Lack of sustainable funding is one of the biggest challenges facing youth organisations across the UK. This new programme will truly help youth organisations in our network, and the wider youth sector, to become more financially resilient. Within our network we have seen great examples of social entrepreneurship and innovative funding streams, and we’re proud to work with our partners on this programme to unlock up to £1.85m of new funding and an in-depth training scheme to better support charities to think creatively and transition into new enterprise models.”
This month two one-year pilot programmes will launch – a grant programme, “Enterprise Grants”; and a learning programme, “Enterprise Learning”. These will be delivered by a coalition of partners and are available to charities and social enterprises which work in the homelessness and youth sectors. Homeless Link, The Centre for Youth Impact and UK Youth will work as sector partners on the pilot programmes. The ambition is for the programme to learn from these initial one-year pilots and expand to other parts of the charity and social enterprise sectors as the work develops.
Seb Elsworth, Chief Executive of Access, said: “Access was set up with funds from government to help social investment be a more useful tool for charities and social enterprises. Key to this happening is the development of enterprise models within the sector. This is what this new programme is all about. We have chosen to start this work in the homelessness and youth sectors because we have seen that they have significant untapped potential for enterprise development and therefore a latent requirement for social investment.”
UK Youth members can find out more by contacting the Membership Team.
Notes to Editors
Find out more about the learning programme run by the School of Social Entrepreneurs here.
Find out more about the grants programme administered by the Social Investment Business here.
About Access
Access – The Foundation for Social Investment works to make charities and social enterprises in England more financially resilient and self-reliant, so that they can sustain or increase their impact.
Access does this by supporting the development of enterprise activity to grow and diversify income, and improving access to the social investment which can help stimulate that enterprise activity.
Access will be around for a decade, but the need for this work will continue well beyond that. So our approach is to work through others to create partnerships which can outlive us, test and learn from new approaches, and generate knowledge which improves the work of others seeking the same goals.
Set up in 2015, Access was endowed with £60m by the Government to support more organisations to access social investment. It also runs the Growth Fund, a blended finance programme supporting small scale lending to the sector, on behalf of the Big Lottery Fund and Big Society Capital.
www.access-socialinvestment.org.uk @si_access
About Social Investment Business
Social Investment Business provides loans, grants and support to charities and social enterprises to help them change the lives of the people they work with.
They have helped hundreds of organisations become more resilient and sustainable so that they are in the best place to grow and increase their impact.
They were one of the UK’s first social investors and since 2002 have provided over £400 million worth of loans and grants for extraordinary organisations all across the country.
www.sibgroup.org.uk @TheSocialInvest.
About School for Social Entrepreneurs
The School for Social Entrepreneurs equips people to transform communities and improve the lives of others. SSE supports social entrepreneurs, charity leaders and intrapreneurs: people who tackle social problems by starting, scaling and sustaining organisations. It helps more than 1,000 leaders of social change every year through courses, connections and support. Michael Young founded the School for Social Entrepreneurs in 1997 in London. Today, SSE’s network of schools impacts communities across the UK, Canada and India.
Match Trading™ is grant-funding that pound-for-pound matches an increase in income from trading. By rewarding sales growth, Match Trading incentivises social organisations to develop their trading base, so they can build stronger futures. Match Trading was created by the School for Social Entrepreneurs from 20 years of experience of helping people to create sustainable change in their communities. Match Trading is made possible with the support of pioneer partners, Lloyds Banking Group and Big Lottery Fund, and its development is overseen by a Task Force of 20 leading social-sector organisations.
www.the-sse.org www.matchtrading.com @SchSocEnt
About Homeless Link
Homeless Link is the national membership charity for services working directly with people experiencing homelessness, or living with housing with health, care and support needs. Representing over 700 organisations across England, we work to improve services through research, training and guidance, and to promote policy change that will ensure everyone has a place to call home and the support they need to keep it.
Our Social Investment Fund focuses on the potential that blended finance of smaller unsecured loans and grants can have on creating change. Our fund is provided through the Growth Fund, which is managed by Access- the Foundation for Social Investment, with funding by Big Lottery Fund and Big Society Capital.
https://www.homeless.org.uk/ @HomelessLink
About The Centre for Youth Impact
The Centre for Youth Impact is a community of organisations that work together to progress thinking and practice around impact measurement in youth work and services for young people. Our vision is for all young people to have access to high quality programmes and services that improve their life chances, by enabling embedded approaches to impact measurement that directly inform practice. Our work, therefore, is dedicated to three objectives, together with our expanded networks and other organisations from across the youth sector: curating the debate, building the movement and shaping the future.
www.youthimpact.uk @YouthImpactUK
About UK Youth
Founded in 1911, UK Youth provides young people aged 9-25 with high quality services, delivered through a network of locally accessible youth organisations across the UK. Together we offer support, advice and training to over a million young people to equip them with vital life skills and help them engage in education, volunteering and employment. Our mission is to provide access to appropriate, high quality services for young people in every community so that all young people are empowered to build bright futures, regardless of their background or circumstances.
https://www.ukyouth.org/ @UKYouth