Not-for-profit organisations that have been operating for five years or less that want to set up their own community business in England have an extra week to apply for business support and grants.
The funding is for community groups, associations, and organisations with good ideas for a community business but need advice and a small amount of revenue funding to develop, test and get to the stage of launching their community business.
The Bright Ideas Fund is seeking strong applications from across England. However, there is a particular interest in applications from Bradford, Grimsby, Hartlepool, Leicester, Luton, Plymouth, Wigan, Liverpool City Region, Suffolk and West of England Combined Authorities. This is not a requirement, and the aim is to fund projects from a range of different places and sectors.
Grants of up to £15,000 are available. It is expected that between 30 and 35 groups will be supported in this round.
Successful organisations will receive:
- Business development support of up to 12 days from Locality, Plunkett Foundation, or Co-operatives UK.
- Grant funding of up to £15,000, which can be spent on specific activities to develop the community business idea.
- Learning and peer networking – access to online resources, thematic webinars and the opportunity to visit and learn from existing community businesses.
The following is an indication of the range of grants available at different stages of development:
- Ideas stage – grants of between £1,000 and £10,000.
- Pre-venture stage – grants of between £1,000 and £15,000.
Groups that miss this round will have further opportunities to apply in 2020 and 2021.
The application deadline for this round has been extended from 30th September to 7th October 2019.
APPLY HERE
Content source: www.grantfinder.co.uk