Business for Good Growth and Resilience Programme
Overview
The Business for Good Growth & Resilience programme is a FREE learning programme supporting you to develop new and existing skills and network with other socially minded or
democratically owned businesses based in West Yorkshire. The programme is jointly delivered by the School of Social Entrepreneurs and Co-operatives UK and builds on both organisations experience of working with alternative businesses.
The programme will support alternative businesses to grow their impact with particular emphasis towards those creating and safeguarding jobs. The programme aims to:
• Develop entrepreneurial skills to help grow your organisation and/or safeguard jobs.
• Develop resilience and leadership skills.
• Develop strong peer networks of fellow entrepreneurs.
What you’ll learn
The learning programme will be focused on the needs of the participants and will be further
defined once the cohort has been selected. Potential topics include:
• Business strategy planning and income streams
• Personal resilience and wellbeing
• Leadership
• Increasing financial resilience
• Impact measurement
• Environmental impact and decarbonisation
• Reaching new markets
• Governance & HR
• Social investment
• Contracts & commissioning
• Tech and Digital (for pivoting business model, new markets or just improving systems & processes)
There are 20 places in total, with 10 places earmarked for people from co-operatives. As well as eight sessions, the programme includes peer-to-peer support, site visits and access to a wider network of support through the Business for Good programme. The programme is specifically designed to help grow the participating organisation’s impact and to create or safeguard jobs.
Who can apply?
The Business for Good Growth & Resilience programme will support representatives from alternative businesses who meet the following criteria:
• Your organisation is based in West Yorkshire (Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Wakefield and Leeds)
• You have been trading for at least 18 months and able to demonstrate this via financial records showing an income of at least £15K over the last 12 months.
• You can provide evidence of your legal structure and governance documents. You may be a co-operative society or co-operative company, registered charity, a Community Benefit Society (CBS), registered society or a Community Interest Company (CIC). We can also accept limited corporations if you have a social purpose, majority restriction on profits, and an asset lock.
• Your organisation has a social or environmental purposes and/ or is democratically controlled and owned.
• Your aim is to make your business more resilient and ensure staff numbers are maintained or increased in the next 6 months.
• You are interested in supporting the growth of your enterprise through adopting new processes/technologies or
• You are planning to explore launching new markets, services or membership this year
We would particularly welcome applications from those who are from Black and minoritised communities, disabled people, LGBTQIA+ people and/ or those working with communities with less privilege.
Need more info?
We recorded an SSE and Co-operatives UK information session, in which we share more details about the programme.
Ready to apply?
Please submit your application by 12pm on 19th April 2024. Under exceptional circumstances, we may give approval to submit your application late. To arrange this, you
must email Claire Dever ahead of the deadline on [email protected].
Before applying, we strongly recommend reading the programme guidelines, which you can download here. The guidelines include further details for the programme including dates of delivery. Download guidance notes. You can also download a copy of the application questions here.
About Business for Good
The Business for Good Growth & Resilience programme is part of the Business for Good, West Yorkshire programme which aims to provide specialist business support to Alternative
Businesses (Social enterprises, co-operatives and community businesses) across West Yorkshire. Business for Good West Yorkshire is led by TSL Kirklees and delivered by a
partnership of local providers – Participate Projects, Voluntary Action Leeds, SEE Ahead, Co-op Culture and Stir to Action supported by national organisations Co-operatives
UK and School for Social Entrepreneurs.
The programme is funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is a central pillar of the UK government’s Levelling Up agenda and provides £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK investing in
communities and place, supporting local business, and people and skills. For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus