Fellows Future Fund

A graphic showing a person pushing a wheelbarrow in a community garden and text saying Exclusively for SSE fellows Mentoring by experienced business people Funding to grow your impact

The Fellows Future Fund is now open for applications. Expressions of interest need to be completed by 5pm 7th June 2023

The Fellows Future Fund has been running since 2019 and offers grants for further learning, innovation, and experimentation within our Fellows community. In June 2023 The Fellows Future Fund will be awarding up to 4 SSE fellows, £10,000 and mentoring to help them make their enterprises more financially resilient and less grant reliant.

We want to help organisations to grow the traded income of their business, growing the impact that can be delivered and helping to achieve scale without further grant funding. We are particularly interested in funding organisations with ambitions to rapidly scale revenue and impact over the next 12 months.

Applications will need to set out the clear objectives for the project both in terms of increased impact and growth in trading revenues. Successful applicants will be expected to report back on progress against their objectives. Alongside the grant, successful applicants will also be allocated an SSE mentor (from our pool of Social Partners) to support them to embed trading within their organisation and to scale to the next level.

For this round, we are looking to fund organisations whose income over the last twelve months is at least £75,000 and who have ambitions to reduce grant dependency to less than 30% of income in the next twelve months.

Applicants must be able to attend an online pitching panel taking place between 10am and 2pm on Monday 26th June.

Eligibility

The Fellows Future Fund is open to Fellows of SSE programmes:

  • That lasted more than six months
  • That ended at least 12 months ago

Even if you have attended multiple programmes, the most recent programme must have
ended at least 12 months ago. You cannot currently be on a long-duration programme,
nor can you be accepted to one starting later this year.

  • Your organisation must be a social purpose organisation that has a restriction on
    profit, so that most profits are returned for social purposes, and is asset locked.
  • It must be based in the UK but could be active anywhere in the world.
  • Your organisation must be established, with at least £75,000 income in the last
    year.
  • Your organisation should be looking to reduce grant dependency to less than 30% of income in the next year

 

To reduce the time spent completing application forms, we are asking all SSE Fellows interested in applying for this round of the fund to complete a short expression of interest. Those most closely matching the application criteria will then be asked to complete a full application to the Fellows Future Fund.

 

To complete the expression of interest, click the button below. Expressions of interest must be submitted by 5pm on Wednesday 7th June 2023. If you have any questions about your eligibility, or the application process, please contact SSE’s David McGlashan: [email protected]

Complete expression of interest

 


Subscribe to get updates on the Fellows Future Fund

To make sure you receive updates about the Fellows Future Fund and other support and events for SSE fellows subscribe to our mailing list as an SSE fellow

If you’re already subscribed

To check if you are subscribed as an SSE fellow, click the link in the footer of the latest newsletter (from David McGlashan) below the text “You can update the information that you receive from SSE by using the following link:” Then follow the instructions to update your preferences and make sure you tick ‘Yes’ under ‘Are you an SSE fellow?’

If you aren’t subscribed

Subscribe to the SSE newsletter to receive funding opportunities, resources, jobs, news and more for social enterprises and charities. Make sure you tick ‘Yes’ under ‘Are you an SSE fellow?’ to get updates about The Fellows Future Fund and other exclusive support and events for SSE fellows.