Scaling a THRIVE-ing Social Enterprise

Any business that is looking to scale or grow needs support and advice, however, when you are looking to grow or scale a business that focuses on helping resolve local social or environmental issues where can you go to get that extra support?

UnLtd, one of the leading social enterprise support organisations in the UK, are running a new accelerator programme that aims to help scale your employability focused venture.

According to their website https://unltd.org.uk/thrive/

“Thrive is our new social accelerator helping ambitious social ventures to scale. We combine six months of intensive support with the opportunity to secure investment of up to £50,000 for your social venture.

We will support 20 social ventures a year through Thrive. In our first cohort, we are seeking ventures that are improving access to employment for those distant from the labour market.

Thrive offers a combination of bespoke business support alongside potential to access finance, either through UnLtd or our partners. This gives your social venture the chance to grow your business, and ultimately deliver greater social impact.

Thrive builds on the learning from our Big Venture Challenge work, which supported 120 social ventures to collectively improve the lives of 1.24 million people in the UK and raise over £13 million of investment to grow their businesses.

How UnLtd can support you

We know that social ventures face barriers as they look to scale. Our research tells us that the main barriers to growth are: accessing capital, establishing routes to market, finding talent, and measuring impact. We design our support around these, and other, areas that we know are vital to get enable growth.

Each venture will get support from a dedicated Venture Manager as we know this hands-on consultative led approach is vital for ventures as they scale. Alongside this, we provide peer-to-peer networking opportunities, high level connections, and access to appropriate finance. We deliver our support in-house, or where required, bring in external expertise from trusted partners. Our support is tailored, but is built around:

• Business planning, financial modelling & strategic advice
• Raising capital
• Developing routes to market
• Accessing specialist advice
• Developing governance
• Evidencing impact and refining your theory of change.”

So if you are looking to make that leap and feel that this is something that would benefit your social impact, apply now!