StartUp Croydon Wins 4th National Award
As an independent, not-for-profit membership organisation, The National Enterprise Network (NEN) has supported the enterprise support sector in England for over 25 years and was created out of a crucial need that emerging local enterprise agencies had for national representation with key stakeholders in central government, with other agencies and the private sector and to enable networking across this new, substantial enterprise support sector.
Since 2016, the NEN has encouraged its membership businesses to enter the NEN awards scheme, designed to recognise outstanding service to the local community.
StartUp Croydon are delighted to announce that they are the 2020 winners of the Enterprise Support Organisation of the Year award (in the under £750k turnover category).
Entrants for this award needed to demonstrate their hard work to establish or maintain recognition and impact within their local community this year, giving evidence of sustainable business models that have enabled the organisation to continue their enterprise support for the longer term future.
In their application, StartUp Croydon described how this year they have introduced additional training and support initiatives .
This included a new pilot incubator style programme – Building Business Horizons which was designed to support alumni from their 3 day StartUp and SEEK enterprise programmes.
An Introduction to Social Enterprise a three day course as part of the Building Business Horizon’s programme
And
Healthy food business start-up courses as part of Croydon Council’s Good Food Retail Plan programme.
The judges were particularly impressed by the client feedback and that four participants were successful in securing ‘seed funding’ after pitching their individual business ideas.
It was also noted that through their strong commitment and on-going determination to support impactful initiatives, they are providing outstanding enterprise support and driving forward economic prosperity within their community.