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The Social Enterprise Support Fund: Second round of funding

The Social Enterprise Support Fund provides grants to support social enterprises during COVID-19. It is delivered by five social enterprise support agencies, and made possible thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund.

By Ed Cox · July 23, 2020

The Social Enterprise Support Fund is £18.7m of grant funding to social enterprises in England and is being delivered by a consortium of Resonance, Big Issue Invest, UnLtd, the School for Social Entrepreneurs and The Key Fund, with funding coming from The National Lottery Community Fund. Grant funding will be for social enterprises negatively impacted by COVID-19 that are supporting people at high health risk from COVID-19, and those supporting people facing increased social and economic challenges as a result of COVID-19.

The fund is committed to inclusion, so  are particularly welcoming applications from enterprises led by people from BAME communities, LGBTQ+ communities, people with disabilities, and leaders with lived experience of the issues that the social enterprise is addressing.

Enterprises can apply for a grant ranging from £10,000 to £300,000, however applications of under £100,000 are strongly encouraged. Additional assessment is required for applications of greater than £50,000 and £100,000 respectively.

The second of three rounds of funding opens on 13th August 2020 and will close for new applications and submissions at 1pm Monday 20 August, but may close earlier if the maximum number of applications for the round has been reached.  We strongly encourage applications to be submitted as early as possible.

Ensuring that applicants have all required documentation (annual accounts, management accounts, cashflow projections, and social impact report) to hand AND that they are attached before submitting is important. Applications can be saved and returned to as long as it is completed before the deadline for that round.

Grant Funding is being awarded on merit, so we encourage strongest applications possible. Enterprises can apply in partnership with others.

Applicants are strongly advised to apply to only one of The National Lottery Community Fund (inclusive of the Coronavirus Community Support Fund) pots of funding and should therefore establish which is the most appropriate before applying. Find out more about the programme.

Applications will be assessed with common criteria across the consortium partners but we would welcome enterprises selecting Resonance as their preferred grant assessor in the application form.

There will be a final  opportunity to apply to the Social Enterprise Support Fund from 10th to 17th September.

You can find out more information about the fund and apply at the Resonance website.

News sourced from Resonance.