The Social Enterprise Support Fund (SESF) reopens for applications at 1pm on 25th November and will provide grants of between £10,000 and £100,000 to support eligible social enterprises in England that have been impacted by COVID-19.
Resonance, along with four other social enterprise support agencies have come together for the second time to deliver the fund. It will help social enterprises across England rebuild and grow their income from trading, enabling them to give more support to their communities to recover from the crisis.
Resonance, Big Issue Invest, Key Fund, the School for Social Entrepreneurs and UnLtd will jointly deliver £16.3m in grants, aiming to help around 500 enterprises. Money for the fund comes from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK.
The fund previously launched in 2020 and delivered £18.7m of grants to over 600 social enterprises across the length and breadth of England. Resonance delivered £3.2m of grants to 120 amazing enterprises. One of the social enterprises that benefitted was Devon based Action to Prevent Suicide, which received £46,000.
Of their funding, Chukes Maxwell, Founding Director & CEO of Action to Prevent Suicide says: “The funding we received from the Social Enterprise Support Fund enabled us to work with marginalised local and national communities, organisations and people we had not fully engaged with, giving us greater reach and potential sustainability. It also enabled us to recruit other directors, including a BAME Culture and Diversity Director as well as collaborate with more partner organisations, including We Create Space, a collective of LGBTQ+ change-makers.”
Another recipient of funding was Bristol based East Side Community Trust, a social enterprise that addresses inequalities experienced in its local neighbourhoods. The team runs a range of community development projects supporting social action in their local area – including a community centre, adventure playground, community magazine, community kitchen and lots more. Stacy Yelland, from East Side, said of their grant: “We lost income from our buildings overnight and other grant funding sources were postponed, so the funding from the Social Enterprise Support Fund, has been amazing enabling us to support our key services to adapt and respond to COVID-19.”
The 1pm reopening of the SESF on November 25th is expected to receive a high number of applications, (with the first round of the fund closing 1pm December 21st) as it’s focused on social enterprises supporting people and communities facing increased social and economic challenges as a result of COVID-19. If your social enterprise is trying to deliver vital services to your community, which is recovering from the devasting disruptions caused by the emergency, visit the SESF website now to see if you are eligible to apply for support.
The fund is available to social enterprises that fit certain criteria: most of their beneficiaries must be in England, and they should have had an annual income of between £20,000 and £1.8m in either of the last two financial years.
The fund is committed to inclusion, working to ensure that at least 50% of grants reach groups that are led by: people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities; LGBTQ+ communities; disabled people; and/or leaders with lived experience of the issues their social enterprise is addressing.
The COVID-19 crisis continues to disproportionately hurt communities that already experience social and economic inequalities. The fund will support social entrepreneurs who help these communities, including leaders with lived experience, to ensure they can put their solutions into practice to help people most impacted by the crisis.
The UK’s 100,000 social enterprises are at the heart of community recovery from this crisis. Social enterprises create economic growth while helping people in need or improving the environment. They employ two million people, creating jobs for the most vulnerable people. Almost half (42%)¹ of UK social enterprises seek to employ people who are typically disadvantaged in the labour market - such as disabled people, care leavers, ex-offenders, homeless people and veterans.
The economic and social impact of COVID-19 has laid bare structural inequalities in our society. People from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, disabled people, those with lower educational outcomes and/or on lower incomes, and the young have been hit the hardest by the crisis. Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities have also been more affected by business shutdowns and suffered a drop in earnings nearly three times larger than their white counterparts.
Women took on two-thirds of the additional burden of extra childcare during the first lockdown and were more likely to be furloughed. The number of reported domestic abuse cases has increased significantly since the first lockdown.
There will be another round of funding starting on 28th February and closing on 24th March 2022.
The Social Enterprise Support Fund is a two-year project, delivered by Big Issue Invest, Key Fund, Resonance, the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) and UnLtd, in partnership with The National Lottery Community Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, The National Lottery Community Fund has committed £18m to the partnership, which will offer vital and rapid financial support to more than 500 social enterprises focused on supporting their communities to recover from the pandemic. This funding will help these enterprises to provide and improve services to some of the most marginalised groups and ensure these are sustainable at a time of economic uncertainty.
We urge all social enterprises to find out more today about funding by visiting https://socialenterprisesupportfund.org.uk
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Resonance Limited is a company registered in England and Wales no. 04418625
Resonance Impact Investment Limited, a subsidiary of Resonance Limited, is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Firm number 588462.
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