Fellows Future Fund

The Fellows Future Fund is supported by SSE’s Social Partners. The Social Partners are people with extensive business experience, who are giving their time and money to get to know and to work alongside fellows of SSE as they develop and grow their social enterprises.  

The Fellows Future Fund is for SSE fellows who have graduated from their most recent SSE programme at least 12 months ago and are not on any current SSE programmes. 

For this round of the Fellows Future Fund, we are seeking to support organisations that have realistic plans to grow their trading significantly in the next year and cease to be grant dependent.  

We are asking for applications for grant funding from experienced Social Enterprises with a turnover of more than £75,000 per annum that are looking to grow their business through launching or embedding activities that drive innovation in the mainstream education sector (early-years, primary, secondary or tertiary). We are particularly interested in seeing applications for innovations involving new products, services or technologies that have the potential to create a new market or transform an existing one.    

We are looking for 12-month projects that will lead to increased trading and support you to increase the impact for your community. Shortlisted candidates will have an opportunity to present their ideas to our panel of Social Partners. 

Applicants must be able to attend an online pitching panel taking place between 10am and 4pm on 27th March 2024.

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.

Applications must be completed by midday on 15th March 2024. If you have any questions about the application process please contact [email protected]

Apply now

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