Your Go! London Match. Trade. Grow journey

Whether this is your first time applying to a programme at the School for Social Entrepreneurs or if you are a returning Fellow looking to build on your previous learning, we’re here to support you every step of the way. Here’s what you can expect on your Go! London Match. Trade. Grow journey:

Step 1: Get excited about the idea of a grant and capacity building that will help you develop trading income  

You are already passionate about helping young people access sport and physical activity, and particularly reach underserved communities. Your organisation is a charity or not-for-profit, working with Londoners. 

The idea of being able to use a grant to develop your trading income is new to you! You are excited about getting support to do this and working with other similar organisations. You are up for a challenge! Come to an online information session to find out more. 

Step 2: Develop your plans and make an application 

Think through your plans to develop your trading income. Maybe you are already selling services and need time and resources to do the work to expand to new areas. Maybe you have an idea that you have wanted to develop, but never had the time.  

Make an application telling us about your current work and outlining your plans. Don’t worry if they aren’t fully formed already, we will work with you to develop your ideas. 

Step 3: Come to an interview 

If your application is shortlisted, we will invite you to interview. The interview is quite informal, but it’s a chance to hear more about you, your passion, your organisation and your plans.  

Step 4: Your first payment 

If you accepted onto Go! London Match. Trade. Grow, you will be assigned a grant manager to support you on your journey. You will sign your grant offer and provide us with baseline information about your current trading activity (if any) and your plans. Your grant manager will help you with this. Once you have done that, you will receive your first grant payment (£3,000 for Trade Up, £5,000 for Scale Up). You can spend this on helping you attend the programme and kick start your trading activity. You might want to refurbish some space, invest in marketing, or pay someone to give you time to get out and win more business. 

Step 5: Your learning journey 

You will join a cohort of 15 organisations on the same journey as you and commit to attending eight study days and four Action Learning Sets over 12 months. You will hear from experts in finance, sales and marketing, from other social enterprises who have developed trading activities, and support each other.  

Step 6: Growing your trading 

Over the 12 months you will develop and grow your trading activity. You will be able to use your initial grant to kickstart this process and then draw down further grant as you grow. You might pilot new activity, or grow existing sales through new marketing or might incentivise staff and volunteers, with the idea of a “one to one” match.  

Step 7: Claiming and spending your grant payments 

As you grow your trading, compared to your baseline year, you will be able to claim further grant payments on a quarterly basis. These are dependent on achieving trading growth, but if you don’t make the trading increase in your first quarter, you can “catch up” during the year. It’s not always easy, but we are here to support you. During your grant period, we will invite you to a finance check, to walk through your finances with you. 

Step 8: Tell us how you are investing in sports and physical activity for young people 

Your trading may already be directly supporting sports and physical activity for young people. When you complete your quarterly claims, we will want to hear how you are reaching underserved communities and, if your trading is not directly working with young people, we will want to hear how you are investing your profits to support young people to access sports and physical activity. For example, by offering subsidised places or free outreach sessions. 

Step 9: Graduate! 

Come to a graduation event and celebrate the end of the programme. Tell us how you have done and what you have achieved in terms of increasing your trading income and growing your offer for young people. 

Step 10: Keep going! 

We will ask you to commit to using at least 75% of your profits from your trading to improve access for young people for another 12 months at least. We will ask you to tell us about this. But we hope that the impact, the skills that you have learnt and the new ways of working will have benefits for years to come. 
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