New grant scheme to help the social sector get back on track

The School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) has created a new grant scheme to help incentivise social organisations to trade while also supporting them to recover and rebuild. 

The social enterprise sector contributes £60bn to the economy, employing 5% of the UK’s workforce, however, due to the pandemic it expects to see a 50% decrease in turnover for each month since lockdown began.

Therefore SSE has launched the new Trade Back grant scheme to help social enterprises to continue trading.

The grant is made up of two elements, a small traditional grant to kick-start recovery and an incentivised grant to accelerate growth by rewarding an increase in income from trading.

From October 2020, 100 social-sector businesses are expected to benefit from grants worth up to £7,000.

The programme involves Lloyds Bank and the Bank of Scotland Social Entrepreneurs Programme which is run by the School for Social Entrepreneurs and is jointly funded by the National Lottery and the Scottish government.

The Trade Back grant follows the success of SSE’s Match Trading grants, which launched in 2017 and which successfully supported over 500 social impact organisations.

Carol Mack, CEO of the Association of Charitable Foundations, said: ‘Our aim is to help support stronger and more viable voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations, capable of achieving truly sustained impact.

‘With our learnings from Match Trading, Trade Back grants could be a turning point in getting social impact organisations through this crisis and future-proofing their businesses at the same time.’

Alastair Wilson, CEO of the School for Social Entrepreneurs, added: ‘SSE continues to believe in the power of trading to support and grow a sustainable social enterprise sector.

‘But the Covid-19 crisis has shown how even the strongest social impact organisations can become vulnerable to the unexpected. We’re excited to launch Trade Back which will help social enterprise to rebuild and reacquire customers lost during the crisis.’

In related news, earlier this year (March 2020) Richard Collier-Keywood, chair of trustees at the School for Social Entrepreneurs, shared his view on the sustainability and growth of the social economy, following the release of new data on Match Trading grants

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