UnLtd: Thrive

Overview

UnLtd combine six months of intensive support with the opportunity to secure investment of up to £50,000 for your social venture, either through UnLtd or their partners. This gives you the chance to grow your business, and ultimately deliver greater social impact.

Thrive builds on the learning from the Big Venture Challenge work, which supported 120 social ventures to collectively improve the lives of 1.24 million people in the UK and raise over £13m of investment to grow their businesses.

How they can support you

UnLtd know that social ventures face barriers as they look to scale. Their research tells UnLtd that the main barriers to growth are: accessing capital, establishing routes to market, finding talent, and measuring impact.

UnLtd design their support around these, and other, areas that they know are vital to enable growth. Each venture on Thrive will get 6 months’ support from a dedicated Venture Manager as they know this hands-on consultative led approach is vital for ventures as they scale. Alongside this, they provide peer-to-peer networking opportunities, high level connections, and access to appropriate finance.

Focus Areas

• Thrive: Access to employment is their accelerator focused on improving employment opportunities for those distant from the labour market.
• Thrive: Solutions for an ageing society is their new accelerator supporting people in later life.

Criteria

To apply for any Thrive programme your venture must:

• Be based and delivering impact in the UK
• Be a social purpose organisation with a commitment to delivering social impact in this area
• Have a trading and social impact track record of at least two years
• Be able to fully commit to the 6-month programme through regular meetings with your Venture Manager, online learning sessions and peer learning events.
• Have at least one member of staff working full time on the business
• Have any legal incorporated limited liability form. Companies Limited by Share will need to have clear mission lock in place or be open to including one as part of the programme. Find out more in our Spotlight paper Profit, Purpose, Impact: Mission locks insights from practice.

For access to employment

You must be working to increase access to employment, through training or job opportunities, for people that face barriers to work, such as, but not limited to:

• Disabled people (including learning disabilities)
• Homeless people, or those in temporary accommodation
• Ex-offenders and people with criminal convictions
• Long-term unemployed
• People recovering from addiction
• Refugees
• Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)

For solutions for an ageing society

Your venture should focus on solutions for an ageing society around:

• Quality of life
• Physical health
• Wellbeing
• Loneliness
• Independence
• Support to Dementia/Alzheimer's

For FAQ's visit the website here