Enterprise Grants Taskforce

What is enterprise grant-making?

Enterprise grant-making is defined as “an approach which encourages and supports charities and social enterprises to increase or maintain their income from enterprise activities, including selling services or goods. This is largely through using funding conditions and/or incentives to encourage enterprise behaviour, often accompanied by capacity building.”

This form of funding enables social organisations to find new and different ways to generate sustainable levels of traded income.

What is the purpose of the Enterprise Grants Taskforce?

The taskforce launched in August 2022 has been gathering momentum. The group welcomes new members with an interest in enterprise grant-making at this pivotal moment of adoption in the sector.

The Enterprise Grants Taskforce recognises that most social impact organisations will be sustainable somewhere between 100% grant dependency and full commercial viability. Where on that spectrum each business operates depends on their size, location and the impact they are intending to create in their community. 

How the enterprise grant-making movement is shaped at this early phase is a critical success factor. To enable enterprise grant-making to become a mainstream funding avenue for enterprises, we need to collectively increase the adoption of the model by funders, both private and public.

Why are enterprise grants important for social enterprise?

Enterprise grants have been identified as critical in actively supporting enterprising behaviour for charities and social enterprises, especially those working in challenging areas of market failure. With increasingly limited resources to create positive social impact, this new movement of grant-making intentionally fills a gap in the funding market that complements unrestricted funding, project-based grant funding and repayable social investment. 

The Enterprise Grants Taskforce sees this shift moving at pace in the coming months and believes now is the time for more funders to consider adapting their practices to become more enterprise-centric, supporting the long-term sustainability and impact of the sector. 

Over the coming months we will be producing content, events and opportunities to collaborate to build understanding and adoption of enterprise grant-making and bring it into the mainstream.

We welcome all that have an interest in this growing funding model to join us in its evolution at this critical stage.