Guidance

Social Enterprise Boost Fund

Information about the Social Enterprise Boost Fund and local areas of delivery.

Applies to England

The Social Enterprise Boost Fund is an up to £4.1m package of funding to kick start and accelerate social enterprise activity in six disadvantaged areas of England. This is being delivered through a combination of capacity building and onward grants to support local social entrepreneurs. The capacity building support includes business support, training, networking, one-to-one support and peer learning. 

Up to £1.45 million of this government funding is being delivered as onward grants of up to £10,000 for entrepreneurs to kickstart or grow their social enterprises.

The Social Enterprise Boost Fund is being delivered in:

  • County Durham
  • Sandwell
  • South Tyneside
  • Sunderland
  • Thanet
  • Wolverhampton

To find out more about support available in your local area please visit the relevant local delivery partner’s website below:

The Social Enterprise Boost Fund commenced in early 2023 and will run until March 2025.

Objectives

The objectives of the Boost Fund are, by March 2025, to:

  • grow the social enterprise sector in targeted areas, by supporting the creation of new social enterprises and boosting early stage organisations
  • enable targeted high-deprivation local authorities and the local voluntary and community sector in these places to implement sustainable systems and processes that encourage social enterprise growth
  • build and disseminate evidence on:
    • scalable and sustainable place-based interventions that work in growing the social enterprise sector in disadvantaged areas
    • the extent to which and how social enterprises support communities and economies in disadvantaged areas
Published 30 March 2023
Last updated 27 October 2023 + show all updates
  1. Information updated to reflect the final figure for the fund and the areas of delivery.

  2. First published.