Applications are now open for Thrive: Access to employment until 14th February 2019.

Thrive is a new social accelerator helping ambitious social ventures to scale.

They will support over 25 social ventures a year through Thrive. They will support two groups of social ventures developing solutions in two distinct areas:

  • Improving access to employment for those distant from the labour market
  • Developing products and services for an ageing society.

They 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 our 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

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

They 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.

Tackling access to employment

Thrive: access to employment is our accelerator focused on improving employment opportunities for those distant from the labour market.

While the UK currently holds record employment levels of 75%, many people still suffer barriers into a good job. Disabled people are twice as likely to be unemployed compared to non-disabled people and poverty rates amongst households with a disabled person are over 10% higher than households without.

The social sector now employs over 1 million people: with a growing young sector, social ventures will be key to helping the UK achieve full and good employment for all. We know that social ventures have brilliant solutions to help support people into employment and we want to help them thrive.

Who we work with

Thrive is for social ventures using business solutions to offer the most innovative ideas to improve access to employment for people distant from the labour market. That could be by providing training and support into employment, or through direct employment opportunities. Within this, we have a particular focus on two key areas:

  • Ventures supporting disabled people into employment, supported by Scope.
  • Ventures improving access to employment in the East End of London, supported by UBS

Please note: The programme is not limited to these two areas. Please see below for full programme criteria.

You can find out more about the ventures in our 2018 cohort booklet “Meet the Thrive social entrepreneurs”

Apply here: http://bit.ly/2I5bQYQ