Member Article

North West’s SME’s offered £2k

Small businesses in the North West are being offered the chance to receive £2,000 towards a series of growth advice workshops and one-to-one mentoring support through the new Small Business Charter Growth Vouchers Scheme.

The programme provides match funding for SMEs to pay for and access high quality leadership and management advice.

Launched by the Small Business Charter, the scheme is aimed at driving local economic growth through business school support for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

It is being delivered by a consortium of six top business schools.

The workshops will cover topics such as a review of growth opportunities; cash flow and general financial management; marketing strategies for small businesses; raising the finance for growth; and planning next steps.

Working together, Nottingham Business School and Nottingham University Business School will cover Nottinghamshire and the surrounding counties, and the consortium will collaborate to deliver sessions in other locations such as Leeds and Manchester.

To be eligible, applicants must have a business registered in England, have between one and 20 employees, have an annual turnover of less than €4 million or £3.2 million, own 75% or more of their business and have been actively selling goods and/or services for at least 12 months.

Diagnostic events will take place in early December and January and workshops during February and March 2015.

Following the diagnostic events, half of the participating businesses will be chosen at random to receive a voucher worth 50% of the cost of the growth programme.

Those allocated the Growth Vouchers will receive £2,000 match funding towards the cost of attending ten half day workshops and will also receive up to 10 hours of expert business mentoring.

At the end of the programme, businesses will be invited to attend a national event in April 2015, where they will have the opportunity to network with like-minded growing firms from across the UK.

Head of executive education and corporate relations at Nottingham business school, Alison Smith, said “This is a new and exciting opportunity for businesses to access valuable and practical advice at a fraction of the cost.

“The workshops, expert mentoring and networking opportunities will give them an unprecedented platform to really kick-start the growth of their business.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sophia Taha .