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DID YOU KNOW

What Type of Grants are Available?

Grant support for small business comes in a number of forms. The best know is the direct grant, which means immediate cash in the bank, but there are a number of other, less known forms of assistance also available. The main types are:

1) Direct Grant – Cash provided to a company to help with staff training, employment, capital investment, etc. issues. Most schemes provide only part-funding and require the recipient to prut some money towards the project.

2) Repayable Grant – The cash funding offered for a project is expected to be repaid out of future business revenues. The grant is not repayable in the event the project fails.

 3) Soft Loans – This is a loan where the terms and conditions of repayment are more generous (softer) than normal commercial terms; e.g. the interest rate may be less or the repayment term may be longer.  

4) Equity Finance – A capital sum is injected into the business where the provider does not expect interest or repayment of but instead it takes an equity share of the business, in the hope that the value of the shares will appreciate in the future, enabling the sale of the stake at a profit. Public equity funds tend to be less demanding then commercial Venture Capital firms in terms of their terms and conditions and the criteria that the proposed grant funded project must meet.  

5) Access to Resources – A number of schemes recognise the problem that start-ups face when it comes to access to specialist resources, like research or manufacturing facilities and provide access to publicly owned such facilities.

6) Shared Cost Contract – The cost of research and development programmes can be prohibitive for companies and small businesses acting alone. Sharing the cost of such programmes with others whereby all participants share in the cost and consequent resulting know how, can be a solution. Such arrangements are often brokered, and sometimes part financed by public bodies and academic institutions.

7) Subsidies – Some awarding bodies, instead of cash grants, will subsidise the cost of approved products or services used by firms.

8 ) Advice And Information – Researching the information required to develop products, services and markets can be time-consuming and costly for smaller businesses. A significant input by public bodies goes to the provision of advisory and information services and a number of schemes are of this type.

9) Free or subsidised consultancy – Some schemes offer consultancy services, where the fees of accredited or approved consultants, who possess the skills the organisation lacks, are paid for in full or in part by the grant awarding body.

10) Competition Awards – There are a number of competitions each year for outstanding performance at national or international level. They are often sponsored by government departments, industry leading companies or banks. These competitions offer great free PR opportunities and often also significant cash prizes and other benefits.

11) Relocation Grants – There are incentives to attract companies to relocate from overseas to the UK or to set up operations here. There are also incentives to move into “special Areas” through the UK or developing a product there.

BLOG POST

The Chris Del Bosco School of Entrepreneurship

Last Sunday at the Vancouver Olympics, Canadian ski cross racer Chris Del Bosco had the second fastest qualifying time and only missed Olympic bronze medal in the men’s freestyle ski cross because of a bad fall at the end of the final. After the race at a press conference he said that “Third, I guess it’s all right for some people, but I wanted to give 100% for my sport, my country.”

This is not an unusual story, but the way Chris arrived to running that Sunday afternoon race is by far the most inspirational story of the year… read more….

BUSINESS TIP

The golden rules of keeping your cool  

1) Take time out – Counting till 10 can really help to control anger. Also, try to put physical space between you and the person or situation that upset you.

2) Lighten up – Humour is great to diffuse tension. But avoid sarcasm as it can hurt feelings and make thing worse.

3) Get your facts right – Ask a lot of questions to make sure you understand the full story before you jump to conclusions.

4) Use “I” statemenst to describe the problem – This helps you to avoid sounding over-critical or placing blame and increase tension. For example, say ” I am unhappy that you talked to X without speaking to me first” instead of saying “You should have spoken to me first!” 5) Exercise and relax – Physical activity and hobbies can provide a good outlet for emotions and can help put things into perspective.

6) Don’t email when upset – A hostile email can come back to haunt you. Write the email to get the steam off but instead of sending it off, put it into the Draft folder and re-visit it the following day.

7) Forgive and forget – We are all human and have bad days and tempers. Don’t harbour bad feeling and don’t go for revenge.

READ ABOUT IT

Social Entrepreneurship in the UK

According to recent research from Delta Economics, 35% of early stage entrepreneurs are social entrepreneurs, and amongst them people from various geographical regions, ethnic backgrounds and social classes are represented in a surprisingly balanced proportion. It however also show that there are still challenges for the sector in terms of scalability and finances, as many fall back on charitable status as they become more established as a means of ensuring their long-term finance.

TOP STORIES

Yahoo-Twitter partnership announced

In its latest attempt to make its Web site more compelling, Yahoo Inc. is paying privately held Twitter an undisclosed amount of money for better access to its data. Yahoo previously had been using Twitter’s free tools to find tweets that pointed to the latest news about hot topics.

Unlike Google and Microsoft, Yahoo plans to turn its Web site into a tweeting perch. This follows Yahoo’s recent commitment to tether its Web site to Facebook, which is even more widely used than Twitter. By some estimates, Facebook now attracts a bigger and more engaged audience than Yahoo and Twitter has turned into a major communications channel that distributes an average of 50 million tweets per day, according to the company’s statistics.

Yahoo is aiming to make it easier for people to share information and images on Facebook and Twitter without leaving its Web site, and thus making people to stick around its website for longer periods and thus boost the showing of Internet ads that generate most of its revenue.

Story link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/24/yahoo-twitter-partnership_n_474408.html

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Environment faces major threat from ‘eco-apathy’ of UK office workers

In a recent study, 79% of UK office workers said they believe that being environmentally responsible at work has a big impact on the environment. But only 48% of them believe that protecting the environment during office hours is their responsibility. 33% feel that company bosses should shoulder the burden and 9% even went as far as saying that it should be the government, not them, which should be held accountable for polluting practices.

Just over half (51%) said that their company has a green policy in place but 46% said that it’s just for show and has no real meaning to the business and its staff. A telling indicator of UK workers ‘eco-apathy’ is that one in ten doesn’t seem know what a green policy is.

A clear example of how office workers are turning a cold shoulder to the environment is in the disposal of paper. The office paper mountain continues to grow despite much publicised technologies such as double sided and secure printing. On average an office worker unnecessarily throws away eight pages of A4 paper every day according to Canon’s research. This equates to approximately 120m pages of A4 that don’t need to be printed every day in the UK.

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Government launches one-stop shop for data

A major new website – http://data.gov.uk – has been launched to the public which gives anyone who wants to use it unprecedented and free access to government data in one place. It will be using a new, open licence, which allows government-owned data to be freely reused by anybody.

The site contains more than 2500 sets of data from across government. All of the data is non-personal and in a format that can be reused by any individual or business to create innovative new software tools, such as applications about house prices, local amenities and services, or access to local hospitals.

Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and Professor Nigel Shadbolt from the University of Southampton, worked together to launch the website. In the run-up to the public launch, 2400 registered developers were given access to a preview version of the site, so they could offer feedback and start experimenting with the data.

The website is available at http://data.gov.uk