We are pleased to announce we have extended the application period for our Emergency Investment Fund to February 2021.

This fund is aimed at Social Enterprises, Charities and Community Businesses who are in desperate need of urgent capital caused by COVID-19. This Emergency Investment Fund helps organisations by providing loans ranging from £50,000 to £250,000. There is a repayment and interest free period of up to 2 years at the start of the investment and then a 3 year repayment period.

Applications will now close on February 26th 2021.

GMCVO have partnered with The Growth Company to enable VCSE organisations to access the Government’s new Kickstart scheme, offering funded six-month work placements to 16-24 year-olds who are at risk of long-term unemployment.
The scheme has been designed give young people the opportunity to gain vital skills and experience that will boost their employability and in turn inject the talents and energies of young people to help organisations with their recovery.

The Greater Manchester Funders Forum exists to enable independent grant makers, social investors and public sector funders to collaborate and coordinate programmes.

Thea Monk, Project Manager of the GM Funders Forum based at GMCVO has written a blog for the Funders' Collaborative Hub on developing a new collaboration during a pandemic.

GM BAME Network and GMCVO are pleased to announce the recipients of the Emergency Grants for GM BAME Communities Small Grants.

Funded by Comic Relief and the National Emergency Trust, the grants will support organisations to respond to the needs of BAME communities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

GM Health & Social Care Partnership have developed a range of assets to help promote mental health services in GM. Please help promote these support services among your service users to ensure everyone is aware of the services available and knows how to access support.

GMCVO has launched a dedicated web page that brings together all of GMCVO’s community research and learning. The page sets out GMCVO’s approach to conducting research and capturing our learning from GMCVO’s own projects aimed at supporting voluntary action in Greater Manchester. The webpage features research-related news and reports, as well as links to some of GMCVO’s research projects.

Across GMCVO a wealth of research is conducted at any given time. Some of this is associated with our practical projects, some of it is bespoke research on specific topics that are relevant for the VCSE in Greater Manchester. We do research on our own and in partnership, as well as giving support to VCSE organisations that are interested in conducting their own.

The new website is a first point of contact for those who want to find out more about the research we do and how to get involved.

Ambition for Ageing (AfA) have launched a new toolkit of real case studies illustrating different ways of equalities approach to programme design. The toolkit is supported by a short briefing which summarises the approaches.

The toolkit can be read as an independent document or used as a companion document to our recent practical model for ensuring equality in community development work, A Spatial Approach to Working with Marginalised Communities.

AfA are also offering free tailored online workshops to introduce the methods and approaches within this toolkit and the supporting document. If you are interested in setting up a session, or would like more information about this opportunity, please email ambition@gmcvo.org.uk

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected community businesses across the country in many ways, according to new research published today. The latest Research Institute Report Navigating uncertainty and remaining resilient: The experience of community businesses during Covid-19, highlights the experiences of 27 community businesses from various sectors over a 12-week period from June to August 2020.

Spread the seasonal cheer at Christmas simply by buying your presents from social enterprises – businesses that have a social or environmental mission at their heart.

#BuySocial and give #PresentsWithPurpose – whether that’s coffee proving jobs for people experiencing homelessness, clothing made by migrant women struggling to find work, handmade chocolates creating employment for people with autism or luxury skincare supporting people with disabilities.

Browse the SEUK 2020 Social Enterprise Gift Guide below which features nearly 100 products from over 60 different social enterprises.

The National Association of Local Councils (NALC), which represents England’s 10,000 local (parish and town) councils and 100,000 councillors, has launched The Good Councillor’s guide to community business to promote the opportunities that community businesses can create locally. The Plunkett Foundation wrote the guide in partnership with Power to Change (the independent trust that supports community businesses in England).

Innovation foundation Nesta have published a blog featuring a selection of inspiring social innovation projects they’ve either supported or come across through their work:

Our list of social innovations includes some pioneering organisations we've worked with in the past, as well as other initiatives that have caught our eye with their creative approach to tackling social challenges. From gifts that give back, to volunteering opportunities, to donations that don’t cost a penny, we hope this list inspires you with ways to spread much-needed festive cheer!

If you’re not on there already, get your Greater Manchester social enterprise listed on the GMSEN directory. GMSEN receive enquiries through the website from potential buyers and collaborators looking to explore what social enterprises are out there. Make sure you’re included by registering today. It’s also a good chance to see what other SEs are out there that might be working in a similar area that you don’t yet know about.

We are currently carrying out some maintenance work on the directory to fix some technical gremlins. Now is a great time to get your social enterprise on there, ready for the re-launch in the near future.

A pioneering project that aims to support families following serial migration and reduce the likelihood of family breakdown or social services involvement is launching in the North West. The Family Reunion and Parenting Project - a partnership between Manchester-based social enterprise and GMSEN member Just Psychology and charity Rainbow Haven - will include Family Reunion group sessions led by a psychological practitioner.

Instead of the annual WISE (Women in Social Enterprise) 100 awards, this year Pioneers Post asked their readers to nominate women leading social enterprise and impact investing across the UK who have been showing Covid-19 who’s boss.

From Greater Manchester, we’re delighted to say it includes Beth Nunn (Pursuing Individual Excellence) Nickala Torkington (Flourish Together CIC), Hannah Broughton (Twinkleboost CIC) and Haleh Moravej (Met Munch). Congratulations to all!

An online resource bringing together a growing range of social enterprise support together in one easy-to-use directory:
- filter by the type of support required
- digestible summary of each support provider's offer
- up to date contact details

Power to Change has launched the Community Business Renewal Initiative, a package of support for community businesses, in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

In response to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, a dedicated web page which lists sources of advice and information useful to VCSE organisations on Greater Manchester. There is an overwhelming amount of information being circulated, and we hope our web page makes it more navigable.

The webpage has sections tailored for
- social enterprises
- BAME-led organisations
- locality specific support and advice
- funding and volunteering

We believe that, right now, looking after your wellbeing is the best thing you can do. SSE fellows and students are sharing freebies, special offers and discounts to help others in the SSE community maintain wellbeing – for themselves, their teams and their loved ones.

The Community Toolkit is an open resource for any community to use, designed by Resolve and built on by Civic Square
.
From applications to the Our Emerging Futures Fund it was clear that all across the UK people have been experiencing both crisis and hope. Communities have come together in response, showing extraordinary resilience and creativity. We wanted to ask - how might it be sustained and built upon? Listening to communities and supporting them to imagine where they want to go from here felt like an important first step.

Together, we’ve created this toolkit so that communities can:
• Listen to, and bear witness too, each others’ experiences
• Turn their individual stories into shared narratives about the community
• Imagine together about the kinds of futures they want for their community
• Discover ways they can take their ideas forward

Tuesdsay 12th January
Online

Build your social media job search skills, confidence and profile.

This training is for you if you are looking to improve your social media job search skills so that you can reach audiences you would not usually try.

21st February

In this free webinar Jon Pearce, partner and head of employment London, will discuss the legal issues associated with redundancy and restructuring for the charity and social enterprise sector.

The webinar will include:

When does a redundancy situation arise?
What a fair redundancy process looks like?
When is alternative employment suitable?
The session will be followed by a Q&A.

Friday, 22nd January
Online

At this meeting Sarah Wilkinson from Ambition for Ageing will share her insights on the value and challenges of small community-led equalities research projects.

25th - 29th January 2021

Understanding Society is hosting a weeklong series of debates, designed to look beyond the pressures of reacting to Covid-19 and inform thinking about policy direction. How can the road to recovery be different from previous recessions to achieve a more balanced recovery? What are we learning through annually observing the complex lives of individuals, families and communities? What lessons can we learn from the Great Recession of 2008? What insights does Understanding Society give us on people’s priorities? Our week of debates will look at education, the future of work, parents and children, spending on health, and financial resilience.

Friday 12th February

This afternoon of health and wellbeing sessions will help nourish and nurture you to prepare for the year ahead and consider what works for you, when making sure you are looking after your needs whilst managing several priorities.

We have a range of online sessions and tasters which all participants will get to try, both revisiting and exploring new ways of managing stress, wellbeing and health.

We are an active Social Investor within Greater Manchester supporting Social Enterprises, trading Charities and Community/Cooperative businesses to grow their trading activity and social impact. We are recruiting for an Investment Officer to directly support these organisations to access Social Investment from GMCVO.

Click on the link below to access a wide range of current VCSE vacancies in Greater Manchester. You can also submit a form to get your own organisational vacancies listed, and there is also a board with trustee and volunteer vacancies, besides paid positions. 

A partnership project between GMCVO and the Greater Manchester BAME Network is underway to build a Greater Manchester BAME Social Enterprise Network and help deliver business support to BAME social entrepreneurs. Specifically for BAME social entrepreneurs, we strongly encourage you check out the new project webpage. It’s full of helpful resources, information, links and the chance to register to join the network, become a mentor or request business support to help you grow your social enterprise.

We are bringing our ‘Time to Grow’ programme to North Manchester, in partnership with Manchester City Council and Nat West in 2021. The aim is to support women with enterprising solutions to social issues and tackle inequality, unlock potential and create sustainable change. We’re looking for 25-30 women, to go on a journey of self-discovery and build positive community connection. Plus there will be a range of wider peer learning events and a conference through which we will reach over 150 enterprising women changemakers.

Talent is a free, 12-week part-time work experience course programme designed to fast-track women (19+) into full-time employment with partner employers in Lancashire. 30 women are currently fully committed and loving the full-time course: "excellent", "I'm loving the course" and "life-changing".

The non-accredited Talent course is focused on hands-on learning with content and topics that have been devised based on market leading courses from Google and Facebook, as well as co-designed by local employers, who will also contribute to course delivery. Participants will be trained remotely in Digital Marketing, Innovation and Leadership to fill open digital job roles. Think of it as 12 weeks teaching, work experience and training with 40 other women on a virtual simulated business with guaranteed job interviews at the end.

The Talent course was conceived and designed from a combination of innovative research by Google and Facebook in partnership with 1,500+ employers worldwide who struggle to find candidates with the required digital and soft skills and digital specialisms needed.

As a lead global trainer for Google’s Squared Online course and Facebook’s European Digital Skills training programme, BuzzStart collated years of research, expertise, and delivery knowledge and transformed this into the BuzzStart Talent 12-week course.

Follow the link below for all the info and to apply

Tameside, Oldham and Glossop Mind are offering free training to enable organisations to provide mental health support to their employees, volunteers and service users.

Are you self-employed or running your own business and keen to grow? Not sure how to improve client retention? Know the basics but want to take your venture to the next level? Whatever you’re facing, whether financial issues, instability with work, health barriers or not knowing what step to take next; there is support available through the Enterprising You mentoring programme.

Enterprising You is a government-funded programme specially designed to support self-employed individuals, including those who work in the gig economy and small business owners in Greater Manchester. Social entrepreneurs can also access this support.

The Enterprising You programme are also seeking social enterprise mentors to join their team. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact yvonne.sampson@growthco.uk

To help businesses navigate a way through this challenging year, ‘Be the Business’ are providing fully-funded mentoring from successful business leaders to SME decision-makers, including social enterprises. The programme is free to access.

Mentoring will focus on each individual and their business needs and can cover a range of issues including; scenario planning, finance, HR and staffing, business development, supply chain and change / transformation management.

Be The Business are also on the lookout for more social enterprise mentors. If you’re interested in becoming a mentor, contact btbmentoring@growthco.uk

Expert Impact are continuing to run their Human Lending Library online. Follow the link below to find out how it works and apply for a free hour of one-to-one business mentoring to meet your current needs as a social entrepreneur.

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities are conducting a review to understand why ethnic disparities exist in educational attainment at school, in employment, in risk factors and outcomes for different health conditions, and within the criminal justice system.

They are inviting submission of evidence from communities, VCSE organisations and researchers

In addition to our own Emergency Investment fund, we are also supporting organisations to access urgent social investment, including:

Resilience and Recovery Loan Fund (Social Investment Business)

Bounce Back Loan Scheme (Growth Company)

If you are considering emergency investment in response to Covid, please contact us for advice and a potential referral at gmsocinvest@gmcvo.org.uk 

We have launched a funding programme aimed at Social Enterprises, Charities and Community Businesses who are in desperate need of urgent capital caused by COVID-19. This Emergency Investment Fund will help fund organisations by providing loans ranging from £50,000 to £250,000. There is a repayment and interest free period of up to 2 years at the start of the investment and then a 3 year repayment period.

We are now taking applications until February 26th 2021

‘Blended finance’ (mix of grant and loan) aimed at small and very small social enterprises and charities that trade, including new organisations. Whether you address social needs, strengthen communities, improve people’s life chances, enhance culture or protect the environment – if the business trades for the common good, this opportunity is for you.

Deadline: Ongoing

GMCVO have launched the next stage of their grants programme to get Greater Manchester Walking. Medium grants (up to £3,000) are now available VCSE organisations to encourage people who are usually less active to start or increase the amount they walk regularly whilst adhering to government social distancing restrictions.

Deadline for applications is Monday 21st December at noon

Thanks to additional funding, GM BAME Network, supported by GMCVO, have launched a further round of an emergency grants programme to support small GM BAME led VCSE organisations and communities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. A rolling micro grants programme with grants of £50-£1000, is now live

The Community Business Renewal Fund provides grants (£10k-£20k) to community businesses in England affected by the Covid-19 crisis to adapt, renew and rebuild their business so they can remain financially viable.
The fund is aimed at organisations delivering services in their local community to support those who have been most affected by the Covid-19 crisis.

Find out more about the Renewal Fund, offering grants of between £10k - £20k, opening for applications in January.

The meet the funder webinar will take place on Thursday 7th January 2021.

The next application round for this fund opens on 10am on 12th January, closing at 4pm on 19th January.

This fund invests in projects looking to develop community led and owned assets for both affordable/social housing and/or sports facilities in Greater Manchester.
The fund aims to invest in substantial projects, normally in excess of £1 million across Greater Manchester. As the local delivery partner, GMCVO will provide support and connect community groups with local partners to help deliver the projects.

Deadline: Ongoing

Applications are open to Paul Hamlyn Foundation's Ideas and Pioneers Fund, which provides grants of up to £15,000 to 'support people with a vision of a better society to explore their ideas for change'. It's open to early stage entrepreneurs, and they would be particularly interested in hearing from you if you are aged 18-30.

Find out about funding available for people and organisations affected by the pandemic on our dedicated page

The latest Funding Bulletin produced by 10GM, a partnership of local support and development agencies in Greater Manchester has been published.

A monthly funding bulletin packed with funding opportunities for you to get your teeth into.

The GM TRENDS project will give an unparalleled overview into drug taking behaviour, habits and attitudes as well as the nature of products themselves, the drugs market, and the profiles of users, over the last six months.

The first part of GM TRENDS, an online survey for professionals who work with people who use drugs is now open. The aim of this survey is to identify emerging substance use trends in Greater Manchester and the link to this survey is below.

Survey 1 link: https://tinyurl.com/GM-TRENDS-KR

A additional survey is being conducted aimed at people who work with or in contact with who have experience of using drugs. The link for that online survey is below.

Survey 2 link: https://tinyurl.com/GM-TRENDS-PWUD

To find out more about the project, follow the link below:

At Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, they understand that the ongoing and possible future impacts of Covid-19 are a serious concern for everyone. Now, more than ever, they need regular information and feedback on what you are experiencing so that they can give accurate, up to date information straight back to government to make sure that the action and decisions they take are right and effective. It would help greatly if you could answer a few simple questions.

The latest round of the Barometer survey, which examines the impact of Covid-19 on VCSE organisations, is now open. Recent insights from the study are also available.