The Social Enterprise Boost Fund is an up to £4.1m£5.1 million package of funding to kickkickstart start and accelerate social enterprise activity in disadvantaged areas of England. This is being delivered through a combination of capacity building and onward grants to support local social entrepreneurs. The capacitycapacity-building building support includes business support, training, networking, one-to-one support and peer learning. 

Up to £1.45£1.81 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 currently being delivered in:

• County Durham
• South Tyneside
• Sunderland
• Thanet

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

• for County Durham, please contact North East BIC
• for South Tyneside and Sunderland, please contact First Port for Social Entrepreneurs
• for Thanet, please contact Social Enterprise Kent

The Social Enterprise Boost Fund commenced in early 2023 and willwas originally scheduled to run until March 2025. In April 2025, the fund was extended until March 2026, making available up to £1 million of additional funding across the four delivery areas. Until September 2024, the fund was also delivered in Wolverhampton and Sandwell. HoweverHowever, due to operational issues the funding ended earlier than originally scheduled in these areasareas.

Objectives

The objectives of the Social Enterprise Boost Fund are, by March 2025,2026, 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