Henry Smith Foundation - Enterprise Gateway Fund

Details

Enterprise Gateway Fund is a three-year fund designed to help small voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations and social entrepreneurs develop new sources of earned income and strengthen long‑term financial resilience.

Henry Smith Foundation is looking for at least four Intermediary Partners to deliver the fund. These partners will combine grants and practical development support to participating organisations and individuals.

Smaller VCSE organisations and early-stage enterprises can have promising ideas for generating income but often lack the funding, confidence, expertise or practical support to develop them. The Enterprise Gateway Fund will support organisations and social entrepreneurs at the beginning of this journey: helping them explore an idea, test whether it could work and build the skills and capacity needed to take it further. It will reach places that enterprise support misses, enabling VCSEs and individuals to access the support they need to realise their trading potential.

Through the Enterprise Gateway programme, the Foundation wants to:

• Help organisations and social entrepreneurs turn promising trading ideas into practical business plans.
• Help them test and develop new sources of earned income.
• Strengthen their enterprise skills, capabilities and longer-term financial resilience.
• Increase access to enterprise support in communities experiencing high deprivation, including IMD 1–3 areas and where enterprise development support is currently limited.
• Learn what kinds of support work best for organisations at this early stage.

Premium information is available exclusively to SCVO members and supporters

Geographical areas funded: UK

Fund type

Type of funding:

Grant, Corporate sponsorship, Other resources

Type of cost:

Revenue, Core costs

Fund award sizes

Minimum:

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Maximum:

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Annually awarded:

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Notes on award amounts:

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Who can apply

To apply, your organisation must:

• Have an established track record of supporting organisations or social entrepreneurs to develop enterprise or trading activity.
• Have experience of managing onward grants, including appropriate grant making processes, financial controls and data management.
• Be able to design and deliver practical enterprise development support alongside grants.
• Be able to facilitate opportunities for participants to learn from and support one another.
• Have established networks that enable you to reach organisations or social entrepreneurs that have traditionally had limited access to enterprise support.
• Be able to contribute to learning about how enterprise support for smaller organisations can be strengthened.

All organisations and social entrepreneurs that this programme reaches must be working within one or more of Henry Smith Foundation’s three strategic priority areas:

• Getting Started
• Building Independence
• Safer Futures

Minimum annual income:

£500,000

When to apply

• Expression of Interest deadline: 5pm, Wednesday 25 November 2026.
• Application deadline: Friday 22 January 2027, 5pm.

Next deadline: 25 Nov 2026

How to apply

Apply online via the Henry Smith Foundation website.

Contact information

Exclusions

Premium information

Activites funded: Housing and shelter Advice and information Community development and regeneration General charitable activities Organisational development and capacity building

Beneficiaries funded: Economically/socially disadvantaged Homeless or badly housed Care experienced people Socially isolated people LGBTQI people People in poverty Unemployed Young people

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Last reviewed about 13 hours ago