Ireland: Social Innovation Growth and Scaling Fund

The Entrepreneurship Impact Fund’s Social Innovation Growth and Scaling Fund – Strand 1 will address the challenge of scaling and reaching growth by providing multi-year funding and targeted support in the areas of scaling, investment and procurement readiness, organisational resilience, leadership, impact measurement, and financial sustainability.

Funding Areas

This strand has two investment areas: The Growth Fund and the Scale Up Fund.

• The Growth Fund
  • The Impact Goal of the Growth Fund is to enable mature social innovations and social enterprises to:
    • Scale up/out their operations to national level: through a well-defined scaling strategy aligned with their strategic plan
    • Reinforce the financial sustainability: through growing their income with support from expert consultants and Rethink Ireland
    • Achieve national transformative impact and/or system change
  • The Growth Fund will support up to three awardees for three years and provide an annual cash grant ranging from €160,000 to €200,000 as well as capacity building supports.
• The Scale Up Fund
  • The Impact Goal of the Scale Up Fund is to enable mid-stage social innovations and social enterprises to:
    • Scale their operations to new geographies/locations: through a well-defined scaling strategy aligned with their strategic plan
    • Increase financial sustainability: through growing their income with support from expert consultants and Rethink Ireland
    • Increase their social impact to new levels
  • The Scale Up Fund will support up to four awardees for three years and provide an annual cash grant ranging from €40,000 to €60,000 as well as capacity building support. This Fund will focus on scaling mid-stage social innovations and social enterprises that have proof of impact, but require additional support to reach the next stage of growth.

What does the fund offer?

• Both funds will also provide:
  • A place on a 3-year Rethink Ireland Accelerator Programme:
• Rethink Ireland’s Accelerator is a unique offer, equipping awardees with the skills needed to expand and deepen their impact. It provides training from best-in-class experts across the private, nonprofit and public sector. Training is provided across a range of functions and may include:
  • Impact measurement and management
  • Communications, strategy and social media storytelling
  • End-game and scaling strategic planning
  • Financial sustainability
  • In addition, the awardees will receive a budget for business supports in the range of €24,000-€30,000 each. Business supports will be tailored to the specific needs of each project and carried out by approved consultants, focusing on creating social impact in line with their theory of change and strategic plan.

Who can apply?

This fund is open to organisations that have a not-for-profit legal form, e.g. charity, social enterprise and other voluntary organisations that meet the following criteria:

• Projects must meet both Rethink Ireland’s criteria and the specific criteria for the Entrepreneurship Impact Fund, as set out below:
  • Rethink Ireland Criteria
    • The project must address a critical social or environmental issue
    • The project must be innovative in an Irish context
    • The project must be based in the Republic of Ireland
    • The project must have the potential and desire to scale or replicate in Ireland
    • The project must provide evidence that it is up and running, or has been tested at least in a minimal way
    • Applicants must come from an entity that has a ‘not for profit’ legal form for example, a charity or voluntary organisation.
  • Entrepreneurship Impact Fund – Strand 1 Core Criteria
    • The criteria that applicants for the Growth Fund will need to demonstrate are:
      • Proven track record of scaling and measuring impact
      • Has a well-developed, Board-approved, multi-year strategic plan and financial projections that clearly map out scaling strategy
      • Proven sustainable income/business model, over 5 years, with sustainable and diverse income streams and multi-year funding
      • Existing impact measurement/management plan
      • Clear vision for scaling nationally and strategic objectives to achieve it as well as a proven track record of scaling the social innovation/social enterprise in the past
      • If the applicant is a social enterprise, existing and projected traded income streams needs to be clearly outlined in financial projections
    • The criteria that applicants for the Scale Up Fund will need to demonstrate are:
      • How the social innovation or social enterprise impacts on a critical social issue
      • Proven business model, multi-year funding, with stable income streams that support current operations
      • Social innovation has potential and desire to scale and has the ambition to further explore their business model with a view to scale to new geographies/locations
      • If the applicant is a social enterprise, the applicant must have generated traded income.
  • Advantageous criteria
    • The criteria below will be considered advantageous in applications, however, organisations that meet the core criteria but do not meet the advantageous criteria are encouraged to apply. Projects applying to either the Growth Fund or Scale Up Fund incorporating any of the below in their application will have an advantage:
      • Is beneficiary-led or involves members of the beneficiary community in decision-making roles
      • Social enterprises that have a positive effect on Ireland’s Green Transition through their activities/interventions
    • Projects applying to the Scale Up Fund will have an advantage if they can demonstrate:
      • Having a well-developed, Board-approved, multi-year year strategic plan, supported by financial projections that outline plans to scale.

For more information, visit Rethink Ireland.