All Good Ventures 2025: Funding and Mentorship for Social Entrepreneurs

Their one-year programme supports chosen entrepreneurs with three essentials: Money, Mentoring, and Muscle. Because they believe with the right help, your clever business idea can transform lives.

Each year, they support a new cohort of social entrepreneurs to launch social enterprise businesses that use profits to help marginalised communities in desperate need.

Benefits

• An initial injection of seed funding to kickstart your business idea, typically ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 (NZD).
• A year of business mentoring, starting with support to complete a business plan and budget. You’ll work with a dedicated business mentor throughout.
• A practical package addressing resource and expertise gaps. Includes access to: LinkedIn Learning, consulting sessions with industry experts, and ad-hoc support.

Eligibility Criteria

• They take applications from social entrepreneurs all over the world annually.
• Criteria 1. Your business can be defined as a social enterprise.
  • They fund/support social enterprises, not non-profits. By definition, a social enterprise is a business with a social motive. It aims to maximise profits and use the money for a specific social cause. Basically, it makes money and makes a difference.
• Criteria 2. Your business is in the pre-seed, seed or early stages of development.
  • They fund/support social enterprises in the beginning stages of a business lifecycle. In official terms, this means pre-seed, seed and sometimes early stage. In everyday terms, you have a well-thought-out business concept, or you might have moved that concept through to market – but only just!
• Criteria 3: Your business has potential for financial sustainability.
  • They fund/support social enterprises that won’t rely on grants or donations forever. They know this doesn’t happen overnight. But they want to see that your business model strives to make enough revenue to, eventually, cover costs including salaries AND return a profit for the benefit of people in need.
• Criteria 4: Your business intends for profits to bring freedom to people in need.
  • Their core purpose is to liberate as many lives as possible from extreme hardship across the globe. With that in mind, they solely fund/support social enterprises that put eventual profits towards bringing freedom to people in desperate need.
  • They consider people in need to be those who lack equal access to one or more of life’s basic requirements: food and/or water, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, safety, employment, or other. They want to see that you have a specific community in mind that fits this definition, and that profits will be used to alleviate their hardship.
• Criteria 5: You are committed to participating in their year-long programme.
  • They fund/support people looking for more than just money. Successful applicants receive a seed funding grant upfront, but also commit to engaging in a year-long mentoring programme requiring the development of a business plan and budget early on, and monthly mentoring meetings thereafter. They want to know you’re ready for this.
• Criteria 6: You have realistic time and capacity for your business.
  • They fund/support individuals who genuinely prioritise their business from day one. It shouldn’t be a lesser priority compared to other major commitments like regular employment, education, or other entrepreneurial ventures. Ideally, a minimum of 20 hours per week should be given to it, with a future goal of full-time engagement. They want to see a realistic estimate of your time availability in your application.

For more information, visit All Good Ventures.