Sheroes in Finance reposted this
Exited founder | Building community @ Female Founders Rise | Speaker | Mum of 4 | Posting all things entrepreneurship and growth
PS 📣latest update just in Innovate UK has now confirmed that they will fund all 50 Women in Innovation awards, meeting the original £4m commitment. Innovate UK has broken its promise to female founders for the final time. We can't and won't stand for this anymore. The ‘Women in Innovation Awards’ promised that 50 female-founded and female-led businesses would receive a £75k grant and package of support, from a funding pot of £4 million. 1,452 women applied for the award; but only 25 awards have been granted. Assuming each grant is £75,000, this is a total of £1,875,000. This leaves £2,125,000 unfunded at present. 📢 This isn't good enough. We're calling for change Let's Fund More Women is urging Innovate UK to: 💰 Commit to fully utilising the remaining funding and awarding the 25 grants 🗣️ Engage in dialogue with us to address the issues raised and implement necessary reforms 🔎 Acknowledge the shortcomings and review the process 🚀 Launch a redesigned award program for 2025, with more funding committed Join the Let's Fund More Women movement. ♻️ Repost this post Write to your MP. Put the pressure on. If you’re one of this year’s unsuccessful applicants, please complete our survey>>> https://lnkd.in/eGMNQRqB This was first brought to my attention by a post from Emma Jarvis sharing the situation. We promoted this award in our community Female Founders Rise so I felt confused and shocked that many of our members and other female founders would have spent hours (during school holidays) and often money on applying. It's been a busy time for many since first hearing about this on Friday but hats off to Tara Attfield-Tomes Becky Lodge Zandra Moore and many more women and men who have worked tirelessly over the weekend to get this sorted. Follow Emmie Faust for daily posts on entrepreneurship and female founders The power of the collective coming together to create change - well done ladies and gentlemen ❤️
We paid £7,000 to grantify to help us. They said our application was one of the best they had seen. And we were so far off! 😢 we have given up on fundraising at all now. Good old fashioned sales all the way now. Sick of wasting my time!
Melanie Goodman
4mo
What was the reason that they only awarded some of the previously promised funding? That seems a crucial aspect but sorry if I missed it!
Why did they do this?
Having been responsible for assessing competitions in an earlier corporate role, we always 'triaged' applications by having a first round with a short proposal, followed by a second round. I wonder whether IUK might consider something similar to avoid so much money and time being wasted.
Remi Ray
4mo
Gave up on Women innovation two years back! A very long application and the feedback isn’t that helpful! My application seemed like it was reviewed by some individuals super out of touch and I said never again!
Maurice O'Brien
4mo
Smashing work on driving this forward, Emmie. 👏🏻👏🏻 Even after reading the IUK apology / announcement of the £4m funding now actually being provided, I still can’t really understand how it happened in the first place. It all seems very odd.
Julian Harris
4mo
Emmie Faust I'm sure the U-turn had a lot to do with the stand you took. Well done. J
What a 72hrs! I am just elated that we've achieved this already. More to do, but what a first step!
Jaskiran Mangat
4mo
Amazing effort, though very sad and absolutely not good enough that it had to come to this. Such reputational damage for Innovate UK . Not sure where your risk managers and co-designers were in this process, but happy to consult on both fronts in the redesign 🤝
Co-founder at Bemuse Limited, The Telegraph and NatWest Top 10 Highly Commended 100 Female Entrepreneurs to Watch 2022
4moThank you Emmie Faust , this is so helpful to all of us. What really saddened me in this situation are the sarcastic and derogatory comments from one of the assessors. They were 100% contradictory to highly positive comments from assessors 2,3,4 and 5! If the idea is to get more women into innovation, then the assessors need to watch their tone of voice. Derogatory comments can do the opposite - put women off innovation. And the assessors should stick to the same brief, which should result in similar comments from all assessors, not completely opposite. It almost felt like assessor 1 just had a bad day, so unfair the comments were and out of touch with all of his colleagues. I have filled in the questionnaire and I am happy to be named and give you specific examples from our application, if it helps the course.