5 Business Grants You Shouldn't Miss In 2022
What is a grant? A grant is essentially funding, usually awarded by governments and organisations, to invest in certain projects or to achieve a specific goal. Here is a list of 5 grants currently available for you:
1. Women in Innovation
This offers 50 Women £50,000 in grant funding as well as support and mentoring. To be eligible, the businesses need to be trading for over a year and have a strong female founder, co-founder or senior decision-maker. They must have a specific innovation 'project' that could commence in April 2023 and last for one year. Like all other innovation grants, the business needs to be doing something innovative that solves a range of pressing societal, environmental and economic challenges.
2. NHS Future Hospitals Initiative
This Open Call for Proposals is open from the 1st of April 2021 until the 30th of December 2022. This call is a major project to uncover new, innovative ways of working that will have a positive impact on the NHS in the coming years and will cover (among other things):
- Logistical aspects (e.g. track-and-trace of goods, smart transportation)
- Improved patients reach (e.g. tele-rehabilitation, tele-homecare)
- Space-derived diagnostic tools (e.g. imaging and monitoring solutions)
- Diagnostic collaboration networks (e.g. Artificial Intelligence-assisted diagnostic service, transportable point-of-care solutions)
- Services for improving environmental impacts (e.g. renewable energy, water treatment, air quality)
3. Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) Open Call
The DASA Open Call is looking for innovative ideas to improve the defence and/or security of the UK. Your client's idea could be a concept, technology or service. There are two main categories/stages:
- Emerging Innovations for newer ideas
- Rapid Impact for innovations that are closer to deployment
No funding limit is specified. However, typical bids funded are between £50K - £100K for projects that last between three and 10 months. For examples of successful applications click here.
4. Innovate UK Smart Grant
The reason this grant is so popular is that Innovate UK are aiming to do cross-sector portfolio funding. This means businesses in different sectors all have a chance to get funding, as long as they have a commercially viable R&D innovation that can significantly impact the UK economy. If your client has a game-changing, innovative, and disruptive idea that will lead to new products, processes or services, or an idea to bring them ahead of others in the field, they might qualify for this grant. Total project costs can range from £100,000 to £2,000,000 depending on the project. One of the ways Swoop can help here is by connecting you and your client to grant writers. The benefits of using these are changing the success rate from 2-5% if they apply themselves to 65-75% using a grant writer.
5. Inclusive Innovation
This is a new grant, where diversity in all its many forms matters and great ideas can come from anyone. ‘Inclusive innovation’ is defined as one that centres equality, diversity and inclusion in the design and development of a product, process, or service. Notably, the innovation must address a challenge. Innovate UK are planning to celebrate inclusion in innovation by investing up to £2.5 million per year for the next three years in this cause. 50 awards will be offered to micro, small or medium-sized enterprises across the UK to support diversity in business. The winners will receive a £50,000 grant each for scale-up of existing, or development of new work on inclusive innovations. This competition is open from 26th September to 9th November 2022.
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