Foundational Economy Innovation Fund
The Fund
The Foundational Economy Innovation fund is providing grants for businesses and organisations working in or with Greater Manchester’s foundational or ‘everyday economy’ to trial new ideas and become more resilient, with £1,000,000 of funding is being made available over a 2-year period.
40 projects have now been awarded initial grants of £10,000 plus expert support, to develop or trial ideas and innovations over a 6-month period. You can find out more about the projects below.
Up to ten projects will receive additional grants of £60,000, plus expert support, to develop their projects further and expand on their impact.
The Foundational Economy
The "foundational economy" supplies essential goods and services, ensuring that Greater Manchester can function effectively.
It includes key workers, essential supply chains and infrastructure, culturally important goods and services (like hairdressing and beauty) and it underpins places, other parts of the economy, and well-being.
It’s the “everyday economy”, or the “essential economy” – the businesses we all rely on for our daily needs.
The foundational economy accounts for over 42 per cent of jobs in the city-region and it is made up of more than 60,000 businesses.
It has a big effect on the levels of innovation and business sustainability, employment practices, the quality of work available, and income levels across Greater Manchester.
The true value of many of our foundational economy sectors has never been more apparent than during the pandemic response, when our key workers and industries kept us going through the emergency response and beyond.
The sectors
The Foundational Economy Innovation fund is in its first iteration focusing on supporting projects in or with a sub-set of the sectors that encompass the Foundational Economy as a whole. We’re starting with four sectors:
· Health and social care
· Early education and childcare (0-5 years)
· Retail and personal services
· Hospitality and leisure
The challenges
We are supporting projects that test new and emerging ideas across one or more of the following challenge areas:
The partners
We are partnering with the Greater Manchester Growth Company who are providing expert support to develop skills in innovation, pitching and business resilience.
They are also leading on a “community of practice” in place to amplify and share learning from and between projects, as well as peer to peer support.
We are also partnering with Little Lion Research who are leading on the evaluation of the fund.
