Foundational Economy Innovation Fund projects

GMCA's Foundational Economy Innovation Fund is supporting 25 projects across Greater Manchester. Funding has been awarded to projects that drive innovation and improve productivity and working conditions in these sectors. Recipients have put forward a broad range of creative ideas to improve ways of working, support their workforce and make their sector more resilient. 

The Projects

CARE+

Creating a new digital engagement platform that will streamline connections between clients and volunteers for hospital visits, household help and social activities, while helping counsellors manage caseloads more effectively. CARE+ is also looking to create a Community Health and Care Skills Hub to provide accessible training pathways for volunteers and counsellors, that focuses on individuals who've faced employment barriers.

Citizens Advice SORT Group

Developing an AI-powered form assistant prototype to help people with long-term health conditions or disabilities claim crucial Personal Independence Payment (PIP) support. The proposed tool aims to be an accessible digital guide, using plain language and targeted prompts to help users navigate the form accurately, freeing up Citizens Advice advisors' capacity.

Coco Operative CIC

Developing a simulated real-life testing of MyPower, a co-produced, trauma-informed digital prototype designed to improve clarity, engagement, and progress in Child in Need/Child Protection planning. Developed with Stockport New Beginnings and parents with lived experience, the prototype includes strengths-based goal-setting, AI-powered feedback, and multi-user collaboration features.

Deepdale Technology

Building a mobile app that connect people with Manchester's independent leisure, retail and cultural venues. It aims to give local businesses a smarter way to promote themselves by letting them post instant, time-sensitive deals during quiet periods, helping to boost footfall and reduce wasted hours, space and stock.

Egino Emerging

Converting brewery and hospitality waste into sustainable food products and green jobs, by co-developing a low-energy drying process for spent grain and coffee grounds, creating a high-yield substrate for gourmet oyster mushrooms, organic fertiliser for urban growers, and flour for craft baking. They will engage people on probation in producing these outputs, embedding skills, work experience, and social value into every stage of the supply chain.

Empower Coaching and Performance

Tackling the challenge of pressures on specialist support from Greater Manchester's health and care providers through developing school-based workshops for children aged 11–14 at risk of persistent absence or CAMHS referral. Blending acting, voice coaching, and mindset strategies, the programme will students reframe anxiety, practice social interactions through role-play, and build resilience.

Health and Education Co-operative

The project aims to make services more effective by freeing up capacity of non-medical prescribers (NMPs), which is seen as a key way to improve patient care, increase access to treatments, and optimise the use of healthcare resources. The goal is to halve the time it takes to get on a prescribing course from one year to six months. Currently, up to 50% of NMPs’ time is spent administering and supporting integration into the role, where currently a typical application requires at least 2 days of support.

Henshaws Society for the Blind

Supporting people with sight loss earlier, preventing demand on specialist care. By working with Manchester City Council, the project aims to identify individuals soon after diagnosis and offer timely, tailored support including follow-up calls, information, and guidance rather than waiting for self-referrals or late-stage interventions.

Hey Little Cupcake

Creating a Community Baking Hub which will provide free or low-cost baking workshops, employment readiness training, and wellbeing sessions for local residents, especially focusing on young people, women returning to work, over-50s looking to reskill and isolated or vulnerable individuals.

Independent Choices Greater Manchester

Streamlining the refuge referral process, freeing up demands on services, by creating an innovative, secure online referral form for professionals to request refuge searches.

Inspiring Communities Together

Creating a development pathway into employment that transforms traditional childcare apprentices into qualified Children and Families Workers. This will extend beyond traditional childcare to create integrated support for whole families, combining nursery-based practice with community engagement skills.

Leigh Works

Creating a professional podcast and video recording studio for local businesses and community groups to create promotional content, produce podcasts, create training materials and other resources. The new studio will democratise media production by eliminating technical barriers through automation and user-friendly interfaces.

Merseybank Garden Group

Producing healthy, nutritious puréed fruit and vegetable-based baby food with an added natural alternative protein, pure powdered oyster mushrooms. This will have a significantly lower carbon footprint than shop-bought equivalents as the bulk of the fruit and vegetables will be grown organically and use carbon neutral and recycled packaging.

Persona Care and Support and Cabasa CIC

Developing a design and printing enterprise to help individuals with disabilities to develop skills in screen printing and fabric design.

PossAbilities

Developing an accessible, user-friendly mobile app specifically designed for individuals with learning disabilities to help them into employment.

SofraMCR CIC's

The 'Cook, Connect, Rise' programme will help 40 underrepresented women to gain food skills, build confidence and explore enterprise ideas. In partnership with Southway Housing, the project will support women to trial food business ideas and access employability support.

Stitched Up

Creating a community-driven, crowdsourced research project – 'Shred Up' – looking into the uses and economic viability of shredded, post-consumer textile waste as a local textile waste solution. The project will gauge demand for different products and explore uses and avenues for making an economically and environmentally viable product.

The Emotional Health Hub

Blending evidence-based strategies with game mechanics to create engaging digital experiences that support 6-11 year olds with common emotional health challenges, testing out a new approach to building emotional resilience with this age group, aiming to relieve pressure on specialist services.

The Fusilier Museum

Making its services more effective by developing an online platform for its exhibitions and archives of the Lancashire Fusiliers and Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, opening up access to the public.

Thriving.ai

Working with care service provider n-compass to trial a digital platform that aims to transform independent health ageing and caregiving. The project will pilot a 'Carer Stress Index' that aims to identify and mitigate burnout among unpaid carers.

Unlimited Potential

Designing Live Well centres with local people to help prioritise the ideas of people who have personal experiences of Job Centre Plus, mental health services, primary care and unstable, insecure employment.

WETA Community Services

Training local people and offering practitioners culturally sensitive, and faith based mental health first aid (MHFA) training, aiming to bridge the gap between conventional MHFA and the mental health needs of the Muslim community. This will be a community led approach that aims to reduce pressure on health services.

Wisterias Care Software

Prototyping a smart rostering tool that dynamically adapts to real-world factors such as travel time, fatigue, and care complexity to improve workforce wellbeing, reduce missed visits, and boost overall service reliability. The project will also develop an AI-driven pain monitoring feature, integrating it into daily workflows via an intuitive body map interface. This will support carers to better detect and respond to pain in people with dementia.

Wyncourt Nursing Home

Integrating new technology by piloting a motorised turning system that allows carers to reposition individuals in bed with minimal physical effort, reducing the risk of musculoskeletal injury

Yonder People CIC

Creating a Social Care Academy in collaboration with HMP Styal. This initiative is aiming to equip low-risk female offenders with the skills and qualifications needed for social care employment post-release.