Starting out
Setting up a social enterprise can feel daunting. Free advice, start-up grants and training help you turn your idea into reality.
Your journey
Funding
Ideas tackling the year's themes
Scotland
A relationship manager will talk through your idea and which fund fits. It’s not an assessment.
Choose your area to see who you’ll talk to.
Success stories
A psychology-led social enterprise that used its award for clinician training, assessment equipment and rent, built a pay-it-forward model, and now offers therapy, neurodiversity assessments and training.
Social Innovation Challenge · Edinburgh
A forge in Granton running inclusive blacksmithing courses. Start It funding created an Access Fund that subsidises places for North Edinburgh residents facing financial hardship.
Start It · Granton, Edinburgh
Barista and hospitality training, mobile coffee catering and pop-up cafés that create routes into work and belonging for refugees, asylum seekers and other newcomers.
Pounds for Purpose → Start It · Glasgow
Yes. Grant funding, one-to-one business advice, investment readiness support and social investment services are free to clients. Firstport is paid to deliver programmes for the Scottish Government, foundations and other public-sector partners.
No. Most people feel they're missing skills at the beginning, and it isn't a barrier. Many Start It awardees had never run a business before. A business advisor helps with things like your business model, pricing and legal structure.
If it trades to make a profit and reinvests that profit in doing good, it could be. Social enterprises are businesses that use their profits for positive impact, reinvesting them in their communities and the people they serve. There's no single legal structure. If your idea is purpose-led but not a social enterprise, Firstport's sister company Firstimpact may be able to help.
Individuals aged 18 or over who live permanently in Scotland and have an early-stage idea. The idea mustn't be trading regularly yet. It must be independent, mainly benefit people in Scotland, reinvest its profits and aim to pay its way through trading, with a direct, measurable impact.
Answer three questions and we'll point you to the right support.
