Business grants available to Hub Agency clients

Many of Hub Agency’s projects involve working with clients to provide quality work at a strategic level.

At present, there are two grants that your company should be aware of which may come in handy to offset some of Hub Agency’s bills…

Leadership and Management Grant.

This grant is relevant for activities broadly determined as ‘consultancy’ work:

Brand strategy
Marketing communications strategy
Digital communications strategy
Media strategy

Key points:

The Leadership and Management support, available as part of the Government’s ‘Train to Gain’ service, is designed to work with ‘strategic influencers’, and is, therefore, aimed at all key directors, managers and leaders within your organisation.

Money is available to ANY organisation to support leadership and management training and development. Your organization may be in ANY sector, but must be based in England, with between 10 and 249 staff (paid or unpaid) and your organization must not have accessed this grant in the last three years.

Up to £1,000 of grant support is available: the first £500 does not require match funding but must benefit the one person identified as the key leader/
manager within the organisation. The remaining £500 grant must be match funded in cash by the employer.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to fill in loads of paperwork to get the support! The process is straightforward: a Leadership and Management specialist adviser must diagnose the skills need (a brief phone call is all that is usually required to start the ball rolling) then information capture will be carried out by the advisor and he or she will then write a personal development plan with the leader/manager which identifies the training and development needed.

And you don’t have to sign up to anything else to get the support!

New ‘Innovation Vouchers’ grant coming soon!

A Business Link advisor has informed Hub Agency that in late Autumn 2009 a new grant will be available to Hub Agency clients. Funded by the EU, the cash is already in place and the grants will take the form of what will be called ‘Innovation Vouchers’.

The precise details have not yet been disclosed, but it’s a fair guess that the funds available to each individual business will total approximately £2,500 and will be made available for quality Hub Agency consultancy work… so it’s well worth watching this space!

To find out more:

Hub Agency recommends you make your local Business Link your first port of call: businesslink.gov.uk

Full ‘Train to Gain’ information can be found at: traintogain.gov.uk