The Diverse Supply Chains grants explained
The Diverse Supply Chains grant aims to diversify the supply chain to bigger businesses. This includes smaller businesses that are owned and managed by women, ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ among others.
The project is a European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) financed project organised by Aston University. The eligible activities the Diverse Supply Chains grant could go towards are including, but are not limited to:
- Marketing and branding
- Supporting the cost of additional specialised consultancy support
- Acquiring accreditations
- Bid writing/training in bid writing/support in bid writing
- Leadership training
- Confidence building
- Support with procurement platforms
- Effective product positioning
- Process/product innovation
- Customer care
- Developing strategic decision making
- Developing business efficiency
- Improving account management
- Business Continuity Plan to support tendering activities
- Developing a business growth plan.
What’s available?
Diversity Supply Chains grants of £2,500 matched funding is available to spend towards the aforementioned projects/activities.
Eligibility criteria
To apply for the workshop programme, you must:
- Have a plan of how this grant will increase your chances to tender for large firms
- Be a formally registered business (VAT, PAYE or UTR number or Companies House registration)
- Ideally have a trading history of one year or more
- Have received less than 200,00 Euros de minimis state aid in the last three years before the application
- Have an annual turnover of no more than €50 million and/or annual balance sheet no more than €43 million
- Be able to contribute a minimum of £2,500 to match fund the grant.
The Diverse Supply Chains grant is a scheme to support SMEs owned and managed by:
- Women (particularly women with children)
- People with limiting disabilities
- LGBTQ+
- Ethnic minorities
- Refugees
- Young entrepreneurs (16 – 25).
Businesses must be based in the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP including:
- Birmingham
- Solihull
- Bromsgrove
- Cannock Chase
- East Staffordshire
- Lichfield
- Redditch
- Tamworth
- Wyre Forest.
How to apply
To benefit from a Diverse Supply Chains grant, you’ll need to:
- Make sure you comply with the project requirements to apply for grants
- Have a plan of how this grant will increase your chases to tender for large firms
- Complete the grant application form.
The application process:
- Complete the Diverse Supply Chains grant application form from their website and obtain three competitive quotes.
- Submit an online, electronic version of the completed grant application. Three quotes also need to be provided to Aston University for approval (you may be asked further details).
- The approval board will then review the grant application.
- Aston University will communicate the outcome of your application.
- If your application is approved, the project can commence (to be completed within 1 – 3 months).
- Pay the supplier in full against the invoices sent to you.
- Submit requested evidence to Aston University to claim for the £2,500 grant. (Supplier invoice, bank statement and invoice to Aston University for the value of the grant, etc).
- Payment of the grant from Aston University.
The application deadline for submissions is rolling. However, it’s best to get your application in as soon as possible to increase your chances of success.
If you need assistance with your Diverse Supply Chains grant application, we can help. A funding writer can optimise your success.
Our Services
Grant Writing
Our Grant Writing Service is for businesses who want to start applying for grants, but don’t know where to begin. They can also help businesses who have been applying for grants but aren’t seeing success.
Our Grant Writing Consultants have over 60 years of experience in bidding for funding and grants. From start-up business grants to self-employed business grants. They can take care of the whole thing for you – they’ll even submit it on your behalf.
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Grant Tracker
You can find this grant and others like it on our Business Grant Tracker. Currently, we have over 1,700 live business grant and funding opportunities. Our team have manually tracked 1,500+ data streams searching for business grant opportunities. Each one is then uploaded to one central system, streamlining the process.
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