Allia

We spoke to Andrew, the Director of Ventures at Allia.

1. Can you tell us a bit more about Allia?

We want everyone to feel empowered and enabled to access support, funding, and space to scale of their impact – thus making the world a better place for all of us.

At Allia, there are opportunities to access funding and join programmes that help entrepreneurs tap into a vibrant impact ecosystem. Our programmes give structure to an otherwise ambiguous startup journey, and at the same time provide a wealth of resources and connections for people to draw upon.

Our flagship programme is the Impact Accelerator where we take tech for good and scaling social enterprises through a rigorous series of content to help founders prioritise the key facets of their business that will make them profitable and sustainable in the long run. We do this with the support of funders who are interested in addressing bigger issues (e.g. climate change, homelessness, diversity and inclusion, and food insecurity), thus allowing our participants to access our programmes for free. Thankfully free in this case doesn’t mean “no value” with nearly 99% of participants saying they would recommend an Allia programme to a startup founder.

2. What challenges are you currently facing and how are you tackling them? 

Awareness and funding. It’s a constant battle for any business and we are no exception to that despite being a social enterprise ourselves. Good work doesn’t necessarily equate to great momentum. It’s a delicate balancing act between sharing a powerful story while at the same time solving problems/creating value for people.

We are constantly working on building up more powerful stories grounded in excellent data, in order to share the incredible work we love doing. We’ve devoted a lot of time working on refining the data collection and refining process, built out a practice on raising our profile, and grown on converting our cheerleaders into champions/funders.

It’s something we hope to continue to accelerate ourselves as we look to connect with underserved founders across the UK. To date, we are very pleased to have worked with over 2000 ventures but across the UK there were 700k+ launched last year alone!!!

3. How can people support you?

Support us, volunteer/mentor with us, and introduce us to people who would be interested in being part of our ecosystem.

We are constantly eager to connect with people who want to share their expertise, engage their company on an accelerator challenge or simply meet incredible entrepreneurs! We are blessed to work with some of the most inspiring leaders of incredible impact ventures both at the local level and national level.

Allia would be delighted to be a catalyst for you or your contacts in addressing society’s biggest challenges. In the last few years, Allia’s alumni have raised over £105m in grants, investment, and loans; let’s make that number grow and see funding go towards ventures and social enterprises that make a difference.

For more information about Allia's programmes visit our website & social media:

Website: https://futurebusinesscentre.co.uk/our-programmes/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/futurebusinesscentre/