Funding Circle partners with charity Hatch
Funding Circle has partnered with charity Hatch Enterprise to support underrepresented entrepreneurs.
As part of the 12-month partnership, Funding Circle volunteers will provide training, mentoring and coaching to start-up founders to help them launch and grow their businesses. This includes financial training and funding clinics.
In addition, the alternative business lender has donated £40,000 to the 2022-2023 Hatch programme.
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“Our team of Circlers can’t wait to get started and offer a helping hand to see entrepreneurs learn, develop and thrive,” said Alexander Allen, UK managing director at Funding Circle.
“At Funding Circle, we proudly champion small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the UK and we truly believe that they drive the UK’s economic growth as well as play a key part in building the SME community.”
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“Our new partnership with Funding Circle opens up a number of impactful opportunities for Hatch’s founders,” added Naomi Nathan, community programme manager at Hatch. “With Funding Circle we’ll also be expanding our support offer to founders in the area of access to funding.”
Hatch was launched in 2014 and has since supported more than 6,700 entrepreneurs in the UK. More than 80 per cent of Hatch graduates are women or from another marginalised gender and 71 per cent are black or from other ethnic minority groups.
These are the groups that typically receive minimal venture capital funding. Previous research from Yoppie has shown that women-led start-ups in Europe only receive less than one per cent of venture capital. Meanwhile, less than seven per cent of small businesses are run by ethnic minorities.
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