Focus on The Prince’s Trust:  The Business Programme working for the future…

The Prince’s Trust Business programme is widely valued across the UK as a tangible method of introducing young people to business discipline, the challenge of self-employment and merits of entrepreneurship. In the past year, the Business programme has enabled over 4,400 young people to start-up in business, and has provided ongoing support to at least 8,000 entrepreneurs.

How The Trust finds its Business Entrepreneurs

The Prince's Trust has a number of strategies to ‘reach out’ to young people and pro-actively inform those who would not otherwise present themselves as potential funding prospects. These strategies include:

• working closely with the Government Job Centres and Enterprise Agencies to signpost young people to The Trust who show an interest in starting-up a business;

• working closely with the UK’s four main clearing banks to ensure referrals for those who approach their local bank for funding and are subsequently turned down;

• employing Outreach Workers to work within local communities of particularly deprived areas to reach out to young people interested in self-employment.

The Application Process

Once identified, the aspiring young entrepreneurs are taken through a thorough business assessment and feasibility process undertaken in conjunction with employed Prince’s Trust Area Managers and Business Development Managers.

Managers work closely with the young person on a one-to-one basis to develop their proposals, identify potential problems, expand business strategies, and strengthen concepts in order to maximise the potential for trading success. All income and expenditure over the first 12 month trading period is drawn up and presented prior to the loan being approved.

The Trust occasionally awards a Test Marketing Grant of up to £250 to allow the young person to run a pilot project of how the market responds to their product – once again, this is all part of the feasibility assessment.

The Loan/Grant process

• Loans are extended over a three year period at 3% interest and are generally used for capital expenditure e.g. equipment purchase, working capital and initial business running costs.

• The size of the funding package and any additional conditions to the loan, are decided at Panel Meetings held monthly at each local office.

• The loans are all monitored centrally in London and repaid monthly – however, defaulting on payments is an issue handled at the local level.

• In 2000/01, approximately 4,400 loans were extended to start up an equivalent number of businesses.


On-going Support – The Business Mentor and Monitoring

The Programme currently has over 7,000 volunteer business mentors on its books ranging from business executives to retired professionals through to young entrepreneurs. They provide to the young businesses:

• an average of 3-4 hours of personal time each month – providing business and common sense advice, morale boosting support, and soft skills across a range of issues;

• a major link between the young person and The Trust itself – as such, the mentor and the Trust work closely to identify and address problems with the business itself and / or the young person, and help overcome these issues before they adversely affect the business.

Each Area Manager will also organise aftercare services and events for constituent businesses on an individual and collective basis.

The success of the programme as a whole is monitored both regionally and nationally.

The top 10 Trust-supported businesses currently have a combined turnover of approximately £90m and employ over 850 full time staff. In over 70% of the cases where the business ceases trading, the young person subsequently accesses education or employment having gained key skills, motivation and self-confidence.

The Trust is aiming to expand the current programme with their ‘Start Up 30,000 Campaign’, which aims to fund 30,000 additional business start-ups by 2005 at a total cost of £100m. The Government has agreed to match fund all private sector donations up to a ceiling of £50m i.e. each pound raised from the private sector will leverage a further pound from HM Government to a cumulative total of the required £100m.

For further information please contact Maya Prabhu at: mayaprab@princes-trust.org.uk