You may remember us mentioning KeyFund before – they’re a social investment provider in Yorkshire, and we’re hoping they’ll help us get the £15k we need to get this show on the road. Making first contact with them has been scary – finance is intimidating at the best of times, so we’ve been putting it off for a while. HOWEVER, this week we made the leap and got in touch! And SURPRISE, they’re super lovely!
I talked to Adrian Bean at KeyFund – he’s their investment manager – and he was very friendly and helpful. He confirmed that we’re exactly the type of organisation KeyFund helps – a social impact company, a Community Interest Company, and a start up with no hope of getting the funding we need from a high street bank! KeyFund can offer us ‘Blended Investment’ – a mix of 80% loan, 20% grant – which is just what we’re after, and they will help us all the way through the process. It’s like a cuddly Sheffield finance hug!
The next steps then – KeyFund have an online application process, which we’ll need to go through step by step, with their help and guidance. Then, we’ll have a meeting with them to hash out the details and get it all shiny and perfect. And then they take it to their decision making panel, and we find out if we’ve been successful. We want to go to their October panel, so we need to have completed the application and meeting by the end of September. So it’s all go here! But in a very, very positive way.