Hatch Enterprise began a strategic charity partnership with Simply Business, one of the biggest SME insurance providers in the UK, back in 2023. Together, we have created and delivered multiple early-stage enterprise support opportunities for underrepresented entrepreneurs.
One initiative co-delivered by our charity partnership with Simply Business is the Young Entrepreneur Fund, a competition designed to tackle the barriers young people face when starting a business. The fund was developed on the back of the Generation Entrepreneur Report (Simply Business & The Federation of Small Businesses, 2025).
Backed by nationwide press coverage and high-profile support, the Young Entrepreneur Fund illustrates how corporate charity partnerships can generate meaningful socioeconomic change.
Innovative Charity Partnership Can Tackle Key Entrepreneurial Challenges Head On
The problem
Entrepreneurial appetite amongst young people in the UK is booming. But despite 58% of young people considering entrepreneurship, only 16% are actively running their own businesses.
The Generation Entrepreneur Report highlights some of the key drivers for this ambition:
Pursuing Independence
Employment and Financial Security
The solution
The Young Entrepreneur Fund is part of the solution. Developed by Simply Business and co-delivered with Hatch Enterprise, the initiative is providing ten young entrepreneurs aged 18-30 with £5,000 in grant funding. Concurrently, winners will receive tailored business support to develop ventures that are built to last, ensuring grant funding is utilised to its best advantage.
12,000 aspiring business leaders submitted an application for the Young Entrepreneur Fund.
The competition was launched on A-Level results day.
Outstanding high-profile entrepreneurs joined the judging panel, including Professor Green and Harpreet Kaur.
These prominent figures joined Hatch Enterprise CEO Rebekah Sun to judge the competition entries and select the final winners.
Each will receive a £5,000 grant, and six weeks of bespoke business support. The suite of funding and guidance will give all ten winners the solid foundations necessary to grow their businesses in a sustainable way.
They represent a diverse range of sectors and ambitions, each demonstrating the potential of young people when barriers are removed and opportunities are designed with their needs in mind.
Meet the Young Entrepreneur Fund winners
The charity partnership advantage
The success of the Young Entrepreneur Fund highlights what can happen when corporate charity partnerships deliver strategic and creative results. In this initiative, Simply Business and Hatch Enterprise offered targeted support to young founders.
I’ve worked with many charitable partners over my career leading corporate impact programmes and Hatch [Enterprise] is truly among the best. We have been able to co-create something ambitious and meaningful together because of their creativity, can-do approach, responsiveness and flexibility. Our partnership with Hatch not only added credibility to our offer for young entrepreneurs, but it also helped us secure a slot on primetime BBC where we revealed our winners on The One Show.
80+
Prime time BBC slot
pieces of media coverage secured, from industry-focused press to nationwide news outlets.
The story of the Young Entrepreneur fund gained coverage on the BBC’s The One Show.
For someone else to believe in you from an outside perspective. They don’t know you or anything. That’s a huge validation.
It’ll change my life full stop. I can go ahead with everything I’ve been planning for so long. It’s a dream.
It means my young people can be better looked after. It means we no longer have to pour from an empty cup.
Looking ahead
We’ve been working hard on new innovations that capture our unique methodology ahead of the release of our new strategy. We will be uncovering new strategic priorities which will take us through to 2029.
Entrepreneurship has long been a powerful tool for influencing change on both grassroots and national scales. Alongside the creation of new interventions developed by and for underrepresented entrepreneurs, our strategy will outline our ambitions to tackle the significant increase in submissions to our waiting list over the past 12 months.
This work takes trust. It takes a genuine commitment to equity to invest the extra time and resources necessary to nurture the potential of those with less access to opportunities.
We invite you to join us.
Explore charity partnerships with Hatch Enterprise
Stay connected
Joining our supporters newsletter is the most effective way to stay up to date with our progress as we develop and launch our new strategy. You’ll receive occasional updates, inspiring stories of our impact, and discover ways that you can champion underrepresented entrepreneurs as they build businesses that create lasting change.
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