About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

Drawing our Partnership Accelerator to a close

You get some pretty effective scaling up of social enterprises, including:

  • The development, for example, of new functions for Thrive, a mental health app, so that it can more effectively deliver support to the people it serves.
  • The development of new access standards for mental health for essential services that the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute will launch next year and,
  • Lots of time and space to do user testing for Applied, Careers Advice for Parents and others to improve and promote their work.

But once you throw in some time and energy from HMG and partnership support from more than 100 of the UK's leading companies supported by the connecting/convening power of Nesta, you get something really special.

The Inclusive Economy Partnership (IEP) has been an experiment; it is an innovation process. We didn't know what bringing together these elements - business, civil society and government - to support social innovators with the determination and skill of the team at Nesta would achieve. Our hypothesis was that it would be something special.

Our early findings show that we were right!

We held our final innovator workshop at Nesta last month and we were blown away by the stories of success after such a short time.

Our six-month Inclusive Economy Partnership accelerator was an intensive effort including over:

  • Five workshops
  • Four events, including a garden party at Downing Street
  • 100 one-to-one coaching sessions

And countless numbers of meetings/activities to set up partnerships between the social innovators and their new business or civil society contacts.

We are very proud of some of the great successes we have had so far including:

  • Toolshed, which has secured an £80,500 social loan through Unltd, which has enabled them to start their construction service at least six months earlier than planned, improve the sustainability of the centre, and to recruit additional staff to enable them to grow.
  • And Exceptional Individuals, which has launched the Dyslexia Academy with great support from the DWP.

And we are so proud to say that we now have more than 100 confirmed partnerships at various stages of commitment and development. We will be sharing their stories over the next months. Watch this space!

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Author

Kate Sutton

Kate Sutton

Kate Sutton

Head of Corporate Social Innovation

Kate was responsible for managing Nesta's Corporate Social Innovation and Inclusive Growth work

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Khyati Modgil

Khyati Modgil

Khyati Modgil

Programme Manager, Government Innovation

Khyati was a Programme Manager in Nesta's Government and Community Innovation team. She is interested in democracy. civic participation and nurturing inclusive organisational cultures.

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Thea Snow

Thea Snow

Thea Snow

Senior Programme Manager, Government Innovation

Thea was a Senior Programme Manager in the Government Innovation team.

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