Just got back from the 2009 NFEA conference in York, where I am happy to announce that two of our members HBV and South East Enterprise won awards as the best delivery agency and best newcomer agency on the Barclays “Let’s Talk Business” programme. Congratulations to them!
Overall the NFEA conference was very interesting with some good quality speakers and interesting topics. Although the official NFEA theme of the conference was “Social Ethos or Commercial Focus” the talk at the conference and around the bar was how every agency in the UK was now having to find new revenue streams to survive. The funds for running start-up or generic business support programmes are limited seemingly everywhere (with one or two notable exceptions). To find out more I quizzed NFEA members about how they have managed to diversify into managing property or providing skills training. I also spoke to those who are now earning a living by managing town centres or car-parking schemes for their local councils. In fact the most surprising case of diversification (apart from the Nail Bar run by Centa at its Kings Cross office) is an agency in the South West whose main source of funding is now running a soil testing service for farms that is paid for by Natural England. In all cases earnings from these ventures were being used to provide or subsidize an advice service for new and small businesses.
- In the light of this I spent most of my time looking for new income opportunities for members and below are just a few highlights I will hope to explore with members in the next few weeks:
- An offer from Barclays Bank to pay Capital Enterprise and its members to stage big “Let’s Talk Business” events in London.
- An open call from Customer First for Capital Enterprise members to become consultants that can sell and deliver the Customer First service to businesses and public sector organisations in London.
- An offer from Sage to give free software packages to all our clients and students.
- An offer to work with Union of Cooperatives to work with them to develop Energy Cooperatives in London for businesses looking to source green energy ( In fact there is a whole realm of ideas on how members can develop fee paying services for businesses who are increasingly obliged to go green, that I will explore over the next few months).
Finally if you are looking for new opportunities please check out the Access to Finance contact being advertised by ELSBC.
