Innovate UK u-turns on 'broken promise' to female founders
Innovate UK u-turns on 'broken promise' to female founders
Women in Innovation Awards were cut short at 25 out of 50 grants
The UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, has overturned a decision to cut short funding for female founders from £4million down to just £1,875,000.
The ‘Women in Innovation Awards’ had promised that 50 female-founded and female-led businesses would receive a £75k grant and a package of support from a funding pot of £4million. Yet after 1,452 women applied for the award, just 25 awards were granted with the remaining applicants rejected.
But following huge pressure - thanks to a speedy campaign mobilised on social media by female founders - the organisation has now announced it will commit to the full 50 grants as originally promised.
Innovate UK issued a statement on LinkedIn on Monday afternoon stating:
“As public funders, we must manage our budgets carefully. The decision to only award this number [25 awards] was a mistake and we prioritised wrongly.
“We recognise the impact this has had on the many applicants, and on the community as a whole, and we apologise wholeheartedly.”
Tech leader and founder Becky Lodge, who was part of the campaign to overturn the decision, said:
“Women'-led businesses are significantly underfunded in comparison to their male counterparts and we rely on a public body to exercise fairness and equity when it comes to distributing public money.”
Onerous application process
Innovate UK is part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The Women In Innovation scheme, which has run since 2016 has awarded £10m to 200 women.
One of the main criticisms of the Women in Innovation Awards was the time ‘wasted’ on the application process by those who were unsuccessful. Founders called on Innovate UK’s CEO Indro Mukerjee to ‘publicly apologise’ to the 1,400 women who have spent on average an estimated 80 hours completing an onerous application process.
“In some cases, we’ve heard of people scoring over 95% and still not being successful. It’s just not good enough,” said one campaigner.
Dearbump founder Emma Jarvis was the first to spot the funding pot had decreased. In her original post on LinkedIn, Emma wrote:
“We were told there would be 50 awards available, so it’s a bit of a gut punch to see that only half of those were actually awarded.
”It’s hard not to question why so many talented and deserving founders were left without the support they need to bring their innovations to life.
”I've spoken with many of the incredible women who applied. They received outstanding scores and positive feedback, yet were still left without the funding to move their ideas forward.”
Offering support
Innovate UK has said it will now be contacting all applicants to highlight how they can access support from Innovate UK and its partners.
“The response to this programme has been our highest to date, and demonstrates the increasing number of women-led innovative businesses that are driving growth for our economy,” the organisation said.
Innovate UK also released latest data for all Innovate UK competitions, which shows that 1 in 3 successful grant applications were led by women, up from 1 in 7 in 2016.