Our Funding Priorities

We regard commercial education as embracing four main areas of activity:

SKILLS DEVELOPMENT: education in the essential skills that are needed for employment as well as society: sometimes called ‘transferable’ skills or ‘generic’ skills.

EMPLOYABILITY: education and research on careers and employment opportunities; encounters with employers and experience of work

ENTERPRISE/ENTREPRENEURSHIP: development of commercial awareness, enterprise and the essentials of business for entrepreneurs, employees and the self-employed.

INTERNATIONAL/GLOBAL TRADE: international business and education for the next generation of world traders.

We fund both research and practical projects that relate to these themes, as well as lectures and gatherings which highlight commercial education issues to the public.

We prioritise applications which:

• help young people prepare for the world of work as well as develop their future career paths;
• support schools, higher education and vocational institutions to deliver employability and enterprise education;
• facilitate the bringing together of the worlds of business and commerce with teaching and education.

We look for projects which:

• bring commercial education and employers into the classroom
• contribute fresh thinking to the field of commercial education;
• are innovative and/or which require support for proof of concept; to reach a ‘next stage’
• demonstrate they do not duplicate other efforts in the field
• support learning between organisations
• include user/teacher design input, user feedback or independent evaluation data.

We look to work with organisations who can demonstrate:

• financial accountability
• cost effectiveness
• impact and ability to measure this
• sustainability, potential for scalability
• organisational capacity and governance
• ability to interact with us.

Please read our General Exclusions to understand what we may not fund.