The mission of Heropreneurs is to empower new entrepreneurs from the extended military community to achieve their business ambitions. In our first impact report, now available at https://www.heropreneurs.co.uk/impact-report2021, we chart our progress from the latter half of 2020 where we were starting to come to terms with the impact of COVID-19 on the businesses we support, and on the charity itself, through to the summer of 2021.
The global pandemic has given service leavers, veterans and their families the time to consider what they ‘really want’ in life, including their work-life balance and their impact on society. For many, this has led to a desire to realise a long-held aspiration to start their own business, taking a long thought-about idea and taking it to a point of reality.
By the end of August 2021, we had already registered more mentees to our programme than in the whole of 2020 and we know that demand for our services will only increase as we move into a post-COVID society, where people demand more choice and fulfilment from the work they do.
With the support of our sponsors and partners, we have helped 161 entrepreneurs from the extended military community over the past year, and our mentors have been able to provide 19,000 hours of one-to-one advice and guidance. We have also recognised 10 business winners as part of our annual awards programme.
We are particularly pleased to showcase some of the amazing mentees on our mentoring programme in our report.
As a charity, we’ve been extremely lucky to rely on the generosity of grantmaking charities including the Veterans’ Foundation, Greenwich Hospital and the National Lottery Community Fund; however, the past 18 months has taught us that in order to survive in this increasingly competitive field, where more applications than ever are being made to organisations who themselves have faced significant challenges to their usual fundraising, we need to adapt to a more self-sufficient approach if we are to continue to develop, deliver our services and make the most of our mentors.
For one individual from the UK Armed Forces Family to go through our 12-month mentoring programme, the cost to Heropreneurs is approximately £800.
In order to allow our small team to continue to deliver and grow our mentoring programme to meet the increasing demands of the whole UK Armed Forces community, we ask you, our most dedicated supporters, to consider a donation to our charity if you are able, either by way of a one-off payment or through regular-giving. Details of how to do so can be found on our website https://www.heropreneurs.co.uk/donate or by getting in touch with our team via team@heropreneurs.co.uk.
We hope that you enjoy reading about what we have been doing over the last year and please remember to recommend our programme to both members of the UK Armed Forces community in business and those unique individuals who make the best mentors.
Very best wishes
The Heropreneurs Team
