The eligibility criteria are listed on the Awards page. You must meet all the eligibility criteria to make an application as we are unable to make exceptions.

We check the date of registration on Companies House/Charity Commission during our assessment. If your social venture has been registered for longer than four years at the time of your application, you are ineligible to apply for Award. This includes a change of legal structure, which would be deemed to be a period of continued operation.

No. You can apply to us even before identifying the right legal structure and may wish to seek support from us on the right one for your social venture. If you have already incorporated your social venture, it must be registered in the UK.

We aim to support people who are creating or developing social ventures which have the most potential to create positive social change. We have provided information on eligibility and suitability for our Awards on the Awards page. You can also watch the video on the Awards page to help you to decide if applying for an UnLtd Award is right for you.

We understand the resourcing challenges that social entrepreneurs face and while we agree that the use of technology such as AI has a role in addressing those challenges, we have noticed an increase in applications where it is very obvious that AI has been used. These applications contain very similar, generic responses to our questions, making it difficult for us to understand you as an individual and your idea or social venture.

We read every single application that we receive, and we do not use AI to assist us in any part of our assessment or decision-making process.

If you are planning to use AI to prepare your responses, please consider only using it as a drafting tool or for proofreading, ensuring that all of your responses are personalised to give you the best chance of success.

Our focus is on assisting those with additional support needs to access our application process. We aim for our Award making to be as equitable as possible, so while we are unable to advise you on your idea/social venture or tell you if your application would be successful, we can provide 1:1 assistance with making an application to people who have additional support needs and/or are facing barriers to applying. You can access this support through our Awards page.

Currently we can only accept applications via our online application form. This is to ensure that we provide an equitable experience for all applicants. If you have additional support needs, we can we can provide 1:1 assistance with making an application.

To accommodate different accessibility needs we can be asked to make changes to our process to give people the best chance of communicating their idea and plans with us. This could be arranging a conversation with a member of the team to provide clarity on the questions and process, providing information in accessible formats or working with you to make available a BSL interpreter, for example. We will consider any requests for accessibility that will reduce a barrier to applying.

You can preview our full application form along with guidance for each question from our Awards page. The same guidance is also available in the online form.

We have Word and PDF versions of our application available from our Awards page. Once you are ready, you will need to create or log into your account to complete the application online. Please ensure that you take note of the character counts for each question so that you can copy and paste your answers into the online form.

Use the save and close button to save your progress. You can return to the application to complete it when you are ready. Take note of the date you will need to submit your application if you want it to be reviewed during the next round of assessments.

The most common reason for not being able to copy and paste answers into the online form is exceeding the character limit. All questions which require a text answer are limited to 2000 characters (this is the number of characters used rather than the number of words and includes spaces). If you have used too many characters, your answer will not paste into the online form. You may also need to ensure that you are using the latest version of your web browser.

We approve Awards quarterly to provide the best support to our Award Winners, so we understand that it can feel like you have been waiting a while for the outcome of your application. You can find the application and assessment timeframes on the Awards page. During the assessment period you will receive updates from us via email, or you can log back into your account to see the status of your application.

If you have received a Starting Up Award, you can apply for a Scaling Up Award when your initial Award is complete. You cannot apply for more than one Award at once, or the same Award type for the same social venture. If applying for a different social venture, we will prioritise new applicants.

Due to the volume of applications we receive, we cannot provide any more detail on why your application was not successful beyond the information given in our decision email. If you are unsuccessful we will share a list of other funding and support available for social entrepreneurs.

You may reapply however we would encourage you to carefully consider any feedback we gave you on your previous application. If you have been unsuccessful multiple times, please get in touch with us before starting a new application.

You must have the right to live and work in the UK for at least the duration of the Award period if successful which is 12 months from the application result (see the Timeframe section for specific dates).