News

Education charity offers tender for assets of its flagship programme

Finance | Tania Mason | 11 May 2012

Enterprise UK, the education charity that is winding up after losing all its government funding, is seeking a charity with similar objects to take over the assets and operations of its most successful programme.

The Tenner programme is a schools-based competition that aims to develop young peoples’ entrepreneurial skills. Each student is loaned a ten-pound note and challenged to make as much profit and social impact as possible through enterprising activities over a period of one month.

At the end of the month students are asked to return the tenner and can keep or donate to charity any profit they made. Awards are given for the biggest social investment, the highest financial return and the best business idea.  In last year’s programme, nearly 27,000 youngsters took part and the highest individual profit was £750.

Enterprise UK has been running Tenner since 2007, so this year’s programme will be the fifth. The charity, which exists to create an enterprise culture in the UK, decided to close its doors after learning in December 2010 that its grant funding from the Department of Business and Skills would not be renewed after April 2011.  

At the end of March 2010, the latest financial year for which figures are published, Enterprise UK had income of just over £6m and 64 employees. Now, the charity no longer has any staff, premises, or current funding arrangements, but it does still have some assets and did not want to see the successful Tenner programme end. So this week it has invited expressions of interest from UK charities with similar charitable objects and a track record of sustainability, who wish to take over the assets and liabilities of the Tenner programme.

Assets will include the Tenner brand and website, a contact database of schools, and full records of previous years’ schemes. It will also include operating capital of around £450,000, though this money will be restricted to deliver the Tenner progamme.

The successful applicant must commit to run the programme for at least three to five more years.

Enterprise UK has appointed Bates Wells and Braithwaite London to oversee the legal process, while the due diligence on applicants will be carried out by an evaluation panel that will make a recommendation to the charity’s trustee board.

Enterprise UK is hoping to complete the transfer on 31 July 2012.

Interested charities should email Mairead O’Reilly at BWB by 25 May.