Over the coming years, we envision GROW to flourish and bloom into an established community of committed entrepreneurs and business leaders, working together, building each other up and emboldening their local economy.
GROW is BD Giving’s investment fund for ambitious entrepreneurs with big dreams and plans to grow in Barking & Dagenham.
While it’s a significant financial investment for us, we’ve always said it’s about more than money. It’s about investing in the entrepreneurs who want to be part of a more inclusive local economy.
In its first year, everyone that applied was based in Barking & Dagenham, 60% of applications were from Black-led ventures, and 70% from women-led enterprises. GROW supported 10 entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and deepen their local impact, two of whom have now taken on social investment from BD Giving – the first shoots in our growing Portfolio of local investments.
We saw measurable results: increased turnover, stronger financial resilience, more sustainable operations, and bigger impact for local communities [read more in our first GROW learning report]. As the programme progressed, we realised we weren’t just backing local business we were investing in local leadership. For me, the most powerful outcome was the emergence of a group of confident and committed community-rooted leaders.
In fact, the entrepreneurs themselves told us that a sense of community and camaraderie was what they valued most out of their journey with us.
GROW 2025: what's new?
This year, we’re going even further. Guided by a collective of local entrepreneurs, including some who took part in the first year of GROW, we’re shifting from an off-the-shelf training package to a peer-centred approach, where the participants will co-create the support they receive.
This shift recognises that leadership doesn’t always come from external experts – it grows from within the community, through shared experience, trust and collaboration. I’m excited about the potential for everyone involved.
A new feature of the programme is a leadership hackathon, where the participants will decide how to spend a pot of money on a shared challenge, such as marketing. They’ll practice strategic thinking, influence, and collaborative decision-making – key leadership qualities in action.
GROW is helping to build a stronger, fairer local economy by investing in the leadership potential of local entrepreneurs. Together, we’re growing not just prosperous businesses, but a connected, more inclusive local economy.
We’re building a new market of investable businesses for the borough and beyond. Albeit, we know that there is work to be done in nurturing new ideas, harnessing bold-thinking and improving financial literacy and confidence. Our Give It A Go programme, a small grants fund for seeding new ideas in Barking and Dagenham, is an example of how we do this. Entrepreneurs who may not be ready to leap into GROW, as they are not yet trading and need to test their proof of concept, could bag this funding opportunity instead.
The GROW story so far...
As a grant-maker and social investor, we’ve always put local people at the heart of decision-making. Using a ‘participatory approach’ – we design programmes with the community, not for them.
GROW Fund was developed by residents of the borough with money transferred by the Council to BD Giving in 2022. Those residents spent months of learning about investment and sharing ideas about what they want to achieve for the borough. You can read more about their journey here.
They chose to develop the GROW Fund so the entrepreneurs who call Barking & Dagenham home can create both a commercial and a social impact in the borough.
The changes we’ve made to GROW, from The Enterprise Collective who helped co-design the programme to The GROW Assembly we’ll recruit to decide which entrepreneurs are selected this year, all contribute to more residents having a role in how money and resources move through the borough.
Whether we’re funding social entrepreneurs, supporting grassroots groups, or testing new models of local ownership, our goal is the same: to build a stronger and more inclusive local economy.
The future of GROW
Thanks to funding from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, GROW will run for three years, from 2025 to 2027.
I’d like to keep reiterating though that GROW is more than money. While we’re aspiring to financially support 30 local entrepreneurs over this time, we are building a new market of ambition, hope and impact for Barking and Dagenham. And, we want entrepreneurs to dream big.
Over the coming years, we envision GROW to flourish and bloom into an established community of committed entrepreneurs and business leaders, working together, building each other up and emboldening their local economy.
GROW will become a regenerative fund. Successful businesses will be able to apply for social investment from BD Giving; repayments and any profit made will be reinvested back into GROW.
Can you see? Local entrepreneurs, successful through the programme, not only have the chance to scale their business operations and grow their local impact but pay-it-forward so other businesses can benefit from the same opportunity. We see our model as a sustainable one, whereby local businesses have the opportunity to hold a stake in its future.
Over the next three years, we’ll see a Portfolio of local investments take shape. A committed cohort of GROWers will bear fruit, each one contributing to a market rooted in ambition and hope, where the local economy and the community can truly thrive.
We are being bold and ambitious with what the future holds for GROW, just like the entrepreneurs we are set to work with. We will learn as much as we can along the way, adapting and reshaping what we offer and how we do it. From designing the offer, giving feedback and making decisions about who wins GROW support, local people and local businesses will evermore be at the forefront of everything we do.
We’re strapped in for the ride. Stick around and you’ll see what can grow in Barking and Dagenham and beyond.
Join us
GROW Fund 2025 is still open for applications and closes at 10am on 27 May 2025. Learn more about what’s on offer or apply NOW!
If you’d like to know more about GROW Fund and our plans for the future, get in touch with me at jack@bdgiving.org.uk or our Head of Partnerships, Kate at kate@bdgiving.org.uk.
