The recent recession and pandemic have put significant strains on many Nigerian entrepreneurs and businesses including those led by members of the FATE Foundation alumni community. In view of these realities and our commitment to enabling and effectively supporting our growing community of entrepreneurs spread across the country, the FATE Foundation team working with the Alumni Executive Committee launched the Business Recovery Programme which was announced at the 5th FATE Foundation Annual Alumni conference. The focus of the BRP is to:
- Build Resilience during and beyond the Pandemic;
- Provide targeted business survival, recovery and growth support;
- Provide knowledge and capacity building support on revenue generation and retention strategies;
- Enable digital pivot through the adoption of digital solutions, technology and tools to improve learning and enable enterprise growth;
- Ensure improved access to financial literacy and financial services; and
- Build partnerships and value-adding community engagement within and among the Alumni community.
This unique programme is free and tailored and designed to equip Nigerian businesses with relevant knowledge and toolset to quickly adapt to economic disruptions while maintaining continuous business operations and safeguarding people, assets, and overall brand equity. The delivery formats will be through:
- Virtual Learning and Capacity Building
- Digital Transformation Enablement
- Remote Consulting and Advisory Services
- Funding Linkages
- Community Building
The Resilience Building Workshops are free and will involve remote learning and virtual capacity building programmes to teach strategies to navigate through the crisis and evolve their businesses as they identify new opportunities along the way. Apart from having general sessions on topics that cut across targeted demographics, it should be noted that programme design will be largely facilitator-led and structured according to target group dynamics, channel accessibility and maybe segmented to target business types, business stages, sectors and value chains.
Key Course Themes will include:
- Understanding the Evolving Business Environment
- Business Model Realignments
- Market Strategy
- Financial Planning
- Revenue Generation
The course duration will be for a period of 3-4 weeks with 5-6 hours contact time per week.
The Digital Transformation workshops are free and will focus on supporting our entrepreneurs with essential digital strategies, knowledge, skills, and tools to manage their businesses at this time. Through combined workshops or separate focus sessions the curriculum will provide guidelines for on easing the digital technology transformation process whilst maintaining business value add and achieving customer satisfaction. Key course topics will include:
- Digital Transformation Strategies
- Setting up ECommerce Channels
- Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp for Business
- Google my Business
- Tools/Credits/Softwares and Opportunities available for Small Businesses
The course duration will be for a period of 3-4 weeks with 5-6 hours contact time per week.
Prior to COVID-19, FATE Foundation has been running a successful physical/personalized business advisory programme called Consulting clinics over the years. The Consulting Clinic is a personalized business advisory session which has been successfully run over the years focusing on major business areas such as tax, digital marketing, Accounting/Cash flow management/finance, HR, legal matters, etc and entrepreneurs will sign up for it based on their area of needs.
As a result of the COVID 19 pandemic and the need to continue to ensure this continues through video communication/collaborative tools and apps.
Free Consulting Clinics:
This programme is designed to run Free weekly consulting clinics at least two (2) days a week with dedicated mobile lines (using voice and WhatsApp business lines) to serve as helplines for entrepreneurs to:
- Receive up-to-date support and advice including financial planning and management;
- Get guidance on how to access the financial-economic stimulus packages that governments and development partners are setting up; and
- Provide guidance on key need areas particularly, finance, accounting, tax and legal.
Application Process Open By October 4th, 2020
We will recognise that a lot of these services will require linkages with service providers and consultants and have established relationships with reputable professional service providers to connect our entrepreneurs with.
Enabling funding linkages with financing providers will be a strong component of this programme. To date, FATE Foundation through her Growth Support Services unit has directly supported over 400 entrepreneurs in applying for programmes like the CBN AGSMEISS and the CBN Economic Stimulus loan plan.
Through our BRP linages, we will be to build on these existing programmes to ensure stronger institutional linkages with development partners, development finance institutions, banks/microfinance banks, angel investors and other forms of lending support to access the following:
- Grants
- Loans at reasonable rates
- Angel and Equity Investments