Find Funding for my business in arb

[WorcsWuss]

When I did my tickets, albeit a long time ago, I got them subsidised as part of an nvq, roughly 50% I'd guess from memory. It was very helpful!

There's bound to still be funding out there somewhere to help with the cost of course, but I think it's better hidden than it was, and you'll probably need to be 'disadvantaged' in some way to access the best of it.

Perhaps you'll have to move to Brixton?!

[agg221]

As someone who lives in the world of grants and public funding, perhaps a perspective might be useful.

 

Consider why grants are made available.

 

With the exception of a very small number of really nice people (Lord Leverhulme springs instantly to mind) it isn't usually an altruistic thing, but rather social engineering.

 

Public bodies collect money in taxes, and then redistribute it to achieve social aims. There can be various aims - increasing employment, preventing influx of foreign exports and 'culture' are the three main ones - they're all criteria against certain public bodies are measured on performance, and all relate to the 'health of the nation' or region or whatever the funding body may be.

 

Grants are usually a pretty scatter-gun approach. Some funding schemes expect a success rate of less than 5%. The thinking is that if there was a true, low-risk commercial case for something you should get a bank loan instead.

 

So with the above in mind, what you need to consider is the particular thing someone may wish to achieve with their investment. Filling skills gaps is always a good bet - look at the sequence in teaching as an example - 1980s teachers were squeezed hard relative to inflation, so they didn't train, so there were skills gaps and standards dropped, so in the 1990s teachers got grants to train and golden hellos. Now we're back in recession, teaching is still a relatively safe profession and supply outstrips demand, so all the grants etc have been withdrawn and pay rises have not matched inflation since 2003. Once the recession ends, teachers will be in short supply again and the cycle will repeat.

 

In arb, this doesn't apply - if this site is to believed colleges are turning out students faster than people are leaving the industry and so there's no skills shortage, so that isn't going to work on a blanket level.

 

Culture is unlikely to get you very far as a driver (operatic arb singers anyone?) and there isn't a tangible product to protect the trade deficit against, so global options are unlikely to be made available.

 

However, go looking at the local drivers and employment is most likely to be the winner. As mentioned, Shropshire has grants - rural with an unemployment issue and so not many options to move transferrable skills around as there would be in towns. The Princes Trust addresses the youth unemployment issue, as do some state-funded schemes where you can get taken on at low cost (although think of the furore this caused last year with Sainsbury's and Tesco's about 'taking honest people's jobs). There are other similar mechanisms though, such as modern apprenticeships, and the paperwork isn't too complex so a small firm might be prepared to give it a go. You can expect to have to do all the work for them though.

 

As WorcsWuss has said, 'disadvantaged' or 'minority group' are always a good bet. Genuinely, there is positive discrimination at work. I do a lot of EU funding applications and the 'triple word score' is a black, one-legged muslim lesbian.

 

Also, don't forget that grant money is there to be used - it's embarrassing when it's not taken up, and it's your taxes you're getting back so there's nothing inappropriate about using it. However, you have to present your case as one of the most deserving causes. With no blanket coverage, you will need to find your angle, think creatively and work pretty hard in pulling a case together, by second guessing what the funder wants to achieve and ticking the right boxes, and then really meaning it so that if you get the funding you will have to deliver against what you offered to the best of your ability.

 

As an example of how this can be done, I obtained a grant for training (75% costs met) for my wife and I to got to Shetland for a week to work with the last remaining working industrial smith in Britain, because he was a specialist in true wrought iron and someone needed to learn the tricks of making fittings and tools etc. before they vanished, and I needed to know them to repair my boat. Above, in a nutshell, is my case, but it took a good week's worth of evenings to sort it out and justify it with supporting evidence.

 

Don't think that grant funding is an easy option - there's probably more work in preparing a good bid than in just running round trying to find someone to take you on.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Alec

Edited January 1, 2013 by agg221

[markieg31]

I started off my career in arb 6 years ago working for £60 a day for a one man band.

after a year he let me go. i had no tickets and found it hard to find another job.

i managed to get a government funded position at college (because it was my first level 2 qual no a levels etc) which allowed me to get my 30,31,38 and a NA in arb. Whilst at college i had a part time job who took me on full time when my course finished.

i went from that job to another one on the powerlines.

 

6 years after starting my career in arb i am now on £65 a day. i know the job from the ground up and am a willing worker so i am about to take the plunge into self employment

borrowing a trailer and various bits. got all me own saws and climbing kit etc so here go's.

 

there was a few chaps on the college course who had been given money. they were going self employed with out any experience. good luck to them but i think you need the real experience!!!

[SGCT Ranger]

I am self employed, and I invest half of everything I earn back into my business. Accumulating new gear pretty quickly, hopefully in a year or so, I will have all the gear I need to be able to run my own show entirely (bar a chipper). I don't necessarily plan to do that by then, but its nice to have the option. It's also nice having your own gear.

 

Im totally with you on this one, i started life in Garden Maintenance, worked hard bought own gear and now im working towards doing my Utility Arb tickets, as before paid for the previous CS38,39 tickets through hard graft. Taken me years to do but at least i can say i totally own my own gear, bar the Chipper (I borrow that when i can from a local Conservation Trust i sometimes do work for)

[easy-lift guy]

I am self employed, and I invest half of everything I earn back into my business. Accumulating new gear pretty quickly, hopefully in a year or so, I will have all the gear I need to be able to run my own show entirely (bar a chipper). I don't necessarily plan to do that by then, but its nice to have the option. It's also nice having your own gear.

 

What's even better is you have a plan:thumbup1:. Stay on the straight and narrow. Remember in life as well as business your toughest competition will be yourself. I financed my first business in house and grew slowly from there.

After I had established my self in the business community and had my Bank as a customer I started my Second business with funding from my bank which financed my loan. Within 5 years that was paid for free,clear:thumbup1:

The Easy-Lift Harness company was formulated the same way as my Second business,except in this case I allowed my customers to handle the financing for my expansion.

Always good to have additional plans of securing funding,when and where

possible.

easy-lift guy

[rovers90]

I don't think you will be able to gain funding for CS30 and 31 as I would've thought they would be classed as mandatory training for anyone handling a chainsaw in employment. If training is mandatory you will not get funding towards it. I know this from another sector I work in and our regional RDPE also stated this recently. I think it is a fairly new change as I get funding towards 30 and 31 in 2010.

 

Good luck with your plans.