The Bank of TMC - the story so far.

After 6 months of planning, creative workshops, market research, spreadsheets, tweeting and hard work by all involved the Bank of TMC is about to invest in up to six new social enterprises, set-up and led by young people from Leicester and Leicestershire. Social Enterprises are businesses that are run for community benefit rather than private profit.

At the start of this year we worked with a group of 25 young people aged between 15 and 22 to imagine what the Bank of TMC would look like: what our values would be; how we would work with young people and support them; how we would keep our self going; what social enterprise is all about... and a host of other questions.This group of 'Young Advocates' met together again in March to design the Bank's first logo and help us with our communications strategy.

By April we were ready to announce the Bank to the world and explain what we had to offer:

• Research and development bursaries worth £500 - designed to help young social entrepreneurs turn their good ideas into real social businesses with a creative and cultural focus.
• Access to support networks and expert advice on finance and business planning, market research and proving the social impact of social enterprise. (Plus some creative activities and quite a few laughs along the way).
• The chance to apply for up to £5000 start-up investment from the Bank of TMC.

We were delighted to see that of the eight bursary winners who joined us on our 'journey of discovery' all eight were supported to put together a business plan and apply for investment.

On 29th June the Bank's Investment Panel met to make decisions on who would receive start-up funding. The panel was made up of:

• Two Young Advocates, one who is a freelance project manager for creative and cultural organisations and one who is President of the Leicester Young Chamber
• Leicestershire's Head of Heritage and Arts
• Leicester's Enterprise Support Manager
• A young member of the TMC Board

Investment was announced on 1st July and by 1st September we'll be signing the funding contracts with three new social enterprises - details of the new businesses will be featured in an article in The Wave supplement to the Leicester Mercury next week (hopefully without the dodgy picture of the Bank Manager). We hope to make up to three more investments by 1st November... watch this space.

We have learned such a lot in a relatively short time. We'll be using this learning to help us roll out the Bank of TMC at the start of 2012; working with our Mighty Team of young people, adults and social entrepreneurs to keep moving onwards and upwards across the East Midlands.