Innovate UK, aka “Britain’s innovation agency,” has reversed a controversial decision to award just half the number of grants it had promised to female founders in a funding competition.
25 out of a potential 50 grants, of up to £75,000 each, were originally awarded for the Women in Innovation scheme, despite it receiving 1,452 applications and having “up to £4m” available to grant.
Hundreds of female founders took to social media over the weekend after the outcomes were announced to question the assessment process — and the organisation’s commitment to supporting women. They also called on Innovate UK to award the full 50 grants and explain where the rest of the funding has gone.
Zandra Moore, the founder and CEO of Leeds’ Panintelligence, was among those taking the agency to task. In a LinkedIn post that received close to 500 reactions, responses and reposts she warned Innovate UK: “You’ve messed with the wrong women.”
Now, Innovate UK has announced on LinkedIn that it will award the full 50 grants, representing a total investment of £4m, as it had originally committed to.
Its post in full read:
“Since 2016, our Innovate UK Women in Innovation programme has played a vital role in strengthening the UK’s innovation system. We’ve worked hard to develop this unique programme, and we care about its success deeply.
“For this year’s Women in Innovation awards, we said that we’d fund a portfolio of up to 50 projects. Last week, we communicated that 25 applicants had been successful for funding.
“As public funders, we must manage our budgets carefully. The decision to only award this number was a mistake and we prioritised wrongly.
“We recognise the impact this has had on the many applicants, and on the community as a whole, and we apologise wholeheartedly.
“We confirm we will be funding a total of 50 awards. This represents a total investment of £4m for the current cohort, as originally committed.
“As well as confirming 50 awards, we also want to reassure everyone who applied that we remain committed to supporting and increasing opportunities across the system for women innovators.
“We will be contacting all applicants to highlight how they can access support from Innovate UK and our partners.
“The response to this programme has been our highest to date, and demonstrates the increasing number of women-led innovative businesses that are driving growth for our economy.
“Women in Innovation is one of the programmes that we offer across the Innovate UK system, which includes the Innovate UK Catapult Network, business growth advisors and Innovate UK Business Connect.
“Across this system we offer many products and services to support innovation.
“Latest data for all Innovate UK competitions, shows that 1 in 3 successful grant applications were led by women, up from 1 in 7 in 2016.
“We apologise again for the concern and frustration that we have caused.”
The agency added that it will:
– Fund 50 Women in Innovation awards, meeting our original commitment of £4m for this programme.
– Contact the additional 25 successful applicants to confirm funding, starting immediately.
– Contact all Women in Innovation applicants with information of other types of support available to them.
– Further develop our strategic engagement with business leaders and advocates in this area. We have already been speaking with people who have been engaging on behalf of communities.
– Continue to work collaboratively to improve our processes and co-create new opportunities.
It concluded: “This entire situation underscores the urgent need for Innovate UK and similar institutions to not only recognise but actively address (unconscious/conscious) bias in their processes,” Bridget Greenwood, cofounder of The 200Bn Club, an accelerator for under-represented founders, told Sifted in response to the news.
“While the decision to honour the original 50 grants is a step in the right direction, it’s clear that without concrete measures to ensure fair and equitable assessments, we risk perpetuating the very barriers these programmes are meant to dismantle. It’s time to move beyond good intentions and take meaningful action to support all innovators, regardless of gender.”
The percentage of venture funding that reaches all-female founding teams has stagnated — in the UK and elsewhere in Europe — at just 2%, a statistic described by the UK government’s Women-Led High-Growth Enterprise Taskforce as representing “no improvement in the past decade.”
