The Help to Grow: Management course is a government initiative that helps SME leaders build management capability and plan for growth. The 12-week programme is delivered by accredited business schools and combines structured training with one-to-one mentoring. The government funds 90% of the cost; participants pay £750.

Each participant is matched with a volunteer mentor who provides up to 10 hours of one-to-one guidance, with flexibility to extend. Mentors cover strategy, marketing, finance, sustainability and digital adoption.

The mentoring is delivered by a consortium of Enterprise Nation, Newable and the Association of Business Mentors. Enterprise Nation manages mentor recruitment, onboarding and matching, and runs the full mentoring journey through its platform.

To date, approximately 9,000 mentors have registered, of whom around 2,900 have been approved and approximately 700 remain actively available. The consortium has overseen more than 40,000 hours of mentoring through the platform. Both participant and mentor satisfaction with the mentoring offer stands above 90%.

Enterprise Nation's platform also connects thousands of founders with over 400 business advisers as part of its wider small business support work.

Further reading

This entry was written by Daniel Woolf. Daniel is the Head of Policy and Government Relations at Enterprise Nation.