Thursday 25th February saw the live broadcast of the Yorkshire Financial Awards 2021.
Hosted by the enthusiastic Lucy Porter, 18 awards were handed out to various companies all around the Yorkshire region.
The Wosskow Brown Foundation were given the first award Lucy gave out that night, the Accelerator of the Year Award!
Yorkshire Financial Awards – Accelerator of the Year Winners
To win this award, the Wosskow Brown Foundation came up against other amazing nominees including Barclays Eagle Labs, Sheffield Hallam University’s Hallam i-Lab, and NatWest Accelerator.
The Foundation is a private sector initiative from the Partners at South Yorkshire law firm, Wosskow Brown, set up as a response to the Government’s call for the private sector to help as much as they can to regenerate the local economy, after a £3bn GVA gap was identified in the region, as well as the fact there were 70,000 too few jobs and 6,000 too few businesses.
The WB100 programme was launched to offer useful support for businesses, sports clubs, charities, and social enterprises. Workshops were delivered to upskill SME owners in everything from Cashflow Management to Social Media, from winning business to Recruitment.
To support this, the Foundation set up a pro bono mentoring programme which brought together local professionals and experienced entrepreneurs with founders of start-ups and scale-ups.
Business Mentoring
The Foundation has also offered a year of free office space to businesses finding their feet, which included free phones, free Wi-Fi, and free mentoring, using the office spaces available at the head office of Wosskow Brown in East Sheffield.
In the five years to November 2019, the Wosskow Brown Foundation helped, engaged, or otherwise assisted over 900 organisations in the Sheffield City Region. In just the past three years, they have also made almost 600 B2B introductions for companies looking to engage with business specialists in a wide range of sectors, gaining a reputation for being a ‘connector’ organisation.
Delighted to Win
Jim Lawson, Programme Director of the Wosskow Brown Foundation, said: “We are delighted to win Accelerator of the Year award”.
Jim also added: “We would also like to highlight the really valuable work the other nominees in our category do in helping businesses to grow and scale”, acknowledging all the other business accelerators in the region.
Jim explained: “When we launched the Wosskow Brown Foundation in 2014, our main purpose was to help regenerate out local economy and through the vision of Ian Brown and fellow partners of Wosskow Brown, we have been able to help over 1,000 businesses.
“Finally, we must thank our unsung heroes, the many entrepreneurs and professionals in the region who responded to our rally call and have engaged and supported all we do”.
