£500,000 Funding Available for HE and FE Institutions for Business Ideas Competition Prizes

@EngineersnBiz Fellowship (EIBF) helps universities and further education colleges to inspire more engineering students and recent graduates to participate in business innovation competitions by providing cash prizes and mentoring by business leaders. 

It does this through its Engineers in Business (EIB) prize fund. Since this was expanded two years ago following funding from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the number of participating universities has risen from four to 32 and £130,000 has been awarded (including multiple awards).

There is a further £500,000 available to support a total of 50 universities – this includes 18 new HE/FE institutions who can apply to join the scheme, as well as repeat applications from the current 32 participants.

Engineering skills are greatly augmented by business education. For this reason, EIBF encourages engineering undergraduates and graduates to participate in business ideas competitions by providing £3,000 in prize money for each successful university/FE applicant. This helps them to increase the level of participation, enabling engineering students and graduates to gain more commercial education and to develop ideas that can solve problems in society.

UK universities and FE colleges that run business ideas competitions or engineering courses that incorporate business/entrepreneurial modules can apply for a £3,000 prize fund over the next 12 months, if they meet the following criteria: 

1. Have an existing enterprise competition or engineering module that engineering undergraduates and recent graduates can take part in (either as dedicated teams of engineers or multidisciplinary teams)
2. The competition can rank and identify winners as part of the institution’s standard assessment process 
3. The institution commits to promoting the prize fund to engineering students/graduates and to track the number of participants year on year

To apply universities should contact the EIBF office to request an application form, or download the application form from the website.

Winners of university/FE competitions can enter the Engineers in Business Champion of Champions national final which, this year, takes place on 26 October 2020.

This gives them the opportunity to showcase their ideas again and compete for a share of a £10,000 prize pot, mentoring by Sainsbury Management Fellows, a comprehensive CV Package from Purple CV, business support services from IPSE and the textbook Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship from Cambridge University Press.