Impact Shakers City Guide: Edinburgh with Daisy Ford-Downes
Since travel isn’t what it used to be, we decided to travel the world through our Impact Shakers City Guides, in which a member of our community shares some of the highlights of their city’s impact ecosystem.
Tell us something about you and how your company got started?
I work for Resilient Scotland, a social investment fund that supports community-led regeneration in areas of multiple deprivation. I’m the Scotland Chapter Lead for Zebras Unite, a global movement building the capital, community and culture for entrepreneurs in the new economy. I also run a website called The Ventures Lab, dedicated to finding innovative funds, programmes and companies doing business differently.
Edinburgh is an amazing, ever-changing collaboration between the public sector, universities, startups, big businesses and the third sector!
Overview of the impact ecosystem by Daisy Ford-Downes
Firstport & FirstImpact work with businesses and other partners to develop a more sustainable and equitable economy. Firstport fosters community, provides funding and support for local social entrepreneurs. They also keep a social entrepreneur directory and have interesting resources on their website for starting entrepreneurs.
The Melting Pot is a social innovation centre and co-working community. They also run Good Ideas, a free incubation programme that helps people turn ideas into change. Currently closed, they’re looking to re-open in new premises in 2021.
Unlocking Ambition is a six month long growth accelerator for ambitious founders with a sustainable growth mindset. This program is part of the Scotland CAN DO program that offers funding and support to promising entrepreneurs that can strengthen and futureproof Scotland’s economy and create a broader positive impact.
SIS Ventures invests and co-invests in mission aligned founders whose starting point is scalable social impact. They purposefully back underrepresented founders of companies with a social and sustainable business plan.
CivTech are introducing problem solving strategies from the tech sector, i.e open challenges and tech accelerators and applying them to issues in public sector organisations.
Investing Women wishes to change the face of the angel investment community in Scotland. They believe in female founders and that teams that include female founders do better. Investing Women backs female founders to scale their businesses internationally.
FutureX Innovation creates and curates content for business leaders building a more sustainable, socially-conscious global economy. They host an online community, resource hub and programme of world-class events including Scotland’s biggest impact event the ‘Impact Summit’.
ECCI is the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation, they have created an ecosystem of charities, public organisations and impactful startups. The startups they support are all working on reducing our ecological footprint through the use of new technologies and sustainable business models.
Other cool impact businesses to keep an eye on:
Matter of Focus helps to make better use of your data and information to learn, improve and tell an evidenced story of the difference your organisation is making.
Wee Seeds provides an age-appropriate mindfulness toolbox for preschoolers in digital form, ‘Mobile mindfulness for mini-minds’. Their social impact includes a ‘Pick One, Plant One’ programme in which for each pledged toolbox, another one is given to a family that needs it.
Neatebox has designed ‘WelcoMe’, an app for customer service providers to help communicate more effectively with disabled clients. It also can help provide training for venue and customer service staff to better assist vulnerable or disabled customers.
Reath are building the digital infrastructure required for businesses to shift to the circular economy. They specialise in the tagging and tracking of circular assets, and building the “digital passport” they need — think Google Analytics for the circular economy.
Blipfoto is ‘a photo a day’ startup that is now owned by the community of users. In a modern on-line world where many millions of images are taken and shared every hour, Blipfoto is a considered and curated space.
Projekt42 is a new type of gym combining physical and mental wellness. During these strange times their physical space is closed but they now provide online counseling, yoga and fitness zoom classes. Their payment model is scaled according to your income. They also offer a psychotherapy texting service.
Social Stories Club introduces you to a world of social ventures where you can support a range of social causes by purchasing one impactful gift.
Tula is an online gathering app where you can have video conferences with up to 200 participants. They make it easy to facilitate groups for purposeful co-creation and they are actively working to organise citizen’s assemblies to keep people actively engaged with the issues their communities are facing.
Want to connect and grow together with other value driven entrepreneurs? Apply here to join our global online impact entrepreneurship community.
