Ian Calvert, founder of FURTHER, and Maluta Netshaulu, Head of Social Impact Portfolio Development at Nedbank, recently joined us as guest speakers during the second UK South Africa Tech Hub Launch League Green bootcamp. They shared their experience working together on The Greenhouse, which supports early-stage green ventures through grant funding, coaching, and holistic capacity-building.
For ESOs/ hubs running green programmes, we urge you to remember the importance of nurturing not only the natural ecosystem, but your entrepreneurial ecosystem too. One of the ways to do this is by cultivating robust ecosystem partnerships.
Here are 4 tips our guest speakers shared for identifying and forming meaningful partnerships:
Utilise LinkedIn, conferences, webinars, and other ecosystem meeting points to connect with potential partners.
This is particularly challenging for more rural ESOs, but professional networking platforms like LinkedIn and online communities like UK South Africa Tech Hub Launch League increase accessibility into the ecosystem, so leverage them!
Make sure your values are aligned.
Over the years, Nedbank has refined their sustainability mandate. They value outcomes, not just outputs, in measuring their impact. FURTHER also believes in a deeply impact-focused approach. They run programmes that aim to have long-lasting effects on the entrepreneurs they train. This includes building mental resilience, which increases entrepreneurial self-efficacy (the belief in oneself). This will stick with them throughout their lives, regardless of what happens to the business.
As an entrepreneur support organisation, track and document your success.
FURTHER consolidated their results data in a comprehensive impact report. Through this, they proved to Nedbank that they can deliver on programmes, and that they are able to provide the type of data that Nedbank needs in their own reporting.
Work with each other’s strengths.
FURTHER has a proven track record in uplifting businesses, and Nedbank has financial expertise and resources. As partners, they can leverage each other’s strengths to support entrepreneurs.
Next month, we will run the third and final bootcamp for this programme, all around creating and delivering specialised content for green businesses. Stay tuned!
About UK-South Africa Tech Hub Launch League
Hubs and entrepreneur support organisations do important work across South Africa and Southern Africa, helping people to grow themselves, their income-earning opportunities and their businesses.
Launch League was established by Viridian and the UK-South Africa Tech Hub to create opportunities for hub teams to grow their skills, access quality resources, and connect with each other as a community of practice. Through enabling local hubs, Launch League aims to support young people to create meaningful economic opportunities for themselves and their communities.
Launch League training and networking events are offered to South African hubs and organisations, but the resources and toolkits are available under open licence to any African hub or organisation. If you’d like to find out how to partner with Launch League to offer training and events for hubs in your country (outside of South Africa), please contact us.