Our business focus is to make a difference for all our clients. Many of our services have won national and international awards and commendations, and we have engaged over 42,000 pre-start potential entrepreneurs and 30,000 SMEs and take pride in our track record of inclusivity – across all our work. Over 50% of our clients are female, and 20% BaME, considerably outstripping national averages.

Outset was created in 2009 to address a market gap for support for people with disadvantaged backgrounds and living in deprived areas.  Some clients had exceptional challenges for them, for society, and support services. Clients that fall into this bracket include ex-offenders subject to Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements, alcohol and substance misusers and those with mental or physical disabilities or specific learning challenges.

The Outset programme was the first of its kind in UK, uniquely structured to include a combination of personal and enterprise skills development, with a starting point of ‘possibility’ for every person. Outset services have been delivered in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, London, Bristol, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Bristol, Swindon and Wiltshire.  

Our new ventures have a three-year survival rate 15% higher than the general business population, which considering some of their backgrounds, is a remarkable achievement and testimony to the human spirit.

In 2011, we created our first online learning platform, Outset Online, designed to make our start-up programme more widely accessible to clients, especially those with caring or mobility barriers, or who lived in rural areas.

Outset Online

Outset Online is our online-learning programme that’s designed with all the essential tools and knowledge needed to start a business. It includes over 140 video tutorials, a range of different downloadable guides and templates, interactive quizzes and activities for putting learning into practice, user-friendly calculators that take the pain out of financial planning plus a complete online business plan builder

The Outset Foundation

The Outset Foundation is an independent UK charity dedicated to relieving poverty by supporting enterprise and skills development services across the UK. This includes those helping people struggling to find employment, and helping small business grow to create more local job opportunities.