Launching the GRID Foundation
It is just 10 years since I came back to Ireland to do something about the banking problem. With any plan that is based on a set of ideals (and frankly naivety) the journey is full of ups and downs and twists and turns.
I was reading a Ranulph Fiennes book recently and the quote ‘Try chewing a few prawns before you announce to the world that you intend to devour a lobster’ really resonates for me.
The longer I go on the journey the more I understand that this is continuous. We recently had a big acquisition that we were close to completing but didn’t happen at the last moment.
What has also been continuous on our journey in the last 10 years is our desire to not just run a profitable business but also to have a positive social impact in what we do. In 2020 we founded the SME Recovery campaign which campaigned for a comprehensive response to the pandemic by the government for SMEs. This campaign was very successful in that it helped bring about the wage support scheme, tax warehousing and many other reliefs that helped stabilise the SME sector when many businesses were forced to close. In 2016 we were also the winners of a special financial inclusion award from the MetLife Foundation.
As we rebooted our own business post-pandemic we wanted to reassert our commitment to making a positive impact
We have new product offerings that will help with this but we are also incorporating a foundation arm of GRID that will build on our policy work in 2020 and also deliver unique initiatives that help build a stronger and more resilient financial system. There will be three key workstreams in the foundation:
- Advocacy – with our deep understanding of the financial fabric of small businesses we will advocate for government policy that is better in tune with the needs of small businesses and align with those that professionally represent the SME sector with government
- Research – We will execute research to highlight unknown needs, characteristics, and impacts of the SME sector. Central to the 2020 campaign was the reality that small businesses are both economically and socially important. They are also undercapitalised and our research will highlight why this is a problem for us all.
- Events – We will run a conference focused on financial health and launch an inaugural Irish Fintech Awards.
I will chair the GRID foundation and in due course, we will hire a Foundation Director once we can show the benefit and impact of our not-for-profit arm on our core mission of helping as many small businesses as possible to build their financial health and resilience. If you have an interest in the GRID Foundation please get in touch! You can also learn more by going to https://www.gridfinance.ie/about/foundation
