“Total comms sh*tshow” — fury as Innovate UK backtracks on female founder award

3 September update — following the backlash, Innovate UK confirmed it would pay all 50 of the promised grants late on Monday afternoon.

“Disheartened” entrepreneurs are calling out Innovate UK online, after it delivered just half of the number of promised grants for women business owners in a funding competition.

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, said it would offer 50 Women in Innovation Awards to women-led SMEs. Each winner gets £75,000 to “support women who are at a critical stage”. But it has since been revealed that only 25 awards were given out.

In a viral LinkedIn post, femtech founder Emma Jarvis called on Innovate UK to deliver the 50 grants promised, describing the turnout as a “gut punch” to entrants.

“Women led businesses are consistently underfunded, despite the fact that they are addressing some of the most pressing challenges in society,” she wrote. “We shouldn’t be competing for just 25 spots.”

Source: linkedin.com/in/emmajarvismba/

What are the Women in Innovation awards?

That it is more difficult for women entrepreneurs to raise money than men is a well-known fact of the business world. Startups data, taken from our Startups 100 Index, has shown that men can expect to secure six times the amount of funding raised by women, on average.

Since 2016, the Women in Innovation awards have pledged to help bridge this gender funding gap. For 2024, 50 grants were available, amounting to an overall pot of £3.75m.

It has been reported that 1,452 female founders applied for the grants in total; a measure of how hard-fought the funding landscape is for women entrepreneurs.

But with just 25 winners chosen so far, applicants have been left confused over what has been done with the remaining amount.

It could be an issue of quality, but this theory is suspect. Last year, Innovate UK managed to find 50 ‘suitable’ winners from a considerably shrunken pool of just 900 applicants.

Over the weekend, hundreds of founders – both men and women – took to LinkedIn to decry what serial founder Emma Sayle described as “a man made virtue signalling attempt to placate us angry female founder folk.”

Innovate UK criticised for response

In response to the drama, Innovate UK published a brief statement on its LinkedIn page over the weekend, acknowledging the “confusion and concern,” the mess has created.

“That’s on us and we own that. Sorry that it’s impacted so many people,” the post reads.

The organisation has promised to share a full update this week to explain the thinking behind halving its grant money. However, commenters immediately hit back at what Sayle described as a “total comms sh*t show”.

Source: linkedin.com/in/emmasayle

Sanjay Lobo MBE, founder of the Startups 100-listed business, OnHand, also weighed in on the Innovate UK LinkedIn statement. “Way forward seems straightforward to me,” he wrote.

“1. Fund a further 25 high-scoring female founders, 2. Apologise to the applicants (the above is not that), 3. Listen to the mass of feedback [and] commit to improvements.”

Screenshots from WaybackMachine, a digital archive, suggest that Innovate UK may have changed the wording on at least one of its web pages to “up to” 50 women as late as 9 July.

Screenshots showing how the Innovate UK website changed between 13 June and 9 July 2024 (Source: web.archive.org)

“Where has the other £1.8m gone?”

As a non-departmental public body, UK Research and Innovation is funded by a grant-in-aid from the UK government, meaning the money must be used for specific purposes.

Innovate UK has previously stated that the competition “may not be able to fund all the proposed projects”. However, that 50 awards have been handed out in previous years suggests that finance had not previously been an issue.

Ingrid Murray, angel investor and co-founder of Confused.com, has speculated that Innovate UK funding has been cut. On Sunday, Murray wrote on LinkedIn, “Where has the other £1.8m gone? [..] Could it be Government cost cutting, the pot halved at short notice?”

Ahead of the summer election, Labour pledged to launch a review of the financial exclusion of women in business if elected. Now in government, it has yet to confirm these plans.

Commenting on the controversy, Patricia McGirr, founder at Repossession Rescue Network, said entrants “deserve more than lip service, they deserve the support they were promised.”

“Make some noise”

So far, nearly 800 people have liked and shared Jarvis’ original post. Founders are now coming together to campaign for Innovate UK to deliver the 50 awards originally specified.

On Sunday, Jarvis shared a link to an online survey for supporters to have their say about the Innovate UK debacle. Questions include ‘Would you recommend Innovate UK to another female founder’ and ‘How would you rate your experience with Innovate UK?’.

“If you are a female founder or a supporter of female innovation, I would be grateful for you to make some noise about this issue,” wrote Jarvis.

“These founders are not just participants in a competition they are leaders, innovators, and change makers who deserve to have their work supported and recognized.”

On Monday afternoon, founder Zandra Moore shared an open letter calling for greater transparency from future Innovate UK awards.

This story is still developing. We’ll keep you posted with any updates about the unfolding Innovate UK controversy on this page.