As a business looking to create jobs in the Black Country region, we want to give you the best possible chance of being successful in your application for a Green Shoots Plus grant. We are offering Small to Medium size businesses (SME’s) the opportunity to participate in one-to-one reviews with a business solutions advisor to see if they could qualify for Green Shoots Plus financial assistance to support their plans for business growth or expansion.

Ahead of your visit, here are our top tips for making your Green Shoots Plus Fund application count.

1. Make sure your business is eligible - You must be a sole trader, partnership, or limited company delivering a capital project, and creating or safeguarding jobs in Shropshire, Telford Wrekin, Stafford or Herefordshire.

2. Think about the information in your Expression of Interest - the main point of this project is to create or safeguard jobs in the areas stated so make sure you're emphasising how many you're looking to create/safeguard and how you will achieve this

3. Be realistic about your funding request - the amount of funding you're asking for needs to be proportional to the amount of jobs you're creating or safeguarding in the Black Country. If you're asking for a lot of investment, we'll expect a lot of jobs in return.

4. Be realistic about the number of safeguarded jobs – You must be able to confirm that the amount of jobs that you propose are being safeguarded will be lost within 12 months if the project doesn’t proceed.

5. Make sure you've considered all of the options for funding - Please indicate that you've considered other funding options such as your own resources or commercial lenders even if the funding isn't confirmed. We require a letter declining funding from your bank

6. Attend a Green Shoots workshop - you will have the opportunity to meet business advisors who can support you in your application and help you pull together a proposal that is investment ready.

7. Make sure your figures are accurate - your application will be assessed based on the figures you provide, so make sure they're accurate. Get support from finance professionals if possible.

8. Do your research - show the investors that you know the need and demand for your product or service and can evidence it.

9. Obtain robust project costs – make sure that you can demonstrate your estimated additional costs relating to the increased volume of your output/sales, as a result of carrying out the project.

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