Beyond the Grant: Celebrating Make it Big and Big Business Alumni

Funding can create possibility. But what happens around the funding can be just as important.

At our Make it Big and Big Business End of Programme Celebration, we brought together organisations that have spent the programme building, questioning, planning and preparing for what comes next.

The video from the celebration captures something that can be difficult to communicate through programme statistics alone: what it feels like when an organisation has the funding, community and support it needs to think differently about its future.

From organisations supporting young people to enter the creative industries to those developing solutions around affordable housing for women, the ambitions in the room were different. But many of the challenges were familiar.

How do you build sustainably?

How do you move from responding to immediate pressures to thinking strategically?

How do you prepare for investment before you urgently need it?

And how do you make those decisions while continuing to deliver the work your organisation exists to do?

More than money

For the organisations taking part, funding was an important part of the programme — but it was not the whole story.

Participants spoke about gaining access to a community of peers facing similar challenges. They talked about receiving advice and guidance alongside funding, and having the opportunity to develop skills that changed the way they thought about their organisations.

One participant described the programme as an opportunity to “sit still and actually answer some of those awkward questions.”

That space matters.

Leaders of growing organisations are often required to move quickly: delivering services, managing teams, securing income and responding to the communities they serve. Creating the space to interrogate the organisation itself, its model, finances, ambitions and readiness for growth can easily be pushed further down the list.

Make it Big and Big Business were designed to make that work harder to postpone.

Building organisations that can sustain their impact

Throughout the celebration, participants reflected on changes that went beyond completing a programme.

One organisation spoke about becoming more strategic and adopting a more sustainable way of working. Another reflected on developing skills that had encouraged them to think differently.

For another participant, DiNN's support was instrumental in helping the organisation secure a co-investor.

These are significant shifts because sustainable growth is rarely created by funding alone.

It requires organisations to understand where they are now, where they want to go, what resources they will need to get there and what needs to change internally to make that growth possible.

It also requires leaders to be able to have difficult conversations about money.

One of the messages shared at the event captured that perfectly:

“The best time to look for investment is not when you run out of money and you are in trouble. It's the day after you get a grant.”

That is a mindset we want more organisations to be able to adopt.

Rather than approaching investment as something to consider only when other funding options disappear, organisations can begin thinking about their financial futures while they have the space and resources to make thoughtful decisions.

The power of growing alongside others

Another theme running through the video is community.

Participants described the value of being surrounded by peers doing similar work and navigating similar questions.

For organisations building ambitious solutions, that community can provide something that formal programme content alone cannot: reassurance that the challenges they are experiencing are shared, opportunities to learn from other leaders and relationships that continue beyond an individual workshop or funding award.

At Do it Now Now, we believe organisational resilience is strengthened when leaders have access to capital, capability and community together.

That means providing resources that help organisations act now, while developing the skills, relationships and infrastructure that allow them to continue building after a programme ends.

Celebrating what comes next

The End of Programme Celebration marked the completion of Make it Big and Big Business, but the organisations featured in this video are still building.

They are developing new services, creating opportunities, exploring new models, strengthening their organisations and continuing to pursue the ambitions that brought them to the programme in the first place.

We are grateful to every organisation that trusted us to be part of that journey, to the teams and partners who supported the programmes, and to the funders who enabled the work to happen.

Most importantly, we are excited about what these organisations do next.

Because the goal was never simply to help organisations complete a programme.

It was to help them become better equipped to build what comes after it.