The Lighthouse founders have spent most of their working lives supporting businesses. From developing and administering government grant programs, to facilitating and managing seed and angel funding to sitting on funding selection panels – we have pretty much done it all. We have since used this experience and our understanding of individual needs to design our own funding programs including a microcredit loan program that has been recognised as best practice by FECCA1.
Some of our work:
Capital Angels Pty Ltd
In 2001, one of the founders of Lighthouse was an Investment Manager for the Epicorp Seed Fund. As a way of seeking follow-on investment for the portfolio she pulled together an informal group of local high net worth investors. The group got together over cheese and crackers to decide how to best support the companies they wanted to invest in. In 2005, one of the participants thought it was time to formalise the group and the entity Capital Angels Pty Ltd was created. The focus was the same, but proper processes and governance were introduced to the investment process. Since 2008, Lighthouse has held a board seat and taken on the role of identifying, scrubbing, and presenting potential investees to the board as well as creating education events for both budding investees and investors.
Entrepreneur Development Fund (EDF)
EDF was a pilot program funded by the ACT Government, Lighthouse and Epicorp. Lighthouse designed the program, application and selection processes and managed the funds. The pilot program ran for 18 months and aimed to contribute to the costs of skills development and knowledge transfer helping businesses develop their in-house capabilities and achieve their goals. EDF supplemented existing ACT and federal government grants and tested some of the assumptions around funding available for small to medium businesses to take this human centred approach to their business growth. During the pilot, 12 businesses received over $150,000 in matched funding. The pilot program demonstrated a clear need for support but found that many smaller enterprises did not have access to the matching funds. It was also clear that any future program had to be sustainable and operate independent of government funding. This led to a rethink of the program, and the Entrepreneur Development Loan Fund was launched with non-government partners in 2014.
Microcredit Loans
In 2011, the ACT Government put out a call to provide no interest loans to women on low incomes. The program had to be designed, gain accreditation, and become an approved Centrelink provider. All loan provision, follow-up and default management also had to be done in-house. The unique element of the program was not the funding, but rather the tailored, human-centred mentoring provided as part of the package. Lighthouse won the contract to deliver the program and after several iterations continues to deliver the program today, not just to the ACT, but also regional NSW. In 2014, with the injection of funds from other partners, eligibility extended to a broader group including those either starting or already in business, but who could not attract traditional debt funding. The loan amounts were also increased from $3,000 no interest loans to $10,000 low interest loans. Lighthouse continues to work to make the program available Australia wide.
