At the Real Farming Trust we understand the challenges that agroecological food and farming enterprises face in raising finance, whether that is waiting for a grant to come through or having the funds to grow and develop when you have no assets to secure against.
We want to create a way of filling that gap between grant and commercial funding.
We offer:
- Unsecured loans for a 5-year term
- Amounts of between £25,000 and £100,000
- Can be used for capital or revenue costs
- Interest rate at 5%, and is calculated on a declining balance, equal instalments basis
- To help cover the costs of running the programme, we charge a one-off fee which will be taken from your loan when drawn down. This is currently set at 2% of the loan amount
- We also offer grants. Side by side with your loan, you will be offered a grant at 18% of the loan amount.
A key component of the LEAP is a tailored and structured mentoring package to ensure that you are ready take on a loan. We call this ‘investment readiness’. The structure and focus of this support will vary from one organisation to another, but could be in areas such as business planning, financial modelling, governance, social impact delivery, community finance or marketing.