Funding Your Innovation Through Grants

The Digital Tech Cluster is delivering a business support programme to help leaders of digital tech companies grow and succeed. As part of this, we are hosting a free online event created specifically for digital tech founders and leaders. Join us for this free, online workshop that will share how to successfully apply for grant funding.

Topics will include:

• What a grant is and where you can find the
• How to write a winning bid
• How to manage a grant

James Bedford, STFCs Digital Tech Cluster Manager, will be joined by innovation expert Jo Derbyshire from Inventya. Jo and James will be happy to answer your questions after the presentations.

Jo Derbyshire – Director of Growth Finance

Jo has a strong background in grant writing and innovation funding, having successfully supported a wide range of businesses and universities in securing competitive public finance for R&D and growth. She has led and contributed to numerous high-quality funding applications across national and international programmes, with a deep understanding of what makes a proposal both technically sound and strategically compelling. Jo was founder/representative of the lead partner of The Lachesis Fund, a £10M evergreen investment fund established for a group of midlands Universities. Jo is also an Archaeologist, working with a team exploring a lost temple in southern Egypt.

The Digital Tech Cluster

Launched by the Science and Technology Facilities Council in Daresbury on November 2021, the Digital Tech Cluster supports innovative, fast-growing tech startups and scaleups through a targeted business support programme and a peer network. The Business Support Programme delivers around 15 workshops a year, supporting ver 300 leaders of digital tech businesses in 2024. The Peer Network is an exclusive community of tech leaders that benefit from more bespoke support in the form of facilitated CEO, CTO and Female Tech Leaders meetups, pitch practice sessions, mentoring and 1-1 support. 89 tech leaders have joined so far with the ambition to grow the network further in 2025.

Please sign up for tickets and make a note in your calendar. An invitation with joining instructions will be sent before the event.

We look forward to welcoming you to this event.

The Events Team