Emerging Entrepreneurs 

About the challenge

Santander is committed to fostering entrepreneurship within UK universities, providing over £2m of funding each year to support entrepreneurship across our 85 university partners.

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The Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards was launched in 2011 and has since grown to become one of the UK's largest student and graduate business pitching competitions. 2020 marked the 10th year of the competition, and to celebrate we ran the Santander Universities Emerging Entrepreneurs Programme, a five month virtual programme of dedicated support for student/graduate start-ups from 83 of our university partners. 

As part of this programme, the businesses entered the Emerging Entrepreneurs Crowdfunding Challenge, where they had the opportunity to crowdfund between 1st and 29th September 2020, to drive engagement for their businesses, and to be in with the chance to win a £6,000 cash prize from Santander. 

During the programme, participating businesses had access to coaching from our partners at Crowdfunder, including online events and one-to-one coaching, on how crowdfunding can benefit your business, and how to create a successful campaign.

We are pleased to confirm that all participating businesses raised a total of £50,794 from 2,138 supporters. We saw 436 likes, 160 shares and a total engagement of 2,734 which is fantastic!

Find out more about Santander Universities

And the winner is...

We are delighted to announce that the winning project was Student Travel Tips, a business led by Alfie Laurence from the University of Bristol. Alfie raised an impressive £5,451 from 410 supporters, and will also receive £6,000 from Santander.

Find out more about Alfie's business

Learn online at your own pace

Crowdfunding for businesses

If you are interested in Crowdfunding for your business, you can take part in our crowdfunding course designed specifically for the Santander Universities Emerging Entrepreneurs Programme. You can take this course when it suits you and learn at your own pace. 

Join the course 
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The businesses