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Santander Entrepreneurship Bursaries

Secure upto £3000 to support your start-up journey​

Santander Entrepreneurship Bursaries are designed to help you to get your business started. We know that the early days of your business are hard. You may be juggling having a full time job while you work on your business in the evening, or struggling to get to the tipping point where your business is making enough money to support you. 

Option 1. Santander will fully fund your salary for 8 weeks, but only if you are based in our incubator. This is equivalent to £375 per week.

Option 2. The Santander Entrepreneurship Bursary will supplement your income by £150 per week for up-to 13 weeks to allow you to spend more time on your business, helping you through this pain point. This bursary is worth a maximum of £1950.

​Eligability

To be eligable for a bursary you will need to have graduated from Cardiff Metropolitan with a Bachellors, Post Graduate Certificate, Masters or Doctoral qualification within the last 2 years. In exceptional cases we may also make an award to current students.

Your business must be based in the UK.

You must already be trading, OR have a validated business plan which is investment ready.

You must be eligable to run a business in the UK.

For option 1 you must be based in our incubation space.

Application Process

To apply for the Santander Bursary you will need to prepare two documents, a Business One Pager and a covering letter/plan. 

The Business One Pager should be approximately 1 side of A4 and should contain enough information for us to understand your business. We're not expecting a page of text, make it interesting. If you've not written a BOP before, follow this guidance on layout and this guidance on what to include. Your Business One Pager should be something that you have on hand for anytime someone wants to know more about your business. It should include.
• An overview of your business/idea
• Your target market
• What progress have you made to date
• What you will do next
• What do you need to achieve this

We want to see creative and innovative ways of your presenting your idea, so let your creative spirit flow in the one pager. This is a chance for you to visually present your idea the best you can!

You will also need to prepare a covering letter and action plan which should explain why you would like to receive the Santander Bursary and what you aim to achieve during the 8/13 week period. The letter should, like any good covering letter, be specific to your business and your situation. Why should we support you and what makes your business special? It should address your personal financial situation and give us some information on how the bursary will help you to spend more time on your business. Unlike our other awards you do not need to specify what you will spend this money on – it is designed to cover your living costs allowing you to reduce your employed working hours or give up a part time job.

The plan should give us some confidence that by the end of the bursary period you will have grown your business enough that it is giving you a sustainable income. One way of setting this out is using a three column table – date, activities, outcomes – with enough detail in the activity and outcomes columns to give us confidence in your plan. Targets and outcomes should be S.M.A.R.T.

Both these documents should be saved as a Word document or PDF - other document types will NOT be accepted.
Once you have prepared this information you will need to complete an application form which helps us to monitor if this funding is supporting students and graduates from a widening participation background. You will need to upload your files during this process.

We have a limited number of awards, and we will evaluate your application on a first come first served basis.


We have a limited number of awards, and we will evaluate your application on a first come first served basis.

Terms and Conditions

The offer of the bursary is made on the following conditions;

  • Option 1, during the 8 week period you will be working fulltime (a minimum of 40 hrs per week) on your business. This time will primarily be spend located in the Llandaff Incubation Space.
  • Option 2, during the 13 week period you will spend a significant proportion (at least 30 hours per week) of your time working on the development of your business, spending at least 1 day per week in the incubation space.
  • If available you will attend the Centre for Entrepreneurship's accelerator programme.
  • With assistance from the Centre for Entrepreneurship you will provide Santander UK with 3 video blogs during the period of the Internship giving details of progress with your business and how the grant funding has enabled you to develop your business.
    (Video 1 – as soon as possible, video 2 after 4/6 weeks, video 3 at the end of 8/13 weeks)
  • Once agreed by the Centre you will share these videos on the Santander Universities Fellows group; 
    https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13556614/
    The Cardiff Met Entrepreneurs and Freelancers Facebook group;
    https://www.facebook.com/groups/408358279662890/
    And on any other social media platform required by the Centre for Entrepreneurship.
  • You will submit a one-page written report within one week of completion of the internship, summarising what you have used the money for and what difference it has made to you establishing their business.
  • Payments will be made every 4 weeks, in advance.
  • Awards will be made by the Centre for Entrepreneurship and are subject to the Universities' policies regarding equal rights and use of the Welsh language. There is no appeals process, however resubmissions are allowed.
  • Submissions will be evaluated in the order they are received. Applications which are succesful will be granted an award subject to available funding.

Apply here for the Santander Entrepreneurship Bursary