FAQ

There are SFEDI Business Support standards covering many roles involved in providing help to pre start, start up and existing small businesses. Publicly funded contracts for providing support to small businesses usually specify that advisers, coaches, mentors and information providers must have a certificate to show that they meet the SFEDI Business Support standards. SFEDI standards for advisers, social enterprise advisers, information officers and mentors are all available free of charge to download from this website. If you go to the SFEDI Centres of Excellence section of this website, under business support you will see SFEDI Regional and National Licensed Centres which can Assess, Accredit and Certificate you against the SFEDI Business Support Standard. If you are a company or organisation seeking to develop a bespoke programme for your business support personnel then please contact SFEDI Director Ruth Lowbridge at ruth.lowbridge@sfedi.co.uk who will be pleased to recommend you SFEDI licensed centres who can meet your specific needs.

Everyone at SFEDI, a not for profit organisation led by existing entrepreneurs and business owners, is dedicated to finding what works best in training, learning opportunities and support to ensure prospective and existing entrepreneurs and owner managers have the very best chance of surviving and thriving. SFEDI provides no direct support to business owners but the leading practice and the standards which we develop are used by all good trainers, advisers, mentors and information providers. By continually raising the standard of the training and support prospective and existing business owners get so we improve the chances of success for everyone. Look for the SFEDI logo – see 4 below.

SFEDI is a UK wide organisation that aims to be like a ‘Consumers Association’ of learning and skills development available to prospective and existing entrepreneurs. We tell everyone what is good and we try to improve what isn’t so good. All the entrepreneurs involved in SFEDI are independent of government but SFEDI is also recognised by government as the standards setting body for training and qualifications for those thinking about, setting up or running their own business and all those providing business support. This downloadable update gives you more detail on the SFEDI business model.

The SFEDI endorsement logo means that the course, programme, qualification, website, journal, learning media (manuals, DVDs, videos book, cd roms etc) is small business friendly and is of real practical value. SFEDI found that a lot of the training that owner managers and staff in small businesses were receiving was not appropriate. SFEDI has a trained team of people who run small businesses to evaluate whether the training is useful, in the right language, value for money and meets SFEDI good practice guidelines. If it does then they recommend it for endorsement and a SFEDI committee of entrepreneurs and small business advisers award it the SFEDI logo. So look for the logo and give me your views on any SFEDI endorsed product or service you use at tony.robinson@sfedi.co.uk. 

You’ll find full details on this website in the endorsement section. We look forward to receiving your application.

Most of SFEDI’s clients for its standards setting and leading practice research work are government funded departments (e.g. DfES, DTI, Defra, Scottish Enterprise, Invest Northern Ireland), agencies (SSDA, QCA, SQA, SBS LSC), and bodies (Investors in People (UK), Sector Skills Councils, Ufi/Learn Direct) plus major small business support organisations (banks, trade associations, major training providers and educational institutions). SFEDI’s endorsement work covers a far wider range of private sector and publicly funded training and business support organisations. These organisations want their places, people, products or services to be recognised by gaining the SFEDI endorsement mark. The common thread for all SFEDI clients is a desire to improve the quality and value received from entrepreneur training and enterprise development support.

Once SFEDI has developed or identified standards or leading practice – things that work in practice to help small businesses survive and thrive – then SFEDI ensures it makes this information freely available to everyone via this web site. See our download section.

There are many ways of participating in SFEDI’s work to raise standards of enterprise development. The SFEDI board is advised by a number of groups where the members have a particular interest or expertise such as research, products and services endorsement and education. We have consultation events and focus groups regularly taking place to assist our research studies and you can comment on our research projects in progress at www.sfedi.org.uk. If you are a successful entrepreneur you can lead our work by applying be invited onto our Forum for Entrepreneurs. You can nominate entrepreneurs for awards that have benefited from SFEDI endorsed products and services. Plus we want all small business owners to be ‘mystery shoppers’ and let us know how you rated a SFEDI endorsed programme, product or service. Please do get involved – contact me Tony Robinson OBE, Executive Chairman, SFEDI at tony.robinson@sfedi.co.uk