Give back to students

If you are interested in supporting our students, there are a number of ways you can get involved in Kingston's Enterprise Education activities and events, including mentoring, joining a judging panel, or funding projects.

Become a mentor

If you have entrepreneurial or business experience, you can become a mentor and support our students by sharing your knowledge and expertise.

The Nest

If you are passionate about new business ideas, join our incubator mentor team. Help us build a community of young entrepreneurs with great potential, who will learn from your experience and make the most of your valuable advice.

The Accelerator Weekend

The Accelerator Weekend is the penultimate stage of our entrepreneur development programme. We have up to 12 of our most committed students/graduates spending the weekend developing the commercial side of their ideas.

Your role would be to offer speed mentoring and advice to those in attendance, mostly about defining and reaching out to their target customer and creating an actionable plan for when they leave the weekend. Mentors will give feedback and critique on business ideas and pitches and, where possible, suggestions for improvement, sharing any relevant expertise or contacts.

The Accelerator 8-week programme

This is an 8-week summer course designed for students who took part in the Accelerator Weekend. The attendants have to test all their business model hypotheses, defining and reaching out to their target customer and creating an actionable plan.

Mentors play an active role in weekly coaching a specific start-up, by helping participants test their business model hypotheses. The mentoring can be remote/virtual.

Join a judging panel

If you are interested in supporting our students, you can become a judge in our Bright Ideas programme. Bright Ideas is our annual student competition designed to give our students the opportunity to develop a business idea, have it evaluated and win a prize up to £1000.

Bright Ideas online judge

If you are passionate about new ideas, become a Bright Ideas online judge. In this exciting role, you will be reviewing and scoring the online applications submitted by our students entering the competition. You can do that remotely, all you need is a laptop and a Wi-Fi connection.

Bright Ideas Grand Final judge

The Grand Final is the last stage of the competition where the students will pitch their ideas to panels of judges. In this role you will be part of one of the panels, judging and scoring the ideas.

Hackathon judge

Hackathons are an intense joint effort to crack a problem. Experience the process yourself by participating as a judge or become an industry partner and propose a challenge for our students to work on.

Provide sponsorship or funding

Another valuable way in which you can support our students is to provide sponsorship or funding. If you don't have time to get involved with activities but are still interested in helping our students, you can sponsor our competitions or offer monetary help.

If you'd like to offer your support, or find out more, please get in touch.

Our students have a bright future in front of them. It's very fulfilling and rewarding knowing that I have helped with their career development and business evolution.

Shakeeb, Entrepreneurs Succeed With Us – Mentor

I have been a mentor at the Accelerator Weekend for two years and I would 100 percent recommend this experience to other Kingston alumni - it's all about community!

Alan, SOS Ventures – Mentor

Contact us

If you'd like to offer your support to the Enterprise Education programme, or you'd like to find out more, please email us.