Vivify, an online booking platform to help schools hire out facilities, has received £1 million in further investment from multi-family investment office Arete Capital Partners.
The transaction was led by Simon Lord, Andy Critchley and Briony Fagan at Arete, Matt Noon and Elan Iorwerth of Hill Dickinson (legal advisers), and Patrick Morris of Fairhurst (tax).
With the fresh round of funding, the Manchester-based startup plans to launch a new product by developing its platform into a SaaS solution for schools who do not require a managed service.
Founded in 2020 by the current management team of Russell Teale and Alaine Swis, Vivify works with schools across the country to help hire out facilities outside of school hours to generate much-needed revenue. The startup believes nothing is more important than people’s health and happiness. The platform inspires people everywhere to get the most out of life, bring communities together and to help schools do more.
Vivify is made up of a group of people who care deeply about the schools and communities they represent and are backed by long-term investors who are committed to growing the Vivify brand and improving people’s wellbeing.
Speaking about the fundraise, Co-founder and CEO of Vivify, Russell Teale, said,
“With costs like energy bills rapidly increasing, hiring out facilities can generate hundreds of thousands of pounds for a school, and in turn help with pupil recruitment which brings additional funding.”
Teale further added:
“The initial investment from Arete enabled us to raise awareness of Vivify and offer a lifeline to schools, including some who were operating a deficit budget. With costs like energy bills rapidly increasing, hiring out facilities can generate hundreds of thousands of pounds for a school, and in turn help with pupil recruitment which brings additional funding.
“With 39% of sporting facilities existing behind school gates, schools really do have a pivotal role to play in improving the health of the nation, and this next phase of funding will help us to launch a new product to enable more schools to join the movement to improve the physical and mental wellbeing of communities across the UK”, Teale said.
With the use of leisure facilities returning to pre-pandemic levels, Vivify claims to have been utilized by over 70 schools and has helped enable thousands of hirer groups and grassroots teams to find and book local facilities.
Simon Lord, Managing Partner of Arete Capital Partners, said,
“The thesis that school facilities can be leveraged for the benefit of the community has been validated. Vivify has generated a significant amount of revenue for schools to date, and this new capital round will enable the business to work with a greater number of schools by providing the technology for school stakeholders with limited time to easily launch and manage a community lettings programme in-house.”
“We are very proud of the social and financial success the business has achieved to-date for all stakeholders. We are delighted that high calibre investors such as Bill Currie and Sir Terry Leahy, who come with significant experience in the education sector, are joining Vivify in this round of funding”, he further stated.
The company has also established relationships with national partners, such as Total Swimming Academies, with whom they have launched the Movement Project, a national campaign led by Becky Adlington OBE to address the UK’s inactivity crisis.
Last year in July, Vivify had raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Simon Lord and Jamie Newall at multi-family office Arete.
