Green at Heart

Yes, as long as your organisation receives, or plans to receive, at least 50% of revenue from commercial/market-driven activities.

No. There is an additional circularity assessment tool available for manufacturers, but retailers, service providers, or other non-producing companies are welcome to participate too.

Yes, as long as one of them is registered in an EU member state. If you are registered in two or more EU member state countries, select your HQ location.

Information on how your business operates.To be able to fill in the diagnostic tools, your business operations need to have been running for at least a year. That way, most of your processes are in place and you have a sense of who your stakeholders are.

Not for Phase 1. All SMEs that meet the eligibility criteria (see above) receive access to the ESG tool and webinars. Up to 30 manufacturing companies also receive access to a circularity assessment tool. In Phase 2, the funding will be awarded to a selection of 60 participants across the three participating countries. A further selection of 15 of these entrepreneurs will be invited to attend the entrepreneurial bootcamp in Vienna in the spring of 2025.

No, your business will need to employ at least one person to take part.

Yes! While our main aim is to help human-focused companies become green as well, the ESG tool is relevant for all SMEs for two reasons. One: all SMEs will need to start reporting their ESG performance soon. Two: the tool may help you improve your Social and Governance performance and you may even get recommendations for Environmental improvement that you hadn’t thought about.

A social enterprise combines entrepreneurial activity with a social purpose to make a social impact, rather than maximise profit for owners or shareholders. 

In principle, all such enterprises are eligible for Green at Heart. Within this group, however, we mainly want to help companies with a human focus, as they often lag behind on Environmental sustainability. Businesses providing social services and/or goods and services to vulnerable people are examples of such social enterprises. Read more on the website of the European Commission [↗].

The Timeline above gives an indication of your time investment per part of the programme. You can take advantage of the ESG tool and webinars in as little as 1 day. Webinars run on a rolling basis and you can fill in the tool in your own time until the end of July. We will make the funding application process as easy as possible within the framework of our EU grant.

Yes!

A selection of 60 participants with the most actionable sustainability plans will receive up to EUR 8,000 each to put towards executing their plan.

1. While these reporting regulations don’t formally apply to SMEs yet, they will in 2026 and Green at Heart will help you prepare for that in a very easy way.
2. If you are currently supplying to larger organisations like corporates, CSRD already applies to your business indirectly. If you don’t supply to larger organisations yet: complying with these regulations makes you a more attractive supplier to work with!
3. Regardless of regulations, the diagnostic tool(s) will give you insight into your current sustainability performance and present you with relevant  opportunities to explore – providing a baseline from which to increase your positive impact and resilience across the board.