We exist because the system that was supposed to work for graduates has stopped working. And we are not prepared to wait for it to fix itself.
Something has gone wrong.
For decades, the deal was simple. You work hard at school. You get into university. You graduate with a degree. You get a job that reflects what you have learned and what you are capable of.
That deal is breaking down.
Graduate unemployment and underemployment in the UK is not a short-term consequence of a difficult economy. It is the leading edge of a structural shift driven by artificial intelligence that is eliminating graduate-level roles faster than the economy is creating new ones.
The roles that were supposed to be waiting—in law firms, accountancy practices, marketing agencies, technology companies, financial services—are being automated, compressed, or simply removed. The graduate schemes that used to absorb thousands of people each year are shrinking. The entry-level positions that were the first rung of a career ladder are disappearing.
This is not a temporary blip. It is a permanent change in how the economy works.
And the people bearing the cost of that change most directly are the graduates who did everything right and are now discovering that the system has moved on without them.
We are not here to manage the problem. We are here to solve it.
EmergIT was founded on a single conviction: the graduates who are being left behind by the old economy are exactly the people most capable of building the new one.
They have discipline. They have knowledge. They have drive. What they often lack is the financial runway to get started, the practical support to navigate the early stages of building a business, and someone with real experience who is genuinely invested in helping them succeed.
That is what EmergIT provides.
We act as a genuine co-founder to the graduates we support. Not a grant-giving body that hands over money and wishes them luck. Not a mentoring programme that offers advice from a comfortable distance. A real co-founder relationship—with money, tools, time, and genuine commitment — built around the graduate and their venture.
We provide a £5,000 grant, paid in two milestone-based tranches. We provide AI tools and platform access from day one. We connect graduates with a peer cohort of people building at the same time, and with a network of experienced mentors and collaborators. We build alongside them through a structured milestone framework that turns an idea into a real, trading business.
In return, we take a small revenue share from the ventures we support. That is how we sustain the programme, fund the next cohort, and build something that gets better and more powerful over time. The alignment is intentional. When the graduates we support succeed, EmergIT succeeds. There is no other way we would want it to work.
Built by people who believe this matters.
EmergIT was founded by Ian Rea—a serial entrepreneur with a track record of building and scaling digital platforms—who became convinced that the combination of AI-driven disruption and graduate unemployment represented both a serious social problem and an extraordinary opportunity to do something genuinely useful.
EmergIT is currently assembling its founding co-founder team.
Five degree-qualified graduates who will spend six months building the organisation from the ground up before transitioning into full-time Executive Director roles when our founding grant is secured.
We are not a large organisation with a long history and a glossy annual report. We are a small, determined team building something from scratch because we believe it needs to exist.
A different kind of organisation.
EmergIT is a Community Interest Company (CIC) limited by guarantee. We are not a registered charity, and we are not a conventional business.
A CIC is a company that is legally required to operate for the benefit of the community rather than for the financial benefit of its directors or members. Our asset lock—a statutory requirement of the CIC model—means that our assets and profits cannot be distributed to individuals. Every penny EmergIT generates is locked into the programme and the community it serves.
We are regulated by the CIC Regulator at Companies House.
Our community interest statement and asset lock declaration are filed as part of our annual return and are available on request.
We chose the CIC model because it fits what we are trying to do. We need to generate commercial revenue to sustain the programme—through the service contract with our platform, through consulting and licensing, and eventually through the revenue share arrangements with the ventures we support. A pure charity structure would constrain that commercial activity in ways that would limit our ability to scale. A pure commercial structure would create conflicts of interest we are not prepared to accept.
The CIC sits in between. It allows us to be commercially active and financially sustainable while remaining legally and structurally committed to our community purpose. The graduates we support can trust that EmergIT’s interests are aligned with theirs. The funders who support us can trust that their money is protected by statute, not just by good intentions.
Where we are. Where we are going.
Happening now
Phase 1: The founding sprint
We are currently recruiting five founding co-founders across five disciplines: a Lead Coordinator, a Tech/IT Lead, a Legal Co-Founder, a Finance Co-Founder, and a Marketing Co-Founder.
Over six months, working 15 hours a week alongside their existing commitments, this founding team will build the EmergIT platform, design the graduate programme, and secure our founding £250,000 institutional grant.
If you are a degree-qualified graduate who is unemployed or underemployed and one of these roles fits your discipline—we want to hear from you now.
Opening Autumn 2026
Phase 2: The full programme
Once the founding sprint is complete and our grant is secured, the full EmergIT graduate programme opens for applications in Autumn 2026.
Any UK graduate with a degree, a business idea, and the drive to build it will be able to apply. The first cohort will receive everything the EmergIT model offers—the grant, the co-founder relationship, the tools, the community, and the structured support to take an idea from concept to trading business.
If that is you—or if it might be you by Autumn 2026—register your interest now. We will contact you the moment applications open.
If you want to support this, we would like to talk.
EmergIT is currently raising its founding £250,000 institutional grant. This funding will cover the operating costs of the sprint phase, the development of the platform and programme infrastructure, and the first cohort of graduate ventures launched in Autumn 2026.
Empowering underused graduate talent.
We welcome enquiries from trusts, foundations, corporate partners, and individual major donors who share our conviction that unemployed and underemployed graduates represent an extraordinary untapped resource—and that backing them properly is both the right thing to do and a sound investment in the future of the UK economy.
We are a CIC, not a registered charity. Some trust and foundation funders require registered charity status—we understand that, and we are happy to have that conversation directly. For funders who are open to CIC applicants, we can provide full governance documentation, our community interest statement, and a detailed funder pack on request.